Television panel shows have become the most common and arguably digestible form of experiencing comedy performance within the last 10 years or so. Programmes like Mock the Week, Have I Got News For You and QI are immensely popular for their individuality in the genre, each drawing a different but significant crowd of viewers. Very recently, more panel shows have reached our screens, in the forms of Sweat The Small Stuff, with Nick Grimshaw, and other now diminished shows such as Ask Rhod Gilbert and the uncomfortably narcissistic I Love My Country. Panel shows not only form a great bulk of the entertainment programming available from the BBC, but have become significant cultural factors. Through these programmes, we observe, we satirise, we learn, and of course we laugh. However, the problem is not what these programmes teach us about politics or news, but what they teach us about society.
What panel shows have subliminally advertised over the past few years is that there are very few female comedians, and even fewer who would be booked on national television shows. This is incredibly troubling, as what the public has been able to infer from male/female booking statistics is that women just arenÔÇÖt as funny as men, as abundant as men, or as deserving as men of the limelight. Over the course of the most recent season of BBCÔÇÖs Mock The Week, only 3 female comedians were booked, compared to 12 different male comics. This rift in opportunity is undeniable, but there is no lack in talent or capability to match it.
In reality, there are far more female comics regularly performing up and down the country than what we can observe from television exposure, but they are resultantly disadvantaged in their professional lives, as society has been allowed to believe that women are inferior to men in the world of comedy. This assumption is not just acknowledged by female comedians, but also the males. If you were to ask any male comedian to name a funny woman, they could name you five in a heartbeat; itÔÇÖs not a matter of merit, but a matter of exposure.
This legislation upon the BBCÔÇÖs programming may appear to be what some refer to as ÔÇ£Positive discriminationÔÇØ, whereby minority demographics are purposefully targeted and advantaged in order to fulfil unwritten social quotas. Positive discrimination may be seen as synthetic, and an arbitrary risk to the quality of the finished product. However, I believe it is what needs to happen. The general public deserves to recognise a diversity that reflects its own, and I believe even more fervidly that women deserve to believe that they have just as much a capacity to be funny as men.
I could throw you a long list of names that you may but are unlikely to have heard of, simply because they havenÔÇÖt appeared on our screens or on a list of credits. I have a list of favourite comedians, and just as there are men like Romesh Ranganathan, Elis James and Josh Widdecombe, there are also women such as Aisling Bea, Josie Long and Felicity Ward. I have not added these names to my list because IÔÇÖm looking to tick certain boxes so that I can hold my head high believing that I charitably donated some of my efforts to a minority group, they have been added to my list because they have made me laugh so hard that I fired whatever I was drinking at the time out of my nose.
What has concerned me most of all about such negative attitudes towards female comics is that women hold the same prejudices; itÔÇÖs an assumption that goes deeper than just sexism. I have talked to and overheard women inside and outside of comedy clubs apologetically insisting ÔÇ£IÔÇÖm sorry, but I just donÔÇÖt find women funnyÔÇØ. Not only is this a gross miscalculation of 51% of the worldÔÇÖs population, but significantly, this phrase presents the idea of liking female comedy as a chore, as if extra effort must be made to find a woman funny. It suggests that the notion of men being funnier than women is far more acceptable than women being funny at all. Women, in todayÔÇÖs society, are unable to contemplate being just as capable as men at making people laugh, which I find deeply upsetting.
I love comedy, and therefore I fully support the decision to enforce representation of women on panel shows. It may not change our perceptions overnight, but I look forward to the day that I can sit in a comedy a club, see a women walk on stage, and not watch as the man and woman either side of me fold their arms and sigh.
Sam Lloyd
Add Comment