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Re: are panel games sexist?

Messages in this topic: 12 View All
CatJun 13, 2009
 

 
Well the day I begin to agree with the Daily Mail's stance is a day I hope never to reach.

So...erm back to the 'swarming smarm' for me then.

--- In just-a-minute@..., Robert Torres <bobbyshaddoe3004@...> wrote:
>
> wow!  that was certainly very thought-provoking to say the least. 
>
> --- On Fri, 6/12/09, Dean Bedford <dbedford@...> wrote:
>
>
> From: Dean Bedford <dbedford@...>
> Subject: Re: [just-a-minute] Re: are panel games sexist?
> To: just-a-minute@...
> Date: Friday, June 12, 2009, 4:36 PM
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> here's a different perspective on the debate from Jan Moir of the Daily
> Mail - copied more for amusement than anything else
>
> Not enough women on panel shows? Don't make me laugh!
>
> Who is funnier, men or women? After thousands of years of civilisation,
> you would think we had moved on from this stone age level of gender
> debate, but no. Here we go again.
>
> This week it is the turn of Victoria Wood, who says radio and television
> panel shows are 'too male-dominated' .
>
> The comedienne, once the highest-paid funny woman in this country, feels
> that females struggle to compete in these 'testosterone fuelled' shows.
> Women are just as funny as men, says Wood.
>
> So why can't they get a fair crack of the on air comedy whip? Well,
> maybe it isn't fair, but who cares?
>
> There are many, many thousands of groups of women in this world who are
> deserving of our sympathy for their sexist plights, but British
> comediennes with an airtime grievance sure ain't one of them.
>
> And anyway, perhaps the lack of women on programmes such as Never Mind
> The Buzzcocks, QI or The News Quiz has nothing to do with female guests
> supposedly not being funny enough.
>
> Isn't it far more likely that they are just too smart to want to be on
> such dreary, egocentric panel shows in the first place? Especially if
> they are fronted, as they always seem to be, by that blowsy, arch
> boy-bore Stephen Fry?
>
> My idea of hell? Being forced to watch or listen to endless re-runs of
> Fry and a swarming smarm of his posturing fellow He-Comics as they try
> to out-funny each other.
>
> There is a whole dank substrata of the entertainment industry that seems
> to be devoted to worshipping the supposedly ad hoc bon mots that drip
> from the lips of Jimmy Carr, Jack Dee, Alan Davies, Phil Jupitus, Frank
> Skinner, Russell Brand, Sean Hughes and - coming up fast in the outside
> lane - James Corden, who is far too pleased with himself for comfort.
>
> Really. I've heard funnier weather announcements than Alan Davies in
> full comic flight.
>
> And men like Jupitus and Hughes are only ever seen behind the desks of
> panel shows. Have they even got legs, I wonder?
>
> Who finds these men amusing, except a few male undergraduates who have
> never been kissed?
>
> Which makes it all the more surprising that someone such as Victoria
> Wood feels excluded and wants to join in the panel game action.
>
> Surely the woman behind Dinner Ladies and Acorn Antiques is far too
> witty for the kind of adolescent banter that dominates these shows? I
> bet they have asked her a million times and she has always turned them
> down.
>
> Yet Wood's complaint echoes the one made by Mariella Frostrup last year.
>
> Despite, or perhaps because of, appearing on the show herself, Frostrup
> felt women were only invited to appear as a token presence to be
> ridiculed by the 'testosterone- driven' team captains, Ian Hislop and
> Paul Merton.
>
> That phrase again! Look, ladies. What most of us demand of comedy,
> whether it is testosterone or oestrogen-driven, is that it is funny.
>
> Sadly, the funniest thing about Mariella Frostrup - surely tokenism's
> ultimate token woman - is her insistence that we take her seriously as
> an intellectual.
>
> Ultimately, why do women such as Wood and Frostrup waste time
> complaining that the entry policy on panel shows is sexist?
>
> It is rather like a battalion of deranged, angry women beating down the
> door of a gentlemen's club only to find, once inside, a cache of old
> duffers supping turtle soup and complaining about their prostates. Was
> it worth it? Of course not.
>
> Surely it is beneath them and their feminist wish for comedy equality at
> all costs. Why drag ourselves down to the level of Jimmy Carr?
>
> Yet, increasingly, any form of perceived exclusion - from politics to
> panel shows - seems to rob women of any common sense.
>
> They go berserk! 'Let us in,' they shriek, without contemplating whether
> they really want to be inside this corroded comedy world in the first
> place.
>
> Sometimes it is not what is sexist, but what is significant that is
> really important.
>
> In the meantime, what do you call a really intelligent, funny,
> quick-witted, hilarious man on a panel show?
>
> A rumour.
>
> Boom, and may I say it again, boom.
>

 
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