5 times online comedy instruction was sexist
There are lots of comedy resources online: how to be funnier, how to write a joke, how to effectively use the rule of three (SEE HOW I DID THAT?) That’s great.
Less great: In many instances, you are not so much the target customer as…the target of the joke. Like, the sample jokes they are presenting and analyzing—and I don’t mean “analyzing” in a bell hooks way—are straight up garden-variety dumb and sexist.
Whatever, brah. It’s not worth my comedy outrage. (And I’m not here to slam the particular instructors below; they’re just the ones I happened across, and their basic comedy guidance is sound.) For me the most telling thing is the obvious assumption that ONLY OTHER DUDES are reading/watching, which is not only THE WHOLE ENTIRE PROBLEM, but also questionable customer acquisition strategy.
See what I mean…
- To explain basic joke structure, this guy says: “Consider this joke from Jimmy Carr: My girlfriend said she wanted me to tease her. I said “alright, fatty”. Carr creates an assumption (that his girlfriend wants to be teased playfully) then subverts it (by teasing her maliciously.) It’s a classic setup/punch joke; the first sentence (setup) leads us in one direction, the next sentence (punch) reframes the setup revealing an unexpected twist.”
- Of ALL THE JOKES in the world that he could possibly deconstruct, this guy picks a blonde joke.
- Describing the vital comedy tool of surprise, this guy offers this example: “I woke up in the hotel this morning and the housekeeper was banging on the door, just banging. Finally, I had to get up and let her out.” In a later joke, he calls his ex a “chick,” which is not altogether surprising.
- This guy teaches the rule of threes with a dose of hacky transphobia: “Expected Trait/Expected Trait/Unexpected Trait (She was pretty, she was shapely, she was a man).”
- This guy, who is an adult, refers to the women he dates as “girls.”
- Same guy, explaining the logic of a Seinfeld joke, says, “You’d think more women wouldn’t wax their legs, but since they need to in order to look attractive to men, they do it anyway.”
- Comedy articles and lectures are full of examples. Almost every single sample joke? Written by a dude. Almost every single example of a comedian with a particular style? A dude. Often they’re great jokes/comics! But come on. Google harder.
Find an example like the above? Tweet it at @goldcmdy!
