Show Me the Funny

So Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosted the Golden Globes last night, and they were funny.  Totally underutilized but very funny.  And not just funny to those with ladyparts, but, I daresay, to everyone.  Well, except Tommy Lee Jones.  Tommy Lee Jones, we learned at the Globes, seems to have no sense of humor whatsoever, leaving me to wonder if, when he and Al Gore were roommates back at Harvard, he made Al Gore look like the funny one.  Now that's an accomplishment.  But I digress.

I confess that, way, way back in college, I once expressed the opinion, out loud even, "I don't think women are as funny as men."  Shocking, right?  Thankfully the male friend to whom I expressed this ill-informed and downright incorrect opinion didn't agree, but replied, "That's because you haven't met you."

Aww, thanks.  And deep, right?  You can really read a lot into that.   But being 18, I didn't.  I think I probably just poured another beer.

But what I realized in that moment, and in countless moments after, is that, of course I thought I was funny.  I mean, show me the rare person who thinks he/she has no sense of humor - even when they don't.  And I knew plenty of funny women in my real life - family, friends, coworkers.  Where I wasn't really seeing them was on tv or in the movies, and we all know that being funny is like a tree falling in the woods -- if someone is funny but not on television or in the movies, does it really count? 

Sure they were there but generally in support of a male lead like Jerry Seinfeld, who, of course, as the star of the show, was allowed to be funnier.  Better, smarter people than me have done analysis of the portrayal of women and girls in pop culture so I'm not even going to go there - it's too deep a subject.  But what fascinates me is the external validation that 18 year old me needed that women were funny.   Working for a youth development organization, I can't overestimate the importance of role models - kids need to see people who look like them doing well, succeeding, it makes you think that if they can do it, so can you.

But still, it blows my mind that I couldn't just think about the women I knew who made me laugh on a regular basis and KNOW with every fiber of my being that women were and are funny, or even, really just using common sense, even thinking what the heck gender had to do with funny?  I needed pop culture to tell me, to show me, put a blinking neon arrow over Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Chelsea Handler, Kathy Griffin, Ellen, etc. reading "Funny."  I guess that's also cutting to the heart of comedy - it's not funny unless someone outside of the person telling the joke laughs. 

You know, like that tree that fell in the woods earlier.  At least I think it fell.  I wasn't there, someone told me.

Which is why I was really pulling for Tina and Amy.  I know they're funny from countless hours of watching both of them perform but I was holding my breath to see how they'd do.  Don't blow it, ladies.  The fate of your gender is riding on you.  Because everyone knows that every time Jerry Seinfeld makes a bad joke, male comedians are sent off to the bread line.  And it took years for male actors to carry a movie after Eddie Murphy's one, two, ten unfunny movies.  Right?

What did Tina and Amy have to prove?  Pretty much everything.   What did they actually succeed in proving?  Not that women are funny, but that Tina and Amy are funny.  Because women aren't funny, and neither are men.  But Melissa and Chelsea and Kathy certainly are.  Ray and Eddie and Will?  Also funny.  And so is Lynn, as a matter of fact. 

But not you, Anne Hathaway, sit down already; we've heard enough out of you.

(Just to be clear, when I say Lynn, I mean me, and not Lynn Swann, who may or may not be funny.  I asked Tommy Lee Jones, but he's not a credible source on the matter, and Al Gore says he needs to do do some more quantitative research and see some more pie charts of data before he can decide.)