Thursday, March 24, 2022

Anjelah

That has been a lot of text to get here this week, eh?  Of course, you are seeing it in blog order so you aren't tired of all that text and looking for a break like I am.  You will get sick of that text later, and right now are wondering why I am leading with some comedian.


I've never heard of her.  She might be famous.  She's been in a movie and there are lots of videos of her, so I'm figuring it's just me being clueless about popular culture. But I like her. Female comedians now seem to gravitate to the humor of "Nice Girl Saying Outrageous Things About Sex." As I have seen the early work of a few who didn't start that way, I have to think that the audiences push them that way over time. Women are not allowed the full range of topics that men are, maybe?  On the other hand, they are free agents choosing what it is they do.  I can't watch most of them anymore. I'm going through a comedians binge this month, something new for me, and I recommend Dry Bar for clean comedy, male and female.

Maybe it isn't new. Maybe this is a cultural tendency of many years.  Joan Rivers would joke about being risque and sexy and misbehaving, but the context was always telling you about how those other women were tramps. If you take those jokes away from her, is what is left funny? Maybe it's mostly standup where this is an issue.  The physical comedy of Lucille Ball or Penny Marshall wasn't sexual. When I tire of the modern crew I'll have to go looking for female standup from 30+ years ago.

1 comment:

Mike Guenther said...

You might like to watch/listen to the late Jeanne Roberson. She was a humorist from NC, very funny and very clean humor. YouTube has a bunch of her videos.