This is a Mack's World

Lucy Porter analyses Lee Mack’s latest comment that women are not cut out for comedy

LEE Mack has been a little bit silly. Not only does he think that women “aren’t cut out for comedy” but he actually went and said it. On the radio. If he’d saved it for a written interview he could have at least hidden behind the excuse of evil, misconstruing journalists after the inevitable uproar. Doesn’t he know he’ll have more to deal with than angry bloggers when his viewers decide he isn’t funny anymore because, well, neither is sexism?

Actress and comedian Tina Fey
Image credit: Gage Skidmore

Unfortunately, Mack’s going to have to put in a few more hours at the office to convince us that he himself is cut out for it (at least beyond making petty generalisations about the capabilities of others – good luck with the scrutiny Lee!). But on the other hand, by focusing on one bigoted comment and attacking its architect, we could actually be missing the bigger picture of what’s happening in our entertainment industry.

Taken alone, Mack’s comment seems outdated and prejudiced. However when you look at the dearth of women in comedy he could actually be backhandedly touching on a very raw nerve. In a Western society which prides itself on equality, there was a rather surprising amount of media coverage circling Kristen Wiig’s Bridesmaids as it proved, like Tina Fey’s Mean Girls before it, that women can actually be funny too! If we’re going to pretend that we’ve moved on from the prejudices of the past, then why are we still shocked when female comedians produce material that actually makes us laugh? What does our well-intentioned surprise really say? Pat yourself on the back girls, you rose above the patriarchy, here have a cookie for throwing off the humourless shackles of womanhood!

This ultimately begs the question – are women naturally not cut out for comedy or has the lack of female comics actually got its ugly gnarled roots tangled deep in the attitudes of society? This is certainly the opinion of comedian Jo Caulfield who believes that the lack of female stand-ups simply “reflects the world we live in – which is still basically run by white middle-class men”. She went on to suggest that the gender difference lies in comic style, self-deprecating stories versus “boring old pub jokes” (ouch).

Perhaps, then, the relative lack of success on the part of comediennes is due to our perception of “what is funny” being shaped by our experiences. Comedians thrive off the ‘that’s so true!’ reaction of their audiences, and whilst repeated exposure to penis jokes means that the ‘male style’ appeals to pretty much anyone, the same can’t really be said of Caitlin Moran’s hilarious account of her first period.

So before we decide that women don’t have what it takes, maybe we should consider the issue from a different perspective. Forget the female “incapacity”, I’d argue that society isn’t cut out for the job.

 

Lucy Porter

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The Best Writers Who Started In Their Teens

With the recent young winner of Man Booker Prize being announced, Books Team writer Hayley Johns looks at other great authors who started young…

The Luminaries, an epic of over 800 pages, was awarded the prestigious 2013 Man Booker prize and at twenty-eight years old, its author Eleanor Catton is the youngest ever winner. It’s an incredible feat to produce a novel at such a young age, let alone one of such a huge length and a multi award-winner to boot. But it’s not uncommon for writers to start out early; here are four of the best young prodigies of their time:

1. Caitlin Moran – now the distinguished but hilarious author of the autobiographical How To Be A Woman and columnist at The Times, Moran began writing her debut novel at just 13 years old; The Chronicles of Narmo, inspired by her siblings’ home education, was eventually published three years later in 1992. Even in her teenage years, Moran already showed signs of the quirky yet articulate voice for which she would become known and she was awarded The Observer’s Young Reporter of the Year prize in 1990.

2. Mary Shelley – born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Shelley was of literary stock and so great writing surrounded her from a very young age. It was around the time that she met and fell in love with Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley that she began writing Frankenstein, considered by many to be a paragon of Gothic literature. Although it was originally intended to be a short story, with encouragement from her future husband, Shelley formed a fully-fledged novel, later saying of the process that it was ‘when I first stepped out from childhood into life.’ It was published anonymously in 1818, when Shelley was twenty-one.

3. Christopher Paolini – following his graduation from high school, Paolini began writing Eragon, which would become the first instalment of the series The Inheritance Cycle, aged only 15 years old. Something of a family affair, his debut novel was published by his parents’ small company and the original cover art, featuring the eye of one of the novel’s famous dragons, was designed by his sister. A second edition was released by a larger company in 2003 when Paolini’s work was discovered by a New York publishing house, launching him to the top of The New York Times Bestsellers’ List at the age of nineteen. In 2006, Eragon was adapted for the big screen in a film starring Jeremy Irons and John Malkovich.

4. Helen Oyeyemi – Oyeyemi began work on her novel The Icarus Girl during her studies at sixth form. Published in 2005, when she was 20 years old and a student at Cambridge, the novel’s assured style earned praise from critics and Oyeyemi’s subsequent works have seen her both nominated for and the winner of prestigious prizes,  such as the 2010 Somerset Maugham Award.

If all this talk of young talent has you rushing to finish the first draft of your ground-breaking novel, fear not, for you still have plenty of time to make your mark on the literary landscape; Anthony Burgess, for example, published A Clockwork Orange when he was in his mid-forties and George Eliot wrote Middlemarch only when she was fifty-five.

Hayley Johns, Books Team

A Summer Of Sexism

Gemma Joyce discusses her experiences of sexism this summer, and the differences between how sexism is dealt with on the internet and in everyday life.

The university bubble is a great one. It’s vibrant and varied, and everything is up for debate and discussion. After enjoying my first year writing sassy essays on feminism and taking part in the fiery debate over whether The Sun should be banned from sale on campus I returned, feeling far more aware of contemporary issues, to my beloved hometown ready to start my summer working a busy bar in a family pub.

Caroline Criado-Perez. Image Credit: BBC

My uni bubble promptly burst.

Whether or not we are studying ‘Degrees in Misogyny’ as The Daily Mail would like its readership to believe, acceptable social conduct seems to differ quite significantly between my generally polite and considerate peers in the lecture theatre to the ‘polite and considerate’ customers that insist on calling female bar staff ‘gorgeous’, ‘babe’ or ‘lovey’ without affording similarly demeaning names to their male colleagues.

From not taking food recommendations seriously because “she’s a girl, of course she’d recommend the chocolate brownie,” to more hurtful remarks about your looks or unfounded and unnecessary assumptions voiced about your sexual preferences and behaviours, sexism is undoubtedly alive and kicking in the workplace, most blatantly in environments where alcohol is present. Such behaviour from customers not only ruins your day but leaves you feeling quite helpless, when it’s generally accepted as part of the job and refusing to serve such customers just makes matters worse.

Of course, sexism in the workplace is not breaking news. But there is a great divide between dealing with sexism in the ‘real world’ and sexism online that needs to be addressed.

The summer has seen an enormous amount of debate over issues regarding sexism, much of which has taken place online.

Laura Bates’ Everyday Sexism Project has continued to gain popularity and media attention with more and more users of all walks of life adding their stories describing sexist behaviour they are subjected to on a daily basis.  The press went wild when it was made public knowledge that the internet, particularly on sites like Twitter, was becoming a hotbed of sexist hatred channelled through anonymous insults and threats of violence.

This was highlighted in particular by acclaimed classicist Mary Beard and feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, who led the campaign to have Jane Austen printed on the £10 note. Both were made victims of hundreds of abusive messages, and were very vocal in showcasing their negative experiences to the international press.  Next came Caitlin Moran’s brief campaign #twittersilence, which aimed to boycott Twitter for a day in order to bring their attention to the issue of unacceptable threats being made with a shoddy process of reporting them. The Twitter silence divided opinion, but the message was clear: Stop the threats!

The internet is a powerful tool in discussing such issues, and the massive interest generated by recent events has led service providers to at least consider tougher security processes for their well meaning users. Trolling will hopefully, one day, become a thing of the past.

What will be interesting is whether sexism will be addressed in the ‘real world’ before or after it is in cyberspace. Current public anger towards the Twitter trolls being named and shamed all over the newspapers is not reflected in the night club where sexual assault goes unreported weekly, at a busy bus stop where a car full of lads drives past beeping and shouting “Get your tits out!” to a bystander, or in the accountancy firm where the female staff are paid less than their male counterparts. Of course not every troll is subject to this naming and shaming process, but their act of idiocy is put on record. Every day sexism is not recorded even fractionally compared to that experienced on the internet.

While anger is growing at sexism on the internet, I can’t boycott my job because I’m unhappy that some customers leave me feeling uncomfortable and angry. Nor can I shout “Why don’t you take your sexist comments and FUCK OFF. Hashtag shouting back!” – I can’t imagine the families in the restaurant jumping to their feet in applause, metaphorically ‘retweeting’ and ‘liking.’ I would simply lose my job.

I long for the day when a sexist comment is considered more rude than not saying “please” after ordering a drink, or leaving food all over the table when leaving a restaurant.

My point is that “shouting back,” the phrase Twitter uses to describe the act of correcting an act of sexism, is much harder in person than it is online, particularly when your job is on the line. My online self would happily condemn a sexist comment made in the real world or on the internet, but sadly my real life self struggling to fund my student lifestyle remains at a loss at dealing with sexism at work.

Gemma Joyce

Moranthology – Caitlin Moran

Sophie Beckett takes a look at Feminism’s favourite spokeswoman Caitlin Moran’s Moranthology…

Caitlin Moran’s 2011 book How To Be a Woman is undoubtedly one of the funniest books I have ever read. However, as Moran herself points out, it ‘was limited to pretty much one subject: being a woman’. Published in November 2012, Moranthology, the first ever collection of Moran’s articles, doesn’t suffer from this limitation. Tales of partying with Lady Gaga rub shoulders with articles on the problems of drug addiction and a piece about the joys of holidaying in Aberystwyth is thrown in for good measure. All subjects are treated with Moran’s intoxicating brand of relentlessly perceptive humour.

Many of the articles are downright silly and all the better for it. The opening piece describes a late night conversation between Moran and her husband- just as he is falling asleep, she insists he wakes up and helps to think of a nickname for her, because she feels its about time she acquired one. It’s probably my favourite article in the book. However, as we might reasonably expect from someone who urges us all to stand on a chair and shout ‘I AM A FEMINIST’, Moran doesn’t shy away from political issues either. She writes incisively about a range of issues including the coalition government and the welfare state. Most memorably, she defends the existence of libraries by poignantly describing how important her local library was in helping her escape a difficult, lonely childhood and adolescence.

The articles are linked by commentaries which place them in the context of subsequent events and often contain some of the best jokes and one-liners in the book. In addition there is a long introductory section which details the ups and downs of the beginning of Moran’s career. These include being catastrophically late to her first ever interview (an episode she later repeats on her way to interview the Prime Minister), and arriving with a suitcase full of cake to impress her future editors which in the course of the journey has somehow gone horribly rancid. Although the book as a whole is less autobiographical than How To Be a Woman, this section is based entirely on Moran’s unusual personal experiences.

The narrative is different, however- rather than describing how it feels to be a girl growing up in our society, here Moran charts her journey as a writer instead. This is a journey that began when writing for the 15-year-old Moran was ‘an option I only knew of because that was what Jo March in Little Women, and Mother in The Railway Children, had done when they also fell upon hard times’. The embarrassing experiences that characterised the next few precocious years are detailed with painful clarity. ‘I am still working on the presumption that people will only give me work if they somehow associate me with baked goods,’ Moran admits of her teenage self. ‘Perhaps it’s this kind of erroneous assumption you get educated out of you at Oxbridge’. The reader can happily laugh along with these stories as we all know perfectly well that everything turned out OK in the end, as the rest of the book more than proves.

It is this narrative which makes Moranthology not just a disparate collection of articles from a very entertaining writer, but a book which asks important questions too. How did a kid from a council estate in Wolverhampton achieve such success in an industry dominated by Oxbridge graduates? And what does she have to say- about library closures, about benefits, about feminism- that we need to listen to? It just happens that this book is also very, very funny.

Sophie Beckett