Feminist Comedy: Toward Visibility and Inclusion

This paper explores a recent turn in stand-up comedy, in which women-identifying comedians tackle the politics of visibility. The ramifications of the #MeToo movement have deeply affected the landscape of comedy. Concomitant with the disgrace of Louis C.K., once regarded as America’s most progressive comedian, stand-up has witnessed a rise of women comedians re-imagining the genre to ask how humor can promote inclusion and address issues of power and abuse. In her 2018 stand-up special Nanette, Hannah Gadsby considered both the potential and limitations of comedy to convey nuanced queer narratives. Gadsby turned to art history, citing Pablo Picasso’s repeated abuse of women, to illustrate the insidious effects of growing up in a culture in which stories—visual and otherwise—are overwhelmingly told by straight white men. Likewise, Cameron Esposito’s 2018 stand-up routine Rape Jokes simultaneously condemned a tradition of women-targeted violence as punchline, while using humor to share stories of assault from a survivor’s perspective. This is hardly the first time that women have deployed humor as political critique, however. This paper situates the recent #metoo turn within a longer history of subversive women comedians dating back to the 1950s, considering how gender troubling strategies of exaggeration, appropriation, and self-deprecation by Joan Rivers, Phyllis Diller, Jackie “Moms” Mabley, and others influenced subsequent comedians and feminist visual artists. I conclude with parallel examples from the contemporary art world to illuminate the often overlooked intersections between arenas of comedy and the visual arts.