111j book review

pretty/funny: women comedians and body politics

Linda Mizejewski, University of Texas Press, Austin, 2014, 288pp., ISBN: 978-0-2927-5691-5, $55.00 (Hbk)

In the popular imagination, it has long been assumed that women cannot be both funny and pretty; in fact, there is some question about whether they can ever truly be funny at all. In her book Pretty/Funny: Women Comedians and Body Politics, Linda Mizejewski begins by retracing these hoary assumptions and cultural biases, arguing that the assumed pretty/funny binary has, nevertheless, enabled female comics to ‘engage in a transgressive comedy grounded in the female body—its looks, its race and sexuality, and its relationships to ideal versions of femininity. In this strand of comedy, “pretty” is the topic and target, the ideal that is exposed as funny’ (p. 5). As she points out, it is a comedic model that is becoming increasingly visible of late, as numerous female writer-comedians have muscled their way into the mainstream. The volume is organised around six case studies of women comedians currently challenging assumptions about the appropriate behaviour for female bodies. Each chapter focuses on a single performer: Kathy Griffin, Tina Fey, Sarah Silverman, Margaret Cho, Wanda Sykes and Ellen DeGeneres. Individually, these case studies are absorbing. Mizejewski’s research is exhaustive and she engages well with existing scholarship on all of these figures. Her analysis is attuned to the particularities of each of the performers’ bodies and personas, situating their comedy within wider discussions about race, ethnicity, sexuality and visibility. She does a particularly good job of pointing to the intersectionality of identity categories, making a case for why, for instance, Ellen DeGeneres’ blond whiteness is integral to her acceptance as a butch lesbian within popular culture. She also does well in pointing to complexity in political resonance, highlighting, for instance, the way in which Kathy Griffin’s comedy is a messy space where mainstream gender norms are alternately contested and endorsed. The most interesting chapter, in this regard, is probably that on Tina Fey. Mizejewski defends Fey’s sitcom 30 Rock from laments that the programme consistently misses its opportunities to send a feminist message. Though she is timid about actually saying so, she resists the good object/bad object frame of analysis, pointing to the way in which 30 Rock plays with and teases out the contradictions in representations of feminism and ‘postfeminism’, and how it highlights the complicated ways in which women are often complicit in reproducing sexist media. She gets a little bit tangled up in whether to refer to the series as ‘feminist’ or not (deciding that it is not itself feminist, but is about feminism), and I was longing for her to clarify things by explicitly making the case that a text can be political (by pushing at boundaries and assumptions) without necessarily advancing a clear political platform. Never- theless, her discussion is nuanced and perceptive. The one element that feels thin is the analysis of what the case studies tell us when put together. One of the questions that Mizejewski begins with is—why now? She characterises the cultural

feminist review 111 2015

(e21–e22) © 2015 Feminist Review. 0141-7789/15 www.feminist-review.com moment as a largely conservative one as far as conceptions of gender and race are concerned: ‘the era of the tea party, Fox News and Sex in the City–style postfeminism’, and, yet, she points out, there is this ‘admittedly polarizing comedy of gender and race emerg(ing) in mainstream entertainment’ (p. 25). Her briefly rendered explanation is that this politicised comedy is developing ‘as resistance to the rising power of American conservatism and mounting anxieties about race and difference’ (p. 26), further linking the phenomenon to the same forces that have propelled the rise of the left-leaning comedy of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. However, these assertions are not fleshed out any further, nor are they followed up with any nods to audience reception or to the public discourse surrounding these comedians. By the end of the book, we certainly get the message that there are a number of female comics currently pushing at cultural assumptions about sex, race, sexuality and the body, but we do not return to an examination of the contemporary moment as a whole, or to where exactly these comedians leave us with regard to feminism or body politics. Indeed, there is barely a conclusion about the binary of pretty versus funny, only a nod to the fact that the comic body will continue to keep the meaning of the term ‘pretty’ up for grabs. That said, the book certainly provides a strong examination of each of these individual comedians, as well as a thorough synthesis of critical discussions about feminism, race, sexuality and embodiment. It is engaging and informative, and, for anyone interested in gender and comedy, it is well worth the read.

Amber Day Bryant University

doi:10.1057/fr.2015.31

e22 feminist review 111 2015 book review