OPEN MIC? GENDER AND THE MERITOCRATIC MYTH OF AUTHENTICITY IN THE CULTURAL PRODUCTION OF STAND-UP COMEDY BY STEPHANIE BROWN DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Communications and Media in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2018 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Angharad Valdivia, Chair Professor Cameron McCarthy Professor CL Cole Associate Professor Julie Turnock ABSTRACT This dissertation demonstrates the ways in which gender plays a role in the validating of authenticity and merit in the cultural and industrial spaces of stand-up comedy. Merit and authenticity are arbitrary signifiers invoked by comics, fans, critics, and industry gatekeepers to protect the privilege of straight, white men who continue to dominate the field. I argue that the ideology of comedic authenticity is a means through which to police the boundaries of stand-up comedy while masking its underlying sexism, racism, and homophobia. More specifically, I argue that women, operationalized here as an industrial identity category, are constructed as comedy outsiders who must continually prove their worth through a shifting and slippery set of aesthetic and cultural norms and conditions. Further I explore the emotional and material labor women must perform to achieve success within the field, both on the local level and the industrial level. I draw attention to gatekeeping in stand-up comedy by theorizing it not as a type of rhetoric or artistic form, but as an industry with a particular culture. To this end, I connect three case-studies that highlight gendered gatekeeping in stand-up comedy: 1) A televised debate between writer Lindy West and comic Jim Norton about rape jokes and the subsequent violent backlash West dealt with on social media; 2) Reviews by television critics of female-led comedies that reinforce masculine standards of quality comedy; and 3) Interviews with women in Chicago and Champaign-Urbana’s comedy scenes that explore how they adapt to fit into masculine, and oftentimes unwelcoming, spaces or how they create their own spaces, classes, festivals, and shows. Through these case-studies, I argue that the study of women in comedy must move beyond attempts to fit women into already existing paradigms and instead use such scholarship to question common sense assumptions about humor and comedy. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to first acknowledge the unwavering support of my advisor, Dr. Angharad Valdivia, who offered invaluable scholarly input on my research and the personal reassurance that this work was worth doing, even when I doubted myself. I would also like to thank the rest of my committee, Dr. Cameron McCarthy, Dr. Julie Turnock, and Dr. CL Cole, whose graduate courses, project feedback, and research advice greatly shaped my scholarly identity and research. I would also like to thank Dr. Amanda Ciafone for championing my work both as a scholar and as a teacher. I learned so much of how to be a good college professor by serving three semesters as her teaching assistant. I am also grateful for the community I found in the Institute of Communications Research, the support I’ve gotten from alumni, the guidance I was given by its faculty, and friendship I found in its students. It’s often overwhelming to find your people within a field as broad as media and communication, and so I’m thankful to have found a home in the Comedy and Humor Studies Scholarly Interest Group of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. I’m especially indebted to Maggie Hennefeld and Annie Berke, my fellow steering committee members and my friends whose work in feminist comedy studies I hope to live up to. More broadly, I am thankful for the invaluable feedback I’ve gotten from colleagues at SCMS, Console-ing Passions, UDC, NCA, FLOW, and all of the conferences I’ve been lucky enough to attend. I also would not be here if it weren’t for Todd Sodano and John Wolf, who encouraged me to go back to graduate school and who continue to offer advice whenever I need it. I’m grateful for the emotional support, brilliance, and scholarly guidance of my fellow ICR students, especially my cohort. I’m also indebted to the cohorts before me who have served as resources since I arrived on campus. I’d specifically like to thank Mel Stanfill, Alicia Kozma, iii and Martina Baldwin, great friends who have also helped me crystallize my research focus and revise my work. Finally, I was lucky enough to have Meghan Grosse and Andrea Ruehlicke in my cohort, who have become two of my best friends in addition to brilliant colleagues. There is not enough space to list all the ways that I am indebted to them for their support and friendship over the past six years. This research would not exist if not for the comics in Champaign-Urbana, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York who gave up their time to talk to me about their experiences in stand-up comedy. I’d like to specifically shout-out Nora Fitton, who e-mailed every comic she knew and told them to talk to me, Alex Kumin, for teaching me how to be a better comic, and Alexandria Hawkey, Lisa Graff, and Andrew Schiver for producing an open mic with me inspired by this research. Finally, I am thankful to have had an amazing family behind me throughout this rewarding, stressful, isolating, fulfilling, challenging process. My mom, who gave me emotional support through phone calls and texts, my dad, who reassured me that academia was the right fit for me, and my sister, who shares my love of stand-up comedy and feminist theory, have been foundational to my success. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2: “COMIC VS FEMINIST”: GENDERED CAPITAL AND AUTHORITY IN THE FIELD OF STAND-UP COMEDY ...................................37 CHAPTER 3: TV CRITICS AND DELEGITIMATION OF WOMEN’S COMEDY, OR WHY NOBODY WATCHED OWN’S FUNNY GIRLS ........................73 CHAPTER 4: THE GENDERED POLICING OF AUTHENTICITY IN LIVE STAND-UP PERFORMANCE ........................................................................112 CHAPTER 5: INFORMAL NETWORKING AS GATEKEEPING IN LOCAL STAND-UP SCENES ......................................................................................................150 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION REWRITING THE RULES IN THE POST #METOO COMEDY SCENE ...................187 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................198 APPENDIX A: IRB LETTER .........................................................................................221 APPENDIX B: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ...................................................................222 APPENDIX C: SURVEY QUESTIONS .........................................................................224 APPENDIX D: INTERVIEW AND SURVEY SUBJECTS ...........................................225 APPENDIX E: COMEDY CLUBS, SHOWS, AND SPACES .......................................227 v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Throughout my research for this project, I keep remembering an argument that I had with a friend about the venerated comedy writer, actress and producer Amy Poehler. It was 2010 and we were discussing the NBC television show Parks and Recreation (2009-2015), which I loved and he thought was a bad knock-off of The Office (2005-2013). “Amy Poehler just isn’t funny. She’s always tries too hard,” he opined. I countered, “You may not find her funny, but that doesn’t mean she objectively isn’t funny. She’s a renowned, critically acclaimed comedic performer.” “But, she’s just not funny. And she doesn’t even write for the show, so you can’t give her real credit as a comic anyway.” “She has a producing credit and directed an award-winning episode...” This segued into an argument about women not being as funny as men, and about my not being as funny as he was. I tried to stand my ground, as I know deep in my gut that I was, and continue to be, funnier than he is. He argued that because he produced more jokes in his Facebook statuses and got more likes than I did, it was quantitative evidence of his superior sense of humor. I couldn’t gain any ground on his terms. This was two years before I started graduate school, before I learned the language of feminist theory, and before I had any confidence in defending my taste and my opinions. I eventually, exasperated, gave up and changed the subject. I remember this conversation vividly because it is emblematic of the often exasperating experience of being a woman defending her expertise on virtually any topic, an experience exacerbated in this instance by the belief that women don’t have a sense of humor. The stand-up industry doesn’t start and end in New York or Los Angeles; rather its rules, norms, and 1 discourses seep into local comedy scenes from big cities to college towns and into the conversations about comedy among friends, family, and romantic partners. I have been a stand- up comedy fan since I was a kid. My sister and I taped and re-watched Jerry Seinfeld’s 1997 HBO special I’m Telling You For the Last Time until the VHS tape broke. And yet, throughout high school and college I never felt like a real comedy fan. My 9th grade drama teacher told me I was a terrific comedic performer, but I never believed I could get on stage and perform comedy. During my Master’s program, I took a comedy writing class, yet insisted throughout the course I was just taking it for fun. I could never really be a comedy writer. I would never be good enough. I arrived in Champaign in 2012 to start my Ph.D. program and started going to watch local stand- up open mics occasionally. There were some very funny performers, but most were mediocre at best. There were few women, and when they did perform, the hosts tended to make off-handed remarks about their sexual prowess or what they were wearing. Comics tossed off jokes about “crazy” ex-girlfriends and sexual assault.