ANTH 3240 Lecture 5: Funny Girls
20 Feb 2012
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Document Summary
Women are often treated as the subject or butt of the joke. When the audience laughs, they are laughing in support of what the comedian is saying. They are laughing at the female target, as opposed to with her. Women have been denied the inclusion in the history of comedy. Women have a reputation for not being funny. There is a belief that intelligence and communication skills are required to make comedy as well as understand comedy. To go with this belief, there is the stereotype that women tend to not laugh at as many jokes, and that they are more critical of jokes then males are. This is blamed on a woman not having a sense of humor, not being intelligent or being too uptight to enjoy the joke. It is never a question of whether or not the joke is actually funny or not.
