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 Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 1:15 pm Post subject: We didn't have a gender agenda |
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Chortle editor Steve Bennett on the death of women on our awards shortlist
| Quote: | It’s a storm we never saw coming. Chortle is, according to the Guardian, at the centre of a maelstrom of controversy for having just two solo female acts in the awards shortlist.
Glossing over the fact the Guardian writer is so attuned to the comedy circuit that he called nominee Dana Alexander, Dana Hall (who is actually an American, male jazz-funk drummer), it doesn’t, admittedly, look great. But what should we have done about it? Put a few more women through just to balance the numbers a bit?
Although I can’t speak for all the panellists, I do know that the gender of any potential nominee never entered the discussion, and I don’t think the lack of women on the final list crossed any of our minds. We were looking for the funniest people, simple as. You wouldn’t expect me to say anything else, I know, but it happens to be true.
I don’t doubt for a moment that female comics face hurdles in this business that male ones don’t. There are still promoters who won’t book more than one woman on the bill, there is still an outdated misconception among some audiences that ‘women aren’t funny’, or some suggestion that the psychological make-up needed to be the attention-seeking alpha of the room, then endure the tough on-the-road lifestyle of a comic, is a predominantly male preserve. All these things are endlessly debated in the media, as if under-representation of women in other professions doesn’t happen. When was the last time you read a piece on, say, the dearth of women surgeons?
I’m not sure what those bemoaning the lack of women on out shortlist would do differently. There seems to be a suggestion that either we’ve overlooked certain female acts, or are inherently sexist.
We certainly didn’t overlook anyone. All the names touted as potential nominees – Sarah Millican, Josie Long and Cariad Lloyd seem to be the main front-runners – were certainly discussed, as were many, many other talented women.
Our decision-making process starts with a team of comedy critics throwing as many names into the ring for each category as they think need discussion. For the record, there were nine panellists at this stage of the discussion – five women and four men. I mention that as the make-up of the panel seems to be important to some people.
This gave us maybe 40 or 50 names in each category. They are very long lists, covering everyone Twitter has consequently touted as being nomination-worthy, and a lot more besides, including a couple of dozen female comedians across all the categories. This is whittled down until a final meeting (now down to six panellists: three of each gender) settled on the published shortlist.
It’s one thing to say ‘what about comic X, why are they not on the list?’ But then look at the other nominees and consider which of those you would dump for the performer you are cheerleading for. Then consider whether you can convince five other independent, well-informed and opinionated people of the fact. That is what all of us on this panel did – what anyone on any panel does – until we reached a consensus.
There are great acts that I would have hoped to see on that list, male or female, and I was chairing the panel. Late Night Gimp Fight, say, was one of the best shows I saw last year, but couldn’t make the last four. It happens.
The second suggestion is that there’s an inherent anti-female bias among the panel. Again, I think that’s disingenuous when your consider how many hundreds of show every one of those critics see every year. It’s surely difficult to maintain any prejudice when you’re overwhelmed with such a tide of reality.
It sounds trite to say so, but when you see so much in a professional capacity, gender really doesn’t come into it: funny’s funny. Sure, a comic might make the sex, or race, or any other part of themselves part of the act, and you can’t then unpick that from the experience of watching them. But ultimately, you are looking to be surprised, amused, entertained – and the demographics of the person doing that is irrelevant.
The final possible reason for the lack of women on our shortlist is that they are fewer of them in the top echelons of comedy, compared to men. That is undeniably true.
The Guardian pointed out that Sarah Millican is not in our DVD category, despite selling 150,000 copies. A fantastic achievement, but five male comics outsold her, and none of them made our shortlist either.
There are also fewer women on every rung of the comedy ladder. Only about 20 per cent of applicants to Chortle’s current Student Comedy Award are female – and this is for newcomers with no barrier at all to entry. Women are clearly not being drawn to comedy in the first place in equal numbers as men.
What to do about it? Positive discrimination? We could insist on one female nominee in each category, but what would that achieve? The suspicion that every woman on the lists got there just because they possess a vagina? At least now every woman on our shortlist got there on merit alone. Even if ‘every woman’ ends up reading ‘both women’.
In the very first Chortle Awards, when the accolades themselves were Groucho glasses crudely nailed to a piece of wood, we had a ‘best female comic’ category – but that was quickly dumped. It seemed like it was treating women as inherently unable to compete on the same playing field as men.
Similarly, the paradox is that for organisations like Funny Women to thrive, they must tacitly acknowledge that being a female comic is different than being a male one. And we’ll ignore the fact that women are, uniquely, charged a £15 fee to enter that competition, other than to acknowledge the fact that Chortle did support the free Funny’s Funny competition for female comics last year. Despite reservations that such a contest was somehow ghettoising female acts, our reasoning was that they shouldn’t be charged for that ‘privilege’ too.
I think the Chortle Award nominations are strong this year, and it detracts from the achievements of those on it to make gender an issue. And amid all the fuss, no one’s picked up on the fact that black and Asian acts are massively under-represented, either. But there is a good reason for that – the Chortle judges are all massive racists.
Do I need to point out that’s a joke? Possibly…
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http://www.chortle.co.uk/correspondents/2012/02/24/14912/we_didnt_have_a_gender_agenda
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Paul Savage speaks Easy
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| Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 4:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Dearth, Steve. Unless you're killing women. |
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Wishus
Joined: 02 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 4:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Dearth, Steve. Unless you're killing women. |
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Wishus
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| Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:44 pm Post subject: |
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You've done the best thing by ensuring parity in the judging panel, Steve. The reason for lack of women on the shortlist is perhaps open to debate, but I wouldn't really know how you could address it. You asked the judges to choose and they did.
I run an awards body for the British Science Fiction Association, and similar to comedy there are fewer women in the field than men, but in that kind of fandom gender politics is at the fore of debate in a way that perhaps it isn't in comedy. Awards bodies, magazine reviewers and convention programmers are seen as the gatekeepers in this respect, and we have fans to keep happy by addressing their concerns where we can. A lot of vocal campaigns addressing and challenging perceived gender disparities are in fact led or championed by men.
Couple of points:
| Quote: | | Similarly, the paradox is that for organisations like Funny Women to thrive, they must tacitly acknowledge that being a female comic is different than being a male one |
The current experience is certainly different, but luckily it's not a time paradox, so in theory we could get to a point in the future where it became pointless to have female-only competitions... and that would be okay for the promoters because they would be running competitions and clubs for all genders and making their living that way. I think the irony of women-only nights is that they are the most obvious way right now for female comics to not have their gender taken into consideration, when it is in fact the primary consideration.
| Quote: |
The Guardian pointed out that Sarah Millican is not in our DVD category, despite selling 150,000 copies. A fantastic achievement, but five male comics outsold her, and none of them made our shortlist either.
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But you weren't judging by sales criteria, or Peter Kay would have been there.
You will not be able to achieve absolute gender parity despite your best efforts on this, but you don't want anyone to choose based on what should be irrelevant criteria anyway. The culture of comedy needs a sea-change in this respect of attitudes to women, but if you support women in comedy, like you do, in fact if you support comedy, your karma will be good. |
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Martin_Caine
Joined: 10 Nov 2011
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| Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:10 pm Post subject: |
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This could be a really dumb question but....
Mrs Browns Boys ? did it even get a look in for the TV or DVD award ?
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purplekelly
Joined: 21 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 1:07 am Post subject: |
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| Martin_Caine wrote: | This could be a really dumb question but....
Mrs Browns Boys ? did it even get a look in for the TV or DVD award ? |
I think it missed out because these are awards for comedy! |
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Martin_Caine
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| Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 5:15 am Post subject: |
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Well for a show that is already the 3rd top selling comedy DVD and peaked at 6.4mil viewers I would like to think it is still classed as comedy regardless of personal preference or has comedy fallen so far of the rails now that it is no longer about the audience ?
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Knacker
Joined: 12 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 7:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Er, it's shit. |
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Ash-LT
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| Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 8:12 pm Post subject: |
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Ratings are irrelevant to quality. The lowest rated episode of The Royal Bodyguard still got about twice as many viewers as the highest rated episode of Peep Show. Are you saying that makes it a better comedy?
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Martin_Caine
Joined: 10 Nov 2011
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| Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 9:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Ash-LT wrote: | | Ratings are irrelevant to quality. The lowest rated episode of The Royal Bodyguard still got about twice as many viewers as the highest rated episode of Peep Show. Are you saying that makes it a better comedy? |
Sorry Ash but you lost me completely there ? Guess I am just old fashioned enough to still think comedy is about making people laugh and I am curious enough to ask my original question why has a comedy show that did so well get omitted from an award entitled the BEST of. Unlike the original topic which is trying to imply sexism, I am not shouting racism and agism, I am however genuinely curious.
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The Stun
Joined: 21 Feb 2012
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| Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 9:05 pm Post subject: Name calling by SEXISTS |
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Funny Women crying "SEXISM!" yet again? odd how the organisers of comedy clubs and competitions that exclude an entire gender (Men) are the first to screech about "sexism"
It's high time the real sexists were kicked out of comedy or told to shut up and stop being so hypocritical
One could almost write a blog about it
http://sean-ruttledge.blogspot.com/2012/02/sexism-in-comedy-poor-downtrodden-lady.html
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Sam Gore
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| Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 9:32 pm Post subject: |
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Mrs Brown's Boys wasn't nominated for the same reason that Adam Sandler movies don't win Oscars. Can you seriously not see why?
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Ash-LT
Joined: 26 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 9:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Martin_Caine wrote: | | Ash-LT wrote: | | Ratings are irrelevant to quality. The lowest rated episode of The Royal Bodyguard still got about twice as many viewers as the highest rated episode of Peep Show. Are you saying that makes it a better comedy? |
Sorry Ash but you lost me completely there ? |
Okay, well if I lost you with that then you're probably not very clever, but let me try again, possibly in words of very few syllables.
The Royal Bodyguard (which everybody who saw it, critics and viewers alike, agreed was utter shite) got twice as many viewers as Peep Show (which most people agree is one of the funniest shows of the last decade.) Hence, having the most viewers does not make something the funniest show or the most deserving of a reward. It just makes it the one that was in a prime time slot on what is still the most viewed television channel, was promoted by that channel the most heavily, and tends to appeal to the sort of people who don't go out much.
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Martin_Caine
Joined: 10 Nov 2011
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| Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 10:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Ash-LT wrote: | Okay, well if I lost you with that then you're probably not very clever, but let me try again, possibly in words of very few syllables.
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Wow you are such a clever person, thank you so kindly for making me aware of your superior intelligence I feel almost humbled in having such this opportunity to respond to you. (look I can talk bollox too)
Obviously due to my dumbness I am still having trouble working out why a comedy DVD that is already the 3rd best seller of all time should at least have a chance of being voted on in any Best Of Award. but hey thats just me 
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Paul Savage speaks Easy
Joined: 05 Dec 2007
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| Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 11:32 pm Post subject: |
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presumably it did have a chance. They show you the shortlist. That's made up from all the stuff they've seen this year
Considering Steve Bennett reviewed the live show and slated it: http://www.chortle.co.uk/shows/tour/g/18839/good_mourning_mrs_brown then you'd be hard pressed for a reason to say why he would pick the DVD of the series of the best. |
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