Sunday, April 17, 2011

A Feminist take on Roasting

This coming Thursday, Ottawa is celebrating their annual awards show and comedy roast.  This is the fourth year for the roast, founded by Nick Carter and Don Kelly.  Tomorrow Nick Carter himself is JH5’s WHO TO WATCH, and will be guest blogging on Wednesday, likely on the topic of roasting.  He is the expert (and a man to be feared for his unmatchable quick wit), and can go into details, but here is a gal’s perspective on this thing they call “roasting”.

Roasting has been around forever.  It is basically hurling insults that are both funny and hopefully intelligent at others.  Not specific to comedy, roasting was used as a means for the religious to challenge Galileo, for science to challenge the church’s stance on everything, and for women everywhere to make fun of their mother-in-laws and/or their husband’s penis size.  Put simply:  there are times where ridiculing others can be funny to those watching.  

Comedy itself formalized and operationalized roasting through the Friar’s Club in the 1920’s.  This (men only) club would have a guest of honour, and have a roast of their peers.  They claim to “only roast the ones they love”.  Dean Martin began televising some of the roasts in the 1960’s and 1970’s, enhancing their popularity.  Everyone wanted to be cool like them, and it is always fun to see a celebrity “put in their place”.  In 2008 Denis Leary’s company then began to produce and film roasts, making them more popular than ever.

All of these roasts both make fun of and honour the “roastee”, and also allow those roasting to take “shots” at the other roasters themselves.  While roasting seemed too harsh for women in the 1920’s, times have changed.  Lisa Lampenelli herself has proven that women can be just as mean, vicious, and funny as the men.  It is not gender specific; it is comic to comic, professional to professional (or amateur to amateur in most of Ottawa’s case).  In Ottawa, they have “awards” as well.  (I use that term loosely because the “Trevor Thompson Sexiest Male and Female” categories are somewhat dubious.  I do think he will take the sexiest female this year though, fingers crossed for him!)

So here you have a group of like minded people (funny, or funny wannabees), having an evening of making fun of each other, drinking, and celebrating Trevor Thompson’s sexiness (I am not making this up people, sure I was one of the first to say it, but I don’t make the award categories up!)  What could go wrong?   I am stereotyping a bit here, but through systemic patriarchal bias during primary and secondary socialization, women are bound to take things more personal than men, or internalize insults more.  Perhaps some men do as well, but knowing the women in Ottawa, there is only one I can think of who will not walk away from roast thinking “am I really like that?  Why don’t they like me?”  Well maybe they don’t care if you like them or not (they do, they won’t admit it but they do), but some of what is said will go home with them.  Is this a good thing?  If your entire life has been spent being told you are worthless, or at least inferior and it is something of a struggle for you, do you then walk into a room full of people hurling insults without taking any of it personally?  I am not saying one way or the other, but it makes me ponder.

Part two of roasting with women concerns women being roasters.   Making fun of people or being mean is really counter productive to “being nice”, something women are told their whole lives.  No one wants to hear a woman say that.  No one likes a mean spirited woman.  You are just saying that because you are envious.  Why can’t you act like a LADY.  These are the messages girls and women are given in their lives, and sure progress has been made, but it is still out there; be nice to everyone, because as you know we are made of sugar and spice and everything nice.   

So then, reading this you may ask yourself “why would you go to the roast”.  Why would a woman put herself in a place where they may take something too personal, or feel bad for being mean to someone else? Well for me, it is because I really want to see if I am indeed a sexier woman than Trevor Thompson, but also I want to belong.  Isn’t that what we all want?  To fit in, to be somewhere and be of people who “get” us.  I really admire many people in the comedy world.  There are those I really don’t like but admire their comedy, and those who I can’t stand their comedy, but like them as people.  Comedy is a community of crazy people; to quote a wise man “you would have to be crazy to get up on stage”.  Often these are people who may not be the best communicators, or they may be die hard party animals.  They are people from almost every walk of life who have this one passion of comedy and making people laugh.  These are the people who will be there at the roast; like minded crazy yet funny people.

So wanting to belong and going to have a fun night are two reasons to go.  Let’s look deeper:  most feminists I know would snub their nose at the idea of roasting.  First, us feminists are known for amazing sense of humours on things (not).  Many would say that it is a patriarchal idea, putting someone beneath you only to prop yourself up and gain favour with others.  In a way roasting could be said to cause and limit self-esteem in people, keeping those down down, and those up up, basically contributing to social stratification.

Feminists may also say that roasting, well comedy in general, uses too many gender specific language in a negative fashion, such as calling women C words, and men F words.  (as in gay, not fuck).  Roasting, and the idea of it could be compared to Darwinian politics, survival of the fittest (or wittiest), and rooted in alpha male constructs.  There are many reasons that feminists and women may not agree with roasting.

So as a feminist, do I agree with these thoughts?  Yes and No.  Yes, it has that potential, without a double it has that potential, to be exploitative and be a negative thing overall that women should shy away from.  Back up a minute though.  Look back a few paragraphs, where I said how women are labelled as “ladies” and told to act and behave in a certain way.  So to follow this ideology, patriarchal ideals have said women should not roast others because it is not ladylike, and feminists theory would have roasting as a negative thing as well.  Patriarchy agreeing with feminism?  WTF??

The truth is that as a woman, we have every right to act how we WANT to.  Roasting should not be gender specific in limits  to who is roasted and who should roast.  To break through the glass ceiling of assholes, women should have the right to partake if they please and NOT be judged for their efforts any different than men should.  Women have the right to CHOOSE to be just as childish and rude as men are.  We have the right to get on stage and make jokes about other comics, and have the right to sit there and “take it” from the comics as well.  As for women taking it to personal, well I back that one up.  In this roasting situation, just as in comedy, inappropriate slurs are made towards women.  Some think it makes it more funny, but I will stand by my take and general dislike of insults that are gender specific, especially words like the C word that are often used in such derogatory situations as rape and violence against women.

Women have the right to go; however, when they go, they must realize that they are entering a potentially foreign environment.  They are entering something that I have seen men do for years; poke fun at each other, often in disgusting ways.  We as women cannot go into a roast expecting not to get offended.  And therein lies the point of this blog:  We have choice.  We can agree or disagree with roasting, and we can decide to go or not.  Not going is not indicative that one does not belong, and going does not make one belong either.

I have made a choice to go.  I have also written a piece for it.  I will tell you honestly that I am not very good at writing mean things out, and have an even harder time saying them.  This is because I have a strong inner child who protects me, and doens’t want me to put myself in a situation I may get hurt, and wants me above all else to be nice to everyone and everything.  So, I did what I had to do:  I punched my inner child in the fact, and told that little C word where she could stuff it.  She now says “go get the (male) C word suckers”.  Could be a fun night!

Check out Nick Carter tomorrow.  He is one of JH5 top ten picks, and the ultimate roaster.  We profile him, and he will share his wisdom on comedy and the world.  You do not want to miss this!

2 comments:

McGee said...

First off I was roasted in Edmonton once. I asked my friends in Comedy had my boyfriend at the time and my brother come up. I had a blast. I knew that they were calling me a cock gobbling whore out of love. Trust me it's hard being in that position but roasts are some of the best comedy shows. Comics roast each other on a nightly basis in the back of the room why not bring it on stage?
Second, I'm not a "feminist" in the true sense of the word. But I am a woman that supports other women and feels that we should be able to do and say the same thing as the boys of the world.
Go to the roast expect to be roasted and have a sense of humour about it. There's nothing worse than a comic that doesn't have a sense of humour about themselves.

JH5 said...

You are a darlin! Will let you know how it goes on Friday!