FUNNY GIRL (ESSAY)
I don’t think I can be funny girl anymore.
Gone Girl introduced us to Cool Girl, which introduced us to this particular breed of internalised misogyny wherein the pick me becomes the personality (maybe it’s maybelline, maybe its BPD, either way IT (was) ME!). But then I got over being cool and decided it was more fun to be funny.
Funny Girl is a subset of Cool Girl in the same way that BPD is a subset of trauma, in the same way that trauma is a symptom of oppression in the same way that there exists a double bind in capitalism where you need to make money but feel shame for making too much but you still want to be rich but you also want to be good and you think the two are mutually exclusive. You’re not ~wrong~ for thinking that, but I’m starting to challenge that belief - partly because if you watch Selling Sunset, you can empathise with these ultra rich, ultra internalised fatphobic but still girlboss feminist women. These women whose money unlocks them access, many kinds of freedom, many beautiful houses with apparently heavy doors (though, it could just be that money buys you open doors, and so it is unusual to have to open one yourself).
Funny Girl might see these women and turn their lives into comedy; she might laugh at their drama and comment on how out of touch with reality they are. Funny girl puts them in their own category, their reality, to separate from her own reality. Their reality/realty is in the promise of a green smoothie and vigorous workout routine and kindness and cocktails. Funny girl’s reality/realty is a sharehouse in Melbourne’s north or west (not south or east) and the promise of comradery in jugs and belly laughs and hangovers and long days of writing and coffees from 7/11 on the way to shows with small audiences and even smaller paychecks (if any). If Funny Girl is lucky, she has a job that doesn’t destroy her soul and male friends that are capital A Allys and audiences that love to see her thrive.
But if Funny Girl is unlucky, she came to comedy because she couldn’t take herself or her life or her feelings seriously. She developed a sense of humour because she seemed to develop differently from her peers. She wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until her late 20s, and when she learned about masking, it felt so much like the closet she discovered life is full of double binds. Unmasking/uncloseting is a process that removes the many layers of social respectability and safeness that as a queer/neurodivergent person, you have carefully observed, implemented and maintained in order to make others feel comfortable and make yourself safe. The relief you have for kids these days growing up feeling safe to be out/queer at a young age feels like a kick in the teeth from your dentist. It’s good. It’s really good. But fuck, you wish you didn’t spend so many years trying to have straight teeth when your teeth were fine and actually look better when they’re gay AF.
The Funny Girl in me disappeared over lockdown. With no audience, why was she here? It’s not to say I didn’t have laughter, joy, silliness, weird character improvs with my housemates. I had all these things, without needing to be Funny Girl. I could make funnies without making it my whole personality. I could talk about my feelings openly without needing a punchline. I began to heal my inner child without needing to tweet my self into deprecation. I saved to drafts all the mean things I would normally say about myself and instead began projecting the self I wanted to be; one that loves, does what she loves, believes in love love love above bits bits bits. Yesterday, I opened Twitter and discovered all my drafts - jokes and all - had been deleted. All the ideas re: not being good enough are gone. Does this mean Funny Girl is dead?
My therapist says that when I am making decisions out of authenticity, integrity and care, I am being self-led. The inverse is to be led by a part of me that has been taught it is not safe or wise to be open/truthful/out. It’s the trauma, y’all. When I am self-led, I make decisions easily, because I am only considering what is best for me and not what might appease others around me so that I am not hurt (real lizard brain shit). But what do you get when you add an audience to this, an audience who you must please, must make laugh, must always think of first and foremost???
trauma response
WE LOVE TO SEE IT! We love to see it. We love, to see, it.
It’s super validating performing in a comedy show to tens, or hundreds of people. Hell, it gives me a rush to make one person laugh. So of course, it’s addictive. Especially to someone with traumatised attachment - the validation becomes so strong that it just makes sense to build your life around it. It’s a form of love you’ve never known. Never mind who you were, or what you wanted, if you can make someone laugh you can tell them anything. But here’s where the double bind comes in; if you don’t know who you are, and you find comedy, you will tell them anything that makes them laugh. You’ll believe you are speaking your truth, fighting the good fight, living your dream, until one day when you’re forced to step back, you look at your life and think, wait, who’s dream?
When I was a kid, I wasn’t funny. I didn’t get comedy. I loved Jim Carrey, does that count? My parents had a very different (mean) sense of humour and the way that I coped with low self-esteem was a self-deprecating sense of humour to my friends. Then when I was in acting school, I was suddenly praised for my comedic timing. I don’t know what had happened, but somewhere in between hiding my sexuality and wanting desperately to be wanted, I realised comedy helps you connect. And so, I learned how to make jokes. I realised that everything can be a joke. Life is a joke. A divine comedy. Nothing needs to be taken seriously. What a life!
But then, the panorama. The panama. The pandemonium. If you’re not on twitter; the pandemic. It really ripped my comedy dreams right out from under me; cancelling my first solo show and all other avenues for comedy. I mean, I had TikTok, but it’s different. Very different. On TikTok, authenticity is valued. I realised all I knew how to do was make jokes with a live audience there to help me work out what was funny. When I was alone, alone, alone, alone… what made me laugh? Faced with infinite solitude and constant crises, I didn’t feel like joking. I felt like listening. I felt like… feeling?? What??
Don’t get me wrong, I make my therapist laugh every session we have because I am a good, nay, her best, patient. I’m a high achiever, obviouslyyyyy the goal is to be the best patient right?? Haha. See, how making jokes hinders the actual truth coming out? Actual truth: I had so much trauma hidden inside me that it has slowly crystallised into my muscles and caused me problems with tension that I now see an osteo to help fix. Truth: I don’t know the extent of my trauma, because trauma hides certain memories so even you don’t feel bad about them. Fact: as Hannah Gadsby pointed out; laughing at your pain just makes it stronger.
Hannah Gadsby began a wave of ~vulnerable comedy~ that many comedians-that-make-other-comedians-eyeroll piggybacked in the comedy festivals that followed. Because comedy is about following the fun thing, the thing that makes people laugh; a tasty mix of relevance, respect, observation and commentary. To sit outside or right in the thing that makes people resonate, until they don’t know what else to do but laugh. Laughter is an emotional release; sometimes the body’s response to surprise, other times, to helplessness. Some probably shitty, definitely insecure, comedians will tell you that comedy is about pushing boundaries and making people uncomfortable. They’re the same comedians that will blame you if you feel upset because someone is being sexist or racist or transphobic onstage. They’re the type of comedians who run venues who will block you on Twitter after you call them out for their shitty reputation.
There’s a whole story to be told about The Comic’s Lounge, one which is before, beyond and laterally surrounding me and my place as a Funny Girl in this Funny World. It’s too big to put into words on this little blog, but what I will say is that comedy fosters an environment of crushing. If you crushed it, it means you did a good job. If you crush on a comedian, chances are you’ll end up getting crushed by their lack of emotional availability. If you’re The Comic’s Lounge, you think you’re crushing those haters of free speech by allowing space for everyone who agrees with your bigotry, and blocking anyone who has something to say otherwise. This thing that they are protecting is not free speech but hate speech, but perhaps to some people, freedom includes power to oppress. These are people who have never been oppressed, but as soon as you counter their opinion, they begin to scream as though they do know what oppression is, despite always acting like it doesn’t really exist. It’s so convenient, how their attention and efforts fail them when someone else needs help. But hey, when it’s 3am on Halloween in 2019, suddenly they have all the energy in the world to ‘take down’ some random Funny Girl on twitter. Ironically, though they love free speech, they take down their own tweets so that people can’t see them abusing a Funny Girl in public.
A lot of my friends - but devastatingly, not enough - respond to this weird event. Notably silent, are many capital A allys who are already benefactors of the comedy scene in Melbourne. Those on the up, or already up, who I have talked to many times and would probably help me in the street if I were being accosted, ignore the whole situation as though they don’t have to get involved. It’s a crushing silence that hurts my feelings and makes me wonder about this lovely comedy community I have defended and adored many times. Who are they protecting, when they protect themselves? I know it is probably a trauma response, and that they want to feel safe, but when one of the top comedy venues in Melbourne is abusing your friend on the internet, surely you can at least speak up? Even Dave Hughes, who for some reason followed me when I was 17 but let’s not think too much about that, leaves me on read when I message him about it. I message the comedians who are Public Good Guys on the lineups that are fundraising to Save The Comic’s Lounge and they also ignore me. I suppose, if the people giving you a platform on which you can crush it, it does not matter who they are crushing in the background.
All this considered, this is the tip of the iceberg. Things are worse in many places in the world. A friend who just moved to LA tells me about her open mic scene there; the MC joking about wishing he had an x-ray to see through another comedian’s dress. A reporter reaches out to me about the whole thing to write about it on his blog, having witnessed many incidences of the same thing in San Fran. Louis CK is cancelled. Jerry Seinfeld took a 17 year old to an awards night. The me too movement never made it to comedy, because it is an industry built on the quick handshakes as you step onto stage, and how much you can make the people laugh. And this doesn’t make anyone laugh. So why would I bother saying it?
Well, as a retiring Funny Girl, I no longer feel the pressure to shut up and make jokes about things that make me feel uncomfortable. I can talk about my feelings without laughing them off. I have found my voice in platforms elsewhere that feel real, meaningful and true to me, rather than this other version of me that I have tried to be to make others happy. It doesn’t make me happy to leave behind comedy, but it feels like what is best for me now, in order to have the space to work out who I am when I’m not just trying to get an audience onside. In doing this, I feel like I am finally on my own side, backing myself, believing in myself, showing up for me. I no longer am Funny Girl but funnily enough I feel like this will be the thing that brings my sense of humour back. In doing what you love, following what you want, and allowing yourself the full spectrum of the human experience, you become the person you were always trying to invent. A sense of self emerges when you feel safe, heard and connected to others. No longer am I sacrificing the former to achieve the latter. I would sign off with RIP Funny Girl, but literally so women have died because of the exact issues I’m bringing up here, so instead, I’ll just end with this: it’s okay to not be funny, girl.
