A poem a day in April from Rutgers English PhD students and friends.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Girly Poem #7: Anonymous Studio Execs Agree

In my experience,
girls' revealing themselves
as candid and raunchy
doesn't appeal to guys at all.
And girls aren't that into it,
either. Men just don't understand
the nuances of female dynamics.
If men don't have to make movies
about women, they won't.
That wouldn't work with two women,
because ... Maybe women have
a built-in dignity, and if a woman slips
on a banana peel ... You know,
maybe it's just that I've never tried it.
The international on her is so weak.
Get some tits in the movie.
Ooh, that's yucky.

5 comments:

  1. Lifted from quotations from studio execs (not all anonymous) in Tad Friend's article, "Funny Like a Guy: Anna Faris and Hollywood's Woman Problem" (The New Yorker, April 11, 2011)

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  2. Tits ARE yucky!

    I wish I still got the NYer! I really want to read this article. I'm reading the Tina Fey book (which is not really that amazing actually, but likable) and she talks about the Second City guys being like, "If we have more women in the troupe they will get fewer parts!" and Tina Fey was like, "Wait, we MAKE UP the shows. We can MAKE UP skits with more women in them." And I think the Second City guys were totally uncomfortable with having 2-3 women in a skit.

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  3. That's the article Mimi brought over for me -- I can lend it to you if you want!

    Believe it or not I heard about that part in Bossypants through this argument about feminism that I am having with Amber Tamblyn! Okay, not really WITH Amber Tamblyn, but:

    http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2011/04/rooney-i-hear-you/

    http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2011/04/all-the-ladies-in-the-place-with-style-and-grace/

    http://beccaklaver.blogspot.com/2011/04/should-all-submissions-be-read-blind.html

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  4. Whoa! Crazy that this conversation was SIMULTANEOUSLY HAPPENING HOW INTERESTING. I just super-quick skimmed everything, and my immediate reaction is that Amber Tamblyn is maybe misreading Tina Fey: she concludes that "what Tina Fey is saying is that we should just focus on doing the work — let the audience be the judge." But while Tina seems to think that appealing to the audience and seeing whether you get laughs is a good way to circumvent the weird sexist assumptions made by writers & producers (an argument that you're complicating* in your post), that particular anecdote was actually more about how this SNL actress had internalized the producers' bizarre sexist assumption that there was only so much work for women to go around. So Tina Fey isn't making an argument for a kind of laissez-faire comedy marketplace, but rather for a totally regulated activist comedy economy where you make a decision to have more female comedians and then you actively choose to make up funny things for those female comedians to do.

    *how Expos! A+ for Becca Klaver.

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  5. Brill brill! I think you have a dissertation topic on your hands: "Regulated Feminist Activist Comedic Economies: Funny Ha-Ha or Funny Weird?" OK that subtitle makes no sense but I just wanted to GO FOR IT.

    So, the literary correlate would be more feminist presses publishing more women, or actually, more women editors taking over editorial positions EVERYWHERE and publishing more women. Sounds good to me.

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