Rosie White

Women are angry! Lizzie and Sarah as feminist critique

This essay examines the BBC comedy pilot Lizzie and Sarah as a dissonant account of contemporary femininities. With reference to work on the grotesque, and to contemporary television comedys use of the grotesque as a strategy, I argue that this uncommissioned pilot episode offers an incisive critique of contemporary anxieties about middle-aged women and teenage girls. While the narrative employs parody and hyperbole to humorous ends, critical commentary around the show, from its producers and from broadsheet journalists, indicates that it overstepped boundaries in terms of its account of heterofemininity. Comparing Lizzie and Sarah to makeover shows on British television, the episode constitutes an ironic feminist makeover, with its protagonists choosing to kill their oppressors rather than submit to the disciplinary regime of heterofemininity. A close analysis of the dialogue, costumes and mise-en-scene is deployed to read this comedy as a scathing commentary on the continuing limitations of television femininities.

Funny peculiar: Lucille Ball and the vaudeville heritage of early American television comedy

ABSTRACT In this essay I examine the traces of vaudeville performance in the first season of the early American television comedy series I Love Lucy (CBS, 1951–1957), proposing that while sitcom may be regarded as a narratively conservative format, it may also harbour eccentric figures; the funny peculiar. American vaudeville offered a space in which normative heterofemininity was both upheld and subverted. As one of the direct inheritors of that theatrical tradition, early sitcom could embody complex negotiations of gender and identity. The first season of I Love Lucy is inflected by the performance traditions of American vaudeville, while its development was enabled by a theatrical tour to promote and establish the show. Funding for the pilot came from a vaudeville agency and key actors, producers and writers for the series had a background in this comedic tradition. Vaudeville comedy allowed some female performers licence to explore and explode the feminine ideal and early television comedy offered a similar potential. Lucille Balls performance as Lucy Ricardo is exemplary in this regard.

Editorial 'Acting Up: Gender and Television Comedy'

When two of us sent out the call for papers for a comedy symposium (also called ‘Acting Up: Gender and Television Comedy’) at Northumbria University in 2012 we were surprised and pleased to receive submissions that addressed both masculinity and femininity. When the call for papers went out for this special issue in 2013 a similar response ensued: over forty proposals came in, almost equally divided along gender lines, regarding male and female comedians, series, showrunners and writers/producers. Although academic work on gender today encompasses the examination of white, hegemonic heteromasculinity, the political work of feminist comedians, programme makers and academics continues to pack a powerful political punch. As Jo Brand notes in the interview with Sharon Lockyer in this current issue, there is recognition that women’s voices are missing from some aspects of television comedy and public statements have been made about raising the number of women on screen; however there has been little attempt to change the style of formats such as panel shows (Thorpe 2014). This collection of essays also registers the recent interest in feminism as the focus of comedy. Aspects of that revival are evident, in the United Kingdom, in the resurgence of popular stand-up which directly references feminist issues; most notably Bridget Christie’s triumph at the Edinburgh Festival in 2013 with ‘ AB ic For Her’. Christie was the third woman to win what is now the Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Award in its 34-year history; Jenny Eclair won in 1995 and Laura Solon in 2005, so it is hardly full steam ahead. Stand-up has historically been a maledominated field (see Lockyer 2011), while television comedy – sitcom in particular – is often cited as a more feminine arena, if only as a domestic medium. Yet in British sitcom the central focus has often been a male figure or, more often, a dysfunctional couple, with the female partner taking the role of secondary character or sidekick who feeds the protagonist’s comedy by remaining stolidly rational (Gray 1994, 83). More remarkably, in comedy and television studies, it is only in the last decade that work has begun to emerge which examines masculinity in some detail. Andy Medhurst’s A National Joke (2007) was in the vanguard, although masculinity was not overtly part of that volume’s remit. The visible rise of female stars in American television comedy also raises questions about feminism and representation. The work of writers and performers such as Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Lena Dunham has directly addressed debates

‘You’ll Be the Death of Me’: Mata Hari and the Myth of the Femme Fatale

Mata Hari, the infamous spy executed by the French during the First World War, haunts all subsequent accounts of women and espionage. The popular mythology that constructs Mata Hari as a classic femme fatale has produced a stereotype of the woman in espionage that rests on pejorative accounts of female sexuality and betrayal. Mata Hari’s real story is a morality tale of a different kind, as it maps the changing roles of women in modern Europe. In this regard she may be a feminist forerunner, but her myth is dependent on derogated accounts of gender, race and class. Above all, Mata Hari’s mythology feeds into the stereotype of the oriental villainess. In William Le Queux’s 1919 novel The Temptress a French femme fatale brings disaster with her fiendish plans to seduce and murder anyone who gets in her way. The temptress exhibits no motivation other than an inordinate desire for wealth and a lack of inhibition. Finally unmasked, she commits suicide with an overdose of morphine and the remaining characters are married off. Lord Hugh Trethowen, the central protagonist and victim, closes the novel: ‘I feel assured we shall now be happy and contented. Let us look only to a bright and prosperous future, and let us forget forever the grim shadow that fell upon us, the shadow of THE TEMPTRESS’ (Le Queux 1919: 250).

From Terry and June to Terry and Julian: June Whitfield and the British Suburban Sitcom

Like masculinity, heterosexuality, or whiteness, the British suburban sitcom has been a relatively unexamined field in television studies. This chapter examines one of the most popular suburban sitcoms, Terry and June (1979–1987) in relation to the remarkable career of its female star, June Whitfield. Reading Terry and June through the lens of Whitfield’s later work on more “alternative” comedy shows such as Terry and Julian (1992) and Absolutely Fabulous (1992–2012), this chapter examines how British suburban sitcom, a feminine domestic genre, endorses but also undermines cultural norms of gender and class.

‘What Did It Mean?’ A Generational Conversation

Lynn Edmonds was a reader of Spare Rib during its earlier manifestation. This chapter offers an edited conversation between her and Rosie White, who picked up Spare Rib in the 1980s. They recollect their experiences of feminism at this time and how the magazine acted as conduit for a sisterhood of budding feminists.