Who’s Laughing Now: Feminist Perspectives on Humour and Laughter ed. by Anna Lise Frey (review)

This collection of essays focuses on feminism’s and feminists’ use of defiant humor and laughter as a tool to push back against the dominant powers that seek to tell the world that “women aren’t funny.” The book is comprised of ten chapters and an introduction. The contributors come from a variety of educational and professional backgrounds; one contributor is a sexual health counselor, another a master’s candidate in environmental anthropology, and yet another a PhD in political economy in feminist media. The wide range of perspectives is part and parcel of what makes the collection’s emphasis on comic pushback so compelling.

In the book’s introduction, editor Anna Frey begins by pointing out that women are as adept at humor as men, even when the running joke works to serve the systems that oppress them. Frey reminds readers that “not all women practice feminism, and women’s comedy can just as much reinforce violent systems of oppression as refute them.” As she explains, the book’s goal is to explore how laughter and humor can be used as a form of political action, as well as what they might look like to different people (7). No chapter, she notes, is meant to be taken as the final word on the subject; the book is instead intended to offer a mix of voices within an ongoing conversation.

Each chapter title is in itself an attempt at humor. Many of them call out double standards in comedy or address stereotypes that women can’t be funny and are only the butt of jokes instead. The first chapter by Vanessa Voss, “I Would Come Up with a Funny Title, but I’m Just a Girl: Women, Comedy, and an Evolved Sense of Humor,” focuses on what happens when women “infiltrate” comedic spaces like television and the internet only to be met with backlash and sometimes outright violence. Voss claims that “women have the same intellectual capabilities as men when they are allowed to act on them without some form of punishment,” underscoring one of the many important points of this book, namely that women and feminists have the ability to use humor just as effectively as their patriarchal counterparts when given the platform (23). Voss demonstrates this point further in her use of endnotes as a secondary site for humor.

Other chapters explore how women use comedy to cope with real-life situations, bring people together, break down stereotypes by reclaiming and reworking sexist, racist, and other jokes aimed at marginalized groups, and remind us that making fun of oneself is sometimes the best way to keep laughing and stay on top.

In the second chapter, “Phenomenology of a Feminist Joke and the Quintessential Emotional Labour in Maria Bamford’s Comedy,” Matalja Chestopalova investigates how far femme comics will go in order to make their audiences laugh by analzying one female comedian’s television series and stand-up comedy routines. Chapter 3, “I Have to Laugh, or I’ll Die,” is Aba Amuquandoh’s account of how she relied on humor to get through the toughest parts of her life and how that led her to become a professional comedian. Chapter 4, “‘Man, That Guy’s Sad . . . but He Killed’: Survivors of Sexual Violence Joke about Rape,” by editor Anna Frey, also explores how people facing challenging life experiences use humor to cope. In chapter 5, “The Bad Mother’s Club: In Cyberspace, You Can Hear the Unruly Women Laughing,” Anitra Goriss-Hunter considers one maternity website’s redefinition and reassessment of the maternal body through anecdotal stories. The next chapter, “Making It Up As They Go Along: An Analysis of Feminist Comedy in the Prairies” by Marley Duckket, discusses “ the rise of feminist comedy in the prairie provinces” through a look at a prairie comedy troupe called LadyBits Improv Comedy Collective (76). Chapter 7, Sai Amulya Komarraju’s “‘Immoral, Slut, Arsehol...