A few months ago I wrote something on the lack of women on TV comedy panel shows after a long conversation on Twitter with friends in and around the industry. Here’s a persuasive alternative perspective from Bethany Black.
Killer quote: “If any part of comedy is sexist, it’s the audiences.”
Read MoreIf your corporate culture leads to you accidentally selling t-shirts which appear to repeat the excuses for domestic violence, just apologise. You screwed up, it was poor judgement. Say sorry and then close your mouth.
If, like Topman, you also go on to claim that your t-shirts were intended to be “light-hearted” with no deeper “serious” message, you may end up looking like you made a conscious and calculated decision to joke about domestic violence, even if you really didn’t. You thought they were just funny words. You may look like a company that weighed up the pros and cons of possible offence, and decided this particular masterwork of words on a shirt was worth the risk, when – in all likelihood – it got approved when no-one was paying attention.
You may even end up looking like a company that thought, “Is this a shirt only an arsehole would wear? Hey, are our customers arseholes?” You didn’t think those things, but now people are wondering if you did. However, you may also find some of your customers rushing to defend you on your Facebook page, customers who – quite independently of buying your range of fine clothing – are indeed arseholes, loud and plain. You probably don’t want them on your side. You’re probably nice people, but now strangers are telling other strangers upset about the trivialisation of domestic abuse to get over themselves, and they’re doing it on your behalf. Those arseholes think they’re being helpful.
I’d probably stop at the apology next time.
Read MoreI asked a simple question on twitter this morning. Can anyone name a British comedy panel show where female guests have outnumbered male guests? A clutch of replies later, and my expectations were largely confirmed: that women remain in the minority, with a few rare exceptions.
I don’t think cultural attitudes can be wholly measured with a direct headcount, or that comedy or culture can be straightforwardly “improved” simply by including more women in mainstream comedy.1 I’m certainly conscious – and pretty damn personally grateful – for the large number of women who work as writers, producers, directors and more within the comedy industry: the fact that they don’t appear in front of a camera or microphone doesn’t erase their work. I’m also as uninterested in asking whether women can be funny as asking if women are mammals. It remains, though, curious (to put it pretty damn mildly) that women continue to get the shitty end of the stick when it comes to space and time on air in the comedy industry. It is, at best, wildly patronising to continually insist that women in comedy need to be surrounded by men for programmes to work.
Dave Gorman joined the discussion, arguing that we should be looking at the the stand-up circuit first. I agree, to an extent – but looking at TV and radio comedy shows is still useful: it reminds us of prevailing habits (prejudices, even) in commissioning and production which feed the wider industry, and gives us ammunition for looking at the circuit more critically. The TV industry and the comedy circuit are interconnected; one responds to and creates expectations for the other. I don’t buy that it’s necessarily a distraction to talk about TV: we can talk about more than one thing at once, and when those things are deeply intertwined, we probably should.
But, hey, that’s a debate about the kind of debate we should be having – also probably necessary, but not occupying me right now.2 So, my question is this: how long before we see all-female line-ups (live, or on radio and television) that are as commonplace as all-male line-ups? And what kind of cultural shift would that actually represent?
The current flurry of political rhetoric surrounding arts funding needs to be examined carefully, not least because ideological choices are being justified in terms of economics: affordability, value for money and efficiency. I’ll state the obvious – economic arguments concerning the funding of the arts (on the left and right) express particular political and cultural values.
It’s reason enough to be wary when adopting the language of neo-liberal economics in defence of arts funding: we risk accepting and reproducing of the (often unmarked) assumptions on which such logic rests. Case in point may be the Adam Smith Institute’s free market proposal for arts funding, published in March of this year. David Rawcliffe’s paper – which critiques an existing, expensive bureaucracy for distorting priorities and reducing innovation – proposes ‘consumer-side subsidies’ in the form of vouchers to all citizens. You can read the paper here. Leaving aside (for now) the paper’s extremely partial representation of arguments in favour of arts funding, I want to suggest a few problems with that model, and the assumptions on which they rest.
First, the paper appears to argue that a voucher scheme would operate outside of an existing history of practice and institutions. In its conclusion, it argues:
Any new producer could establish itself and instantly compete for customers on a level playing field with other arts producers.
But the playing field as it exists – and would exist under the scheme – is far from level: the National Theatre or the Royal Opera House does not and would not start from the same position as a small regional theatre company, or a new practitioner beginning her career. Some institutions and companies are comparatively wealthy: a few own property and have significant, independent income. Others are dependent on the ability of practitioners to subsidise or wholly cover the cost of their participation; more still are only able to make work through the generosity of their communities.1
It would follow that a voucher system would favour already established companies. While the paper argues that
No new producer can hope to compete against incumbents enjoying subsidies at the level the arts councils provide.
the voucher scheme would start with those hierarchies in place, and likely exacerbate that problem by favouring established companies, who would be able to mobilise their pre-existing profile to capture the largest share of revenue. A further economic barrier – beyond that which already exists – would be created for anyone entering the profession: in short, if you could not afford to make the work and pay for it independently in the first place, the work would be unlikely to get made at all (and the market cannot then reward that which does exist).
Accordingly, and rather than encouraging competition and diversity, culture-making would move into the hands of the few – who would in turn be incentivised to reproduce existing, known practices in order to protect their income. Experimentation and innovation would be dulled by the knowledge – or rather fear – that a mis-step could lead to financial disaster, and the end of a company’s existence.
To make these arguments is not to unthinkingly defend the status quo, but to challenge the terms on which alternatives might be imagined. If, as the report argues, that free expression – free from political interference – is central to liberty and the healthy operation of civil society, do we want to entrust the machinery of cultural production to the vagaries of the market, and the interests of intrenched producers instead?