Ed here: Last night's 30 Rock tore into the discussion about women in comedy. It was funny but it was also angry, something you don't see often on network sit-coms. Here's an interesting piece on it from Salon.
"30 Rock" takes on feminist hypocrisy -- and its own
The show skewers Jezebel, sexy female stand-ups, lame period jokes -- and we all win VIDEO
BY REBECCA TRAISTER
NBC
Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) and Abby Flynn (Cristin Milioti) in the February 24 episode of "30 Rock."
Last night on NBC's "30 Rock," Tina Fey and company dove head first into the mud-wrestling match that is the ongoing conversation about women in contemporary comedy. The show took particular interest in the recent kerfuffle that erupted when unofficially-feminist-but-totally-feminist women's pop-culture website Jezebel took on the beloved "Daily Show" for not featuring enough women as on-air talent or in the writers room, and for its hiring of lissome-but-arguably-not-hilarious Olivia Munn as a token female cast-member. The episode was a direct entrance into the controversy that has lately swirled not only around Munn and "The Daily Show" but also around Fey and her "30 Rock" protagonist Liz Lemon: the one about the very combustible relationship between women, comedy and feminism.
The show begins when a website called JoanOfSnark.com takes "30 Rock's" meta-show "TGS" and particularly Fey's meta-character Liz Lemon to task for not employing enough women. In response, Liz hires Abby Flynn (Cristin Milioti), a pneumatic, infantilized, thumb-sucking trampoline jumper whose character was both an obvious reference to Munn (who took a girlish hop on the old trampoline for a Maxim shoot) and, to my eye, an even more devastating take on the pigtailed creepy-sex-object shtick of Sarah Silverman, two hot real-life funny women often credited by male critics for their comedic talent while those women who don't make their sexuality the most salient part of their personae get ignored or dismissed.
fr the rest go here:
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/30_rock/index.html?story=/ent/tv/feature/2011/02/25/30_rock_jezebel_feminism
No comments:
Post a Comment