You laugh: How do you joke about women on Russian TV
"Our secretary's briefs are like Indian films - they are shot every five minutes." I watch Comedy Club. No, I am not a fan of the show and I was not alone with the TV on the car wash: I plan to devote a week of my life to studying Russian TV shows.
Recently, an important question regularly arises in discussions about women's rights and sexism in Russia: should one be offended by humor, which is unpleasant for you? A rare discussion like this goes without mentioning Nazism and Charlie Hebdo, and women offended with specific jokes and anecdotes are blamed for the lack of a sense of humor. To understand whether everything is so bad with the presentation of women on a national scale, I decided not only to watch several shows, but also to calculate how much time each program was given to women and men, the total number of jokes, the percentage of jokes about women and relationships, the number of comparisons women with animals and objects and, finally, cases when a woman was portrayed as a comedian-man. It was a bold idea to wait for Russian programs to pass the Behdel test, but it was worth a try.
I will reveal the intrigue immediately, it was Comedy Club that took the palm in the nomination "Chicken is not a bird", leaving the competitors far behind. I watched the 460th edition, which was shown on TNT on February 13th. It was the only show I watched, in which men accounted for one hundred percent of the participants who appeared on the scene. Presenters - Pavel Volya and Garik Kharlamov - men. All humorists are men too. 85% of screen time show devoted to men. Approximately five minutes of the total timekeeping program was given to the beats and headpieces, and the same time to women.
During these timid minutes, women appeared at the Comedy Club three times. The first was the group Serebro, who sang a song about the tragic love of a man. Then we were introduced to a duet of designers from Kursk: Nadezhda Reshetnikova and Ivan Vanin. After one phrase, said by Nadezhda, Ivan took the microphone from her and continued talking to the presenters without her. Finally, women were devoted to the sketch - humorist Serge Gorely showed how he glued to the girl. She was assigned the role of a grateful side: "I liked your performance so much, I haven’t been laughing like that for a long time." That is, women in the world of the Comedy Club are allowed to sing, dance, talk about men and accept their courtship. When a woman tries to talk about work, a microphone is taken from her.
The female-faced room in the Comedy Club, however, was, only it was performed not by the comedian, but again by the man - Semyon Slepakov. The tradition of such reincarnations is beloved in a seemingly homophobic Russia, but simply because “dressing up a woman” in itself seems humorous to the audience and the audience. Simply put, it is almost always a parody, not a drag. In most cases, when a male comedian portrays a victim, that is, a woman, he does it based on the most inert and gross gender stereotypes. In the men's mouth, women's interests are reduced almost exclusively to cosmetics, clothes and, in fact, men. As a result, the female sex comes from humorists in the same caricature as the pop stars in the image of Maxim Galkin, only mock here is not a specific person, but the amount of traits allegedly characteristic of all women.
So this time, Slepakov, speaking from the female face, fully dedicated the song to the man. His character is a young Ukrainian who lives with a Muscovite. Of course, she "gekat" (the refrain of the composition sounds like "Ihar, Ihar"), complains about the lack of attention and is offended that "Ihar" did not buy her an expensive car and did not take it to the islands. At the exit, we see a mercantile, not-so-distant heroine, generalized to a whole type, if not the entire feminine gender. Needless to say, that wanting a car and on the islands, even if not at their own expense, has the right to anyone - but in the Comedy Club it turns out that this all boils down to.
In general, the Comedy Club is a chilling parade of abusive jokes. Jokes about women accounted for almost 22% of the total, and jokes about relationships and sex - another 25%. It seems to me that if I were counting racist and homophobic punchlines, I would cover all the content of the program. Two comedians - Alexander Nezlobin and Serge Gorely (the country should know their heroes) - built their speeches entirely in jokes about women and sex. And oh, what a joke it was! Nezlobin accused women of changing their men, complained that the girls did not want to have sex in the garage, and said that his current girlfriend was "inferior to the water park" in Monaco. Waterpark! If you did not know what objectification is, then here it is: a girl is compared to a pleasure institution, as if she is not a person, but an amusement complex. Needless to say, the Behdel test was brilliantly failed by transfer.
Of course, it can be said that nothing terrible - well, there is such a Comedy Club with sexist jokes, it has its own audience, let them look. In fact, the show, like any mass product, introduces certain standards of behavior, albeit in a joking manner, and normalizes them. Do not forget that this is the absolute leader of the comic TV market in Moscow: week after week the show of the TNT channel heads the rating of comic shows in the capital. And in this super-popular transfer of women on the stage there, they are deprived of their right to vote - but over them, to put it mildly, they are stoking. It seems that such jokes are normal, because even women in the hall like them. So, if you joke with a woman that she is inferior to an aquapark, then she will decide that you are a cool prankster. And if she does not decide, then something is wrong with her, but the joke was normal.
To make sure that the world of the Comedy Club is not very normal, you don’t even have to go far. On Russian television, there is an almost ideally canned sample of the late Soviet humor - “Petrosyan-show”. I watched the issue of February 12, 2016, however, it was not easy to believe that the program is less than 25 years old. What is there, constantly had to remind myself of this. It is indicative that Petrosyan-show is the absolute leader of ratings in Russia. When he stands in the broadcasting schedule, he leaves both the Urgant and the Comedy Club far behind: according to TNS, this is the 36th most popular show in Russia and the absolute leader in the sub-genre of "humorous programs."
So: the position of women in “Petrosyan-show” is significantly better than in the supposedly ultra-modern and visually pro-Western Comedy Club. More than a third of the screen time was used for women (20% of them were on the stage at the same time as men). Jokes about women accounted for about 14% of the total, about relationships - another 13%. This is two times lower than in the Comedy Club. Of the 18 people who appeared on the scene during the show, four were women.
The jokes in the “Petrosyan-show” are absolutely, painfully not ridiculous - but at the same time extremely rarely truly offensive. The relations of the sexes here are almost not ridiculed, and if it comes to this then it’s not so much dancing on stereotypes as laughter through tears over the life of the average Russian family. So, actor Alexei Bukhovtsov sang a song about how dad drank "mother's earrings, grandmother's necklace, grandpa's teeth and a car." That is, women are not compared with water parks here, but they also treat frivolous family problems lightly.
Amazingly, Petrosyan-show passed the Behdel test: Yevgeny Vaganovich invited two elderly women to the program - Valentina Grigorievna Arefyeva and Tatiana Arkadyevna Makarova, who sang funny but rather touching songs in places. During the break between the songs, the grandmothers talked among themselves about how good the vodka was and what time to drink. Bingo! Women, even at a certain age, are interested not only in men.
Of course, “Petrosyan-show” is far from paradise on earth, although after the Comedy Club it may seem that way: there was a place for “fool” and a song about breast augmentation. But in the face of "Petrosyan-show" we have important evidence: given that since the mid-1980s these jokes have hardly evolved, we can safely say that thirty years ago, television humor in Russia was much less sophisticated.
Yevgeny Petrosyan, who looks like a sweet spot on stage, does not set his goal to humiliate someone - he really wants to make laugh, even with ridiculous dances and bearded anecdotes. While the Comedy Club sets a new standard for permissible, and the jokes in the spirit of "Guys, this is my office, crap who you want" diverge on social networks, becoming the gold standard for humorous public and workers smoking. This humor goes to the people, and women often have no choice but to endure or accept these standards - and all who are against are victims of new jokes. As a result, women themselves often distance themselves from their gender and do not mind joking that "all women are fools, and I am the queen." The brightest, vibrating example of such humor, built on internal misgynography, is demonstrated by another TNT product - Comedy Woman.
I saw this program several times before the experiment, so I didn’t have any special illusions - and, unfortunately, the 131st edition of the show, aired on February 21, did not convince me. The concept of the Comedy Woman sounds great: it is positioned as a humorous show, created exclusively by women. The slogan of the program promises "the best in the world of the show, and the best is because it's female". In an ideal world, this could be true, but, alas, we do not live in it.
The show traditionally opens with a spectacular musical number with dances, then small sketches are played on the stage, which are interspersed with backstage gags. The comedians themselves participate in the dance number and do it brilliantly, but the sediment still remains: why don't the actors and artists of the Comedy Club dance at the beginning of the show? Perhaps, in their opinion, this is not a man's business?
But, frankly, the problem of the Comedy Woman is not in dancing, but in the content of the numbers. Thus, the backstage scenes were built solely on gender stereotypes: women called each other fat, hid their age, called names and refused to help each other. There were six sketches themselves, and male actors were absent in only two of them. Without them, there was a sketch about the "high school for prostitutes" (here I had blood flowing from my eyes and ears) and the verbal battle of two women performed by Natalia Yeprikyan and Ekaterina Varnava, who watered mud from the bottom of their hearts. Among the epithets, with which the actress with excitement awarded each other, were "animal", "slut", "device", "queen of the crossbow", "sheep", "I do not understand, this is a dog or you before epilation".
Sketches with the participation of men were no better: one of them was devoted to cash clashes between husband and wife, the second, about a romantic date, was reduced to the idea, potentially justifying violence: "If a woman says no, this means yes." In the third sketch with the participation of the comedy goddess Marina Fedunkiv, a middle-aged woman offered the taxi driver to pay "differently." At the same time, the heroine diminutively called the driver “my cranberry, my gopher, my darling”, which men usually do, thus putting themselves in a position of strength and superiority. But, despite the “mirror”, the sketch as a whole failed in respect of women, reducing to one stretched joke about how scary to have sex with a middle-aged woman who does not meet beauty standards.
In the last of the six sketches colleagues expressed that they are annoying in each other. There were a lot of jokes about appearances, menstruation and "female", and the sweet and gentle-hearted male director was called a rag, a mattress and filth. In this case, the men in the sketch did not attack each other even once - only women. But the women themselves insulted each other with great pleasure.
In a word, an excellent idea in theory - a humorous show created by the hands and minds of women - made on the TNT stylebook, turned out to be a complete nightmare. It's just a celebration of internal misery: jokes about women accounted for 28%, and jokes about relationships and sex - another 30%, that is, more than half of the show. Almost all sketches come from family life, women speak almost exclusively about men, and all gender stereotypes about femininity and hysteria are joyfully supported. And this is not fun at all, because the actresses are obviously talented and, most likely, are in solidarity with each other outside the stage. But their sense of humor is embedded in the ugly framework of marching misogyny: creating numbers for the public, they consider it necessary to create an alternative reality, full of hatred of women for women. Behdel-test, however, the show passed: to fail the task with a cast of 10 women would be a special height and, admittedly, the program Comedy Woman almost took it.
Despite the fact that Comedy Woman seems to be a "female show", the men here occupied the screen for almost half of the program, and this is considering that there are ten women in the show, and only two men. Perhaps this is because the male roles here depict real men, and not disguised women. At the same time, Comedy Woman proves that comedians in Russia have a place to turn around: the show is regularly included in the top ten most popular comic programs in the country, often ahead of its "male" counterpart.
But so far, alas, the harm from the show from the point of view of creating a female image in the mass consciousness is even greater than that of the Comedy Club: women here with their own hands reinforce all the vile stereotypes. And it's sad, because you can make fun of them with no less success than you support. This was perfectly demonstrated by Garik Martirosyan at the Comedy Club, asking a guest from the UK what would have happened in his country if they had written “only to people of British nationality” in the announcement of renting an apartment. The answer was a trial. Garik summed up: "Here you have to ad" people of British nationality "have to go to court, and we have this fun fun of the people." Such jokes hit the target, but they also pose unpleasant questions for the society: it’s much easier to joke that "you have a big nose because you are Armenian." Firstly, it’s not beautiful, and secondly, it’s not funny.
Is it even possible to joke offensively and without exploiting stereotypes? "Evening Urgant" proves that it is possible, at least trying. Even with a cursory viewing of the YouTube channel of the program, it is clear that the authors are trying to observe gender balance by inviting guests of both sexes to the studio. So it was in the February 12 issue with Ingeborga Dapkunayte and Danila Kozlovsky. The screen time of women in "Evening Urgant" was 33%, and jokes about women - less than 2%. And this is an absolute record of all the programs I watched. At the same time, the popularity with the audience at “Evening Urgant” is about the same as that of Comedy products: the show regularly ranks among the top 100 most popular in Russia, one week to one week higher or lower than TNT programs.
Perhaps this is the merit of Ivan Urgant himself, who looks like a man not only charming and talented, but also progressive. So, both Dapkunayte and Kozlovsky he greeted them with a compliment of their appearance - although even on the Oscar carpet, women mostly get rid of their appearance while men ask about work. When Ingeborg, talking about her role, she was shy and clarified: "I am very serious, yes?" - Urgant did not use this moment to insert a hairpin, but promised to add idiocy on his part. And discussing the role of Hamlet with Kozlovsky, he exclaimed: "This is the most important event in the life of any male actor!" And immediately made a reservation: "Yes, that men - any actor!" Interviews with Dapkunayte and Kozlovsky lasted equally - 15 minutes each.
The release was released on the eve of February 14, and at the very beginning co-host Dmitry Khrustalev (whose function in the show looks, frankly, mysteriously), played a romantic microsketch with Urgant. When Khrustalev asked if he could be given a gift in honor of the holiday, Urgant made a face "oh my god!" and, minting, issued: "Mitya! Men who work together - here I was waiting for a homophobic joke - they can give each other pink hares!" Surprise: on the central channel, men say that it is not necessary to cultivate masculinity in themselves endlessly.
However, controversial moments slipped here. In the "Look from below" section, children answered questions from the presenter about love, where only one girl fell on the three boys. And she got only one question, after which the attention of Urgant switched to the boys and the heroine no longer appeared in the questionnaire. Not to mention the fact that there were many awkward allusions to sex, extremely doubtful for talking with children: hearing from one of them the word “smack”, the leader began to play around the similarity of the words “smack” and “chpok”: love? How long can you love without smacking? " It turns out that sex education in schools is debauchery, and joking with a child on the central TV channel about “chpokat” is okay.
Of course, it’s not worth making global conclusions on the basis of only one release of each program, but it gives some vector to catch. The results so far are disappointing: it seems that the new Russian humorists almost do not know how to joke without insulting. This humor, unlike its best samples, is not built on the ability to make fun of yourself; instead, it scoffs at groups from which the audience tends to distance itself. The purpose of these jokes is to insult a migrant, call a woman a fool, humiliate a gay and wish her mother-in-law to die. Так и выходит, что передачи, придуманные около сорока лет назад "про всех нас", оказываются более толерантными, чем модные и ориентирующиеся на американский стендап передачи неглупого и в целом приятного ТНТ.
Это, как говорится, печально. Большая часть юмористических шоу на российском ТВ сделана с прицелом на мужскую аудиторию - в то время как на Западе женская аудитория громко заявила о своих правах и о своей платёжеспособности. Сиквел фильма "Идеальный голос" собрал в прокате 286 миллионов долларов и стал самой кассовой музыкальной комедией всех времён, забрав этот титул у "Школы рока". Эми Шумер не сходила с обложек и страниц журналов, а сейчас пишет сценарий фильма вместе с Дженнифер Лоуренс - оскароносной актрисой и феминисткой. Jokes aimed at women in a good way are now in demand and bring money, but in Russia only one TV channel thought about it - having invented a woman-hateful show for women. Perhaps the secret is that there is only one woman among the five producers of the show. And this, as we know, is not the fault of women.
Photo: Comedy Club / Facebook, Russia, Blitz-TNT, Channel One