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Between the Jokelands
Third, women don’t enjoy humor that makes fun of others’ physical shortcomings. By contrast, men make fun of just about everyone. “Men taunt other men with clever nicknames and insults,” says John Morreall, a humor expert at the College of William and Mary. “That isn’t something women do.” There’s a joke on comedycentral.com that goes, “If Laura, Suzanne, Debra and Rose go out for lunch, they will call one another Laura, Suzanne, Debra and Rose. If Mike, Charlie, Bob and John go out, they will affectionately refer to one another as Fat Boy, Godzilla, Peanut-Head and Scrappy.”If women laugh at anyone, it’s at themselves and their quirks. As Lisa Lampanelli puts it, “With us, it’s about our looks and our weight.”
Barreca agrees. “We think we’re fat if we can’t fit into the jeans we wore in high school. Men think they’re fat if they can’t fit into a foreign car.”
But between the jokelands of men and women is a vast common ground. Nielsen Media Research breaks down the gender of audiences for television comedies. It turns out we all watch the same shows: In the 1990s, it was Seinfeld, Frasier, Home Improvement, Roseanne, Everybody Loves Raymond and Friends. Today’s top sitcoms, Two and a Half Men and Rules of Engagement, are popular with both sexes. Comedy Central—which gave the world South Park and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and its offspring, The Colbert Report—has a viewership that’s about 40 percent female. “The common ground is in the absurdities of everyday life,” says Barreca.
Yet for all we have learned about the he/she factor in humor, one mystery abides. Why watch plotless 20-minute comedy shorts in which three potsy middle-aged men with bizarre haircuts basically boing, clonk and blammo one another over and over again for no real reason?
A possible answer may come from another study, this one done at the University of Toronto, where researchers were studying how injuries affect the higher levels of intellectual operation. They asked normal and brain-damaged individuals to evaluate jokes. Those with certain neurological damage had difficulty picking out the appropriate punch line for jokes like “A teenager is being interviewed for a summer job. ‘You’ll get $50 a week to start off,’ says his boss. ‘Then after a month, you’ll get a raise to $75 a week.’ ‘That’s great!’ the kid says. ‘I’ll come back in a month.’”
The group with the neurological damage didn’t get the joke but did show “a preference for silly, slapstick humor—surprising but illogical endings that are the hallmarks of such acts as the Three Stooges.”
Of course, this is not to suggest that most men have the humor sensibilities of a brain-damaged patient. Well, actually, I guess it does. Nyuk nyuk nyuk.
His & Hers Funny Films
5 for Men
1. Blazing Saddles
2. Caddyshack
3. Office Space
4. Trading Places
5. Meet the Parents
5 for Women
1. When Harry Met Sally
2. 9 to 5
3. Annie Hall
4. Clueless
5. Tootsie
5 We Watch Together
1. There's Something About Mary
2. Airplane!
3. Hitch
4. Analyze This
5. Ratatouille
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