What's funny about a man in a dress?

This is a loaded topic at the moment, and a many-armed one. Gone are the days in which The Footy Show (an Australian institution) could guiltlessly wring comedy out of the hilarious sight of a big manly man in a floral dress.

Performers who do characters are under increased scrutiny for exploiting identity, perpetuating harmful stereotypes and generally hurting feelings all across the board. A good example is Chris Lilley who has been under fire not only for racial drag, but also for his portrayal of spoiled school-girl Ja'mie.

The arguments against this kind of portrayal range from the very clear complaint of FTM trans people that such things make their lives more difficult - constantly fighting the battle to be seen as something other than "a man in a dress" becomes difficult when a man in a dress is a shorthand for ridiculous visual slapstick.

It's sort of impossible to measure with any exactness how far these portrayals reflect or contribute to negative attitudes - how much it's an insult to ugly or manly women to suggest that they are inherently the comical opposite to strong men; how many trans people or teen girls feel personally wounded by grotesque portrayals of young womanhood. I won't begin to try. Nor will I enter into the debate between the trans community and the drag community.

I will suggest that dressing up as a 'type' and playing that 'type' for laughs is likely an unkind thing to do - and it's worth accepting out of the gate that there are deep unforeseen impacts from many cruel jokes. Whether it's giving fuel and cultural weaponry to bullies or just reflecting (and normalising) bad attitudes that already exist.

Other arguments include the suggestion that by representing minority groups (even lovingly), Chris, as a white man, is taking up space that could be used by a woman or minority who could play (even a grotesque and comical version of) their own 'type'. For all those reasons and more which have been extensively discussed, there are clearly problems with Chris Lilley portraying a young teen girl in his mocking, acutely observed and scathingly embodied style.

Other people have addressed and articulated criticisms of this portrayal, and I'll signal-boost those rather than repeat their arguments if you want reference to the landscape of good and bad points against Mr Lilley (see Sydney Morning Herald and The Atlantic articles or just google "Chris Lilley Schoolgirl Problematic" to find - I can't do links here because I'm on my phone and Patreon does weird things when you try to link on the phone app - sort it out, Patreon.)

That said, while it might well be doing more harm than good, I'd like to point out where and why I *don't* have a problem with Chris' grotesque portrayal of a teen girl - in theory one of the worst forms of punching down. Though I'd like to make it clear that I'm going to separate this advocacy from any discussion of the broader social consequence and just look at it from a functional comedy perspective. I'll let you fit the value that I'm going to attribute to it into the landscape of harms according to your personal politics, and you can decide if overall the worth is outweighed by the potential and actual harm.

IN WHAT WAY IS IT WORTH DOING?

1) It's funny 'cause it's true.

Being funny isn't sufficient to justify the existence of a mean joke. That said Ja'ime is true enough to be funny.

I grew up in Sydney, and had friends at private schools - the exaggerations that Lilley makes about the worst excesses and affectations of rich schoolgirls are far smaller than you'd want them to be. I knew girls enough like Ja'ime that Lilley's portrayal is as much precise observational comedy as it is grotesque clowning.

That's not to say all teenage white girls, even all RICH teenage white girls are like Ja'ime. But the ethics of stereotype-based-humour aside, enough of the girls I knew in high-school are like Ja'ime for it to be a recognisable trope. The character works because of that.

2) We don't notice when women are doing things.

If I were to put on a schoolgirl dress and play Ja'ime, you'd likely only notice about half of the grotesqueries that I'd be performing.

On Lilley, all the subtle affectations of spoiled teen femininity appear starkly ridiculous. Lilley is taking advantage of his 'blank state' - the television default is white man - and so in some ways his bland normativity renders his 'self' invisible. So we can see all the folly of teen girlhood very starkly. Painting a woman on a woman doesn't serve the same function.

(Again, I'm not entering here into whether this is a good thing or a bad thing - whether affected femininity should be ridiculed, or who is entitled to ridicule it - just describing the technical function of this 'girlface')

3) Empathy means laughing at shared humanity.

This is more of a stretch, but I think it's worth proposing to give a shading of nuance to the current very binary arguments about stereotyping humour ("it's just a bit of harmless fun, lighten up femnazi" vs. "YOU can't make fun of THEM").

A lot of comedy comes from laughing at moments of recognition - shared experiences and shared humanity. Refusing to laugh at the foibles of another implies a lack of empathy with their foibles - a rejection in some way of shared humanity. Particularly if those foibles are affectionately presented, and in balance (which has been argued both for and against Lilley's work).


As a side note, Lilley's not entirely my cup of tea, and I don't watch a lot of television. So arguably I'm not qualified to defend or criticise him. On the other hand, I do know comedy, and have seen a bit of his work, and also, when has not being an expert on something ever stopped anyone on the internet from having an opinion.