There’s been a bit of a storm brewing on t’InterWeb of late. Those minxes at Jezebel (Who they, m’lord? An online magazine for young women designed to be an alternative to traditional women’s magazines) recently wrote a piece accusing The Daily Show of sexism. The argument was that women were badly treated on the show, that it was “a boys’ club where women’s contributions are often ignored and dismissed” and there weren’t enough female ‘correspondents’.
Now the article did highlight a few issues, at least with regards to the show’s beginnings – including some ultra-dickery by then-host Craig Kilborn:
Back in 1997, the then-host was suspended after telling Esquire,”To be honest, [co-creator] Lizz [Winstead] does find me very attractive. If I wanted her to blow me, she would.”
But, in particular, it argued that unless you played into a particular kind of role – good-looking but willing to indulge in fratboy humour – you weren’t going to go far. So talented but plainer women would get overlooked in favour of new correspondent, Olivia Munn, for example:
In case you don’t know who Olivia Munn is, she’s best known as one of the presenters of video game show Attack of the Show. Here she is in a Twilight spoof (that’s not her as Kristen Stewart, BTW – she turns up later in the vid):
She’s also written a book, Suck It, Wonder Woman: The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek, and also appeared (briefly) in Iron Man 2, where Robert Downey Jr made the crew give her a round of applause for her improv skills.
But, more importantly for Jezebel, she’s also a model, better known for appearing on the covers of Maxim and Playboy and for episodes of Attack of the Show in which she jumps into a giant pie dressed as a french maid, for example:
The argument is that Munn isn’t very funny or talented so was only hired for her looks.
To help you decide in a The Daily Show context, here’s pretty much her first appearance last week – which for reasons best known to Comedy Central is only viewable in the US, despite The Daily Show airing on More4 in the UK:
UK readers probably won’t be able to judge from that, but I saw her segment last week, and while she started off nervous and not desperately funny, overall she’s a whole lot better than some correspondents I could mention and was probably better than Wyatt Cenac in his first week. So was she hired because she was good-looking, because she was funny and could do the job, or both?
Whatever the case, virtually every woman who works on The Daily Show (possibly all of them, and they make up 40% of the staff) has contributed to a letter defending both Jon Stewart and The Daily Show itself from the accusation of sexism:
The Daily Show isn’t a place where women quietly suffer on the sidelines as barely tolerated tokens. On the contrary: just like the men here, we’re indispensable. We generate a significant portion of the show’s creative content and the fact is, it wouldn’t be the show that you love without us.
I don’t think the letter entirely disproves the theory that you have to have more of a traditionally masculine sense of humour to do well on the show, although the presence of both Samantha Bee and Kristen Schaal (best known from Flight of the Conchords) on the show as contributors would seem to at least partially disprove it. Indeed, Bee told NPR that “the show was a dream workplace for parents of young children” so it can’t be a total locker-room (or has she been got at?).
But what do you think? Is The Daily Show sexist? Is it lookist? Is Olivia Mann a good thing for the show, which currently only has one regular female contributor, or a bad thing?
PS For a counter-argument to Jezebel’s article, try Slate’s
