Feminist Film Theory on the Brink of Laughter

Abstract One might say that feminist film theory has been on the brink of laughter since its inception. By that I mean, feminist film theory (though often very playful and humorous in tone) has regarded laughter with the utmost suspicion, and with good reason. When laughs erupt onscreen, they are rarely helpful for women, if not actively demeaning and disempowering. It is no surprise that the field has favored virtually every other genre than comedy—melodrama, film noir, Western, musical, thriller, the avant-garde, horror, animation, porn—for sourcing aesthetic invigoration and political redemption. If feminist film theory has been wary of comedy, feminist comedy studies, likewise, has been relatively uninterested in cinema. It is my goal in this chapter to bridge the gap between feminist film theory and feminist comedy studies, which have had extremely different concerns despite pursuing often complementary aesthetic and political ends. These fields are long overdue for a methodological reckoning. In this chapter, I consider a range of examples in order to reveal the four primo female laughers of cinema. They include the killjoy, the coquette, the prankster, and the hysteric. These figures are not definitive archetypes, but persistent tropes that pose provocations for further conversation and debate. I also find them to be extremely helpful heuristics for getting to the bottom of the problem of female laughter in film. As I will explain, these four cantankerous cachinnators give voice to issues of power, sex, resistance, and language, respectively.