Women & Queer Comedians

Challenging the “Not Funny” Stereotype.

- By D Sammy

Indian Stand-Up Comedy is generally perceived as a form of casual entertainment. It is deeply embedded in social realism and has the potential to serve as a medium of political satire and criticism. Owing to its popularity, comedy can be used as a tool for advancing ideologies, expressing dissent, and opposing structures of power. In fact, it is also a ‘Serious Business’ that empowers female comedians to emerge as active political subjects who impact and shape current socio-political discourses.

Despite the expansion of the public sphere into the digital space and the apparent freedom of speech afforded by media platforms, Indian stand-up comedians face new kinds of political surveillance in the forms of censorship, internet trolling, and backlash from opposing groups. In this regard, male comedians have been generally hailed as the authorities on ‘political’ comedy, while existing scholarship on Indian stand-up comedy has studied female comedians only as a subset within the larger community of performers, with unique concerns pertaining to gendered experiences.

Deviating from this strain, today we will talk about acts performed by female comedians and their reception to answer three pertinent questions—How can we contextualise the ways in which the stage accords centrality to the marginalised position of women in comedy?

How are female comedians situated in relation to issues of gender, power, and political authority?

Lastly, what is the nature and manner of the female comic’s political engagement, and what hierarchies exist in determining the limits of their political expression?