More Feminist Than Thou
23rd April 2011
Laura Bennett, Assistant Literary Editor of The New Republic, plays the gender card.
It is easy to forget that beneath all the mentions of wide hips and “terror burps” she is actually an attractive, powerful woman. Lorne Michaels once said about her that “She has such a German work ethic … It’s superhuman, the German thing of ‘This will happen and I am going to make this happen.’ It’s just sheer force of will.” In her account of herself, however, Fey is distilled into a mild current of anxious energy, perfectly likable and inoffensive, coasting to the top of her field on a tide of awkward charm. Neurosis, in Bossypants, is an instrument for fitting Fey into what is traditionally a man’s world.
But God help you if you stray off the PC reservation.
Fey’s non-confrontational style sets her sharply apart from other women in the business, many of whom bank on shock value for humor—Sarah Silverman, for instance, whose memoir, The Bedwetter, published last year, was spiky and loud. Silverman doesn’t so much agonize inwardly about her problems as aggressively exorcise them. In her book, she wrings laughs from serious confessions about her own troubled past, with chapter titles such as “An Emotionally Disturbed Teenager Is Given a Bottomless Well of Insanely Addictive Drugs As a Means to Improve Her Life, and Other Outstanding Achievements for the New Hampshire Mental Health Community”. Silverman has turned darkness into shtick. But Fey’s memoir is wholly cleansed of any real darkness. It preempts any probing into real frailties and flaws. Of course, this is the point; it is designed to disarm.
Lesson: If you’re not a thorough bitch (and Sarah Silverman is a thorough bitch), then you’re not a Real Woman.