5 Questions With: Assistant Professor Of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, Maggie Hennefeld
5 Questions With is a recurring feature where we sit down with a special guest to get their unique perspective. In this installment we talk with Maggie Hennefeld, Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota and author of Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes (Columbia UP, 2018) ahead of her discussion for The Feminist Slapstick Show (Presented as part of our Prof Picks series — Playing at the Princeton Garden Theatre Thursday, March 21st at 7:30pm).
How did you initially become interested in female slapstick comedians of early silent cinema?
I’ve always been a big fan of women in comedy, from earlier trailblazers like Mae West, Lucille Ball, Moms Mabley, Phyllis Diller, and Carol Burnett, to more recent funny ladies (too many to name!): Margaret Cho, Tina Fey, Wanda Sykes, Amy Schumer, Ali Wong, Tiffany Haddish, Tig Notaro, Hannah Gadsby, and so many others. When I was doing research for my dissertation in graduate school, I couldn’t believe how many female comedians there were from the very earliest years of cinema, and they were absolutely hilarious! But why don’t we talk about them or know more about them? It became my mission not just to get their names out there (like Mabel Normand, Marie Dressler, Sarah Duhamel, Florence Turner, Laura Bayley, Lea Giunchi, et al.), but really to understand why we’d forgotten or overlooked their talents in the first place.
Why do you think it is that male slapstick comedians such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton remain so well known today, while their female contemporaries do not?
It’s essentially a problem with how cultural canons are established. Why did we think that there were no female filmmakers or producers or screenwriters, when there were hundreds of women working at every level of film production since the earliest days of cinema? Because these women were written out of the dominant canons, which were mostly written by men. It’s the mission of feminist film historians to remake the canon!
At the same time, audiences have always felt uncomfortable laughing at images of comical violence inflicted on women’s bodies. As a film genre, slapstick comedy revels in the joys of anarchic violence and sadistic abuse, which we find therapeutic when they appear ultimately unthreatening or impermanent (think of the Coyote & Roadrunner cartoons). Feminist comedians today challenge us to laugh, not just as a form of escapism, but as a way of dealing with messy and difficult social problems, like inequality, oppression, violence against women, and so forth. They’re paving the way for us to look back at the archive and remember how women in comedy have been doing that kind of work for over a century.
Would you call these shorts feminist? If so, why?
Some of them! Most of the ones in this program I’ve curated are feminist… My favorite film, Mary Jane’s Mishap (1903), depicts a housemaid who spontaneously combusts and explodes out of the chimney while doing her chores. It’s totally absurd, but you can also see her eruption as a form of protest against her labor exploitation and servitude. Sometimes the only way out of the home, for women, was via the chimney! In another film, Daisy Doodad’s Dial (1914), a bored housewife trains day and night to compete in an amateur face-making competition. Other films here walk the line between feminist protest and demeaning ridicule (e.g. Princess Nicotine [1909] and Madame’s Cravings [1907]). I talk about hundreds of these films in my book, Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes (Columbia UP, 2018). Most often, as you’ll see, their politics cut both ways. Then again, most comedies are ultimately ambiguous in their political meaning and social effects.
Do we see any of the same gender politics of comedy playing out in film today?
Oh, totally. I mentioned the trope of female spontaneous combustion: women explode when the impasses of feminist critique reach their absurd, comedic limits. If you go back and watch old episodes of Inside Amy Schumer, it’s striking how many of her skits end in spectacles of surreal, cataclysmic, self-immolating violence — in response to the unresolvable contradictions of feminist liberation in a modern capitalist society. I’m really taken by the recent trope of “the feminist killjoy”: like Gadsby or Samantha Bee, the killjoy is a feminist comedian who refuses to laugh in chorus with a predatory or offensive punch line. These early silent films, like our popular media today, are all about testing the line between edgy protest and offensive ridicule. That’s always the big question of comedy… WHAT IS THE LINE between edgy and offensive? Who’s empowered by the punch line and who’s humiliated as the butt of the joke? They also deal with crucial feminist issues, such as sexual assault, reproductive rights, labor exploitation, spousal abuse, racial inequality, queer repression, and so forth. They’re truly histories of and for the present moment.
Why is it still important for people today to watch and appreciate films from over a hundred years ago?
As we know, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Comedy is a way of speaking truth to power. These films are our histories, our archives, and they grapple with conflicts that were absolutely formative in shaping the power politics of our present-day media culture. First of all, they were instrumental in establishing cinema as a dominant mode of entertainment, some might say, the medium of the 20th century. Second, despite their light-hearted absurdity, the realities they satirize are undeniably serious. They’re all about confronting the violence and catastrophe that erupts when society doesn’t have adequate ways of dealing with inequality and oppression. That’s why I call these female comedians “specters” in my book, because they’ve never stopped haunting us.
The Feminist Slapstick Show is presented as part of our Prof Pics series, and plays at the Princeton Garden Theatre on Thursday, March 21st at 7:30pm. For more information on our upcoming Prof Pics screenings, view our lineup Here.
