Given Over to Ecstacy

I’m a fairly reasonable fan of Christopher Hitchens — I don’t agree with everything he says, but he makes me think and I very much enjoy the manner in which he writes. I loved hearing him read his own audiobook, “God is Not Great,” and have been awed by his ability to tear down an opponent in a debate without ever raising his voice.

So, today, I read this article in the Buffalo News, a long-winded, slightly bookish toast to Hitchens, and it referenced what is perhaps one of his most controversial cultural articles (in the US, anyway), “Why Women Aren’t Funny.”

On the face of it, I couldn’t help but agree with the literal title. The number of successful comediennes or even truly funny women is likely a tenth of the population of funny folk in general. On the plus side, this means that every funny woman you’ve ever encountered, you’re likely to remember for the rest of your life. It’s not that women are dour by default. It’s that women are free to use humor as one tool in a vast collection of devices to make themselves and others feel good and enjoy life.  Being funny is hard because there’s a high degree of uncertainty that your funny will match that of your audience (or target). Why be funny if you can achieve your objective through other, surer means?

And this is the point of Hitchens’ article.  Assuming heterosexuality, men have to be funny in order to get laid by women. Women, appealing by default, don’t have that pressure. In terms of securing sex, men have to work at it — like, really work at it. Women have to show up.

When the article first appeared in Vanity Fair, there was a fair bit of static because people were making the premature leap of “Women aren’t funny, and they can’t hope to be.” Had they actually thought about the article as a whole, they’d have arrived at the conclusion that the only person Hitchens was denigrating was himself, as a male human. Men have to perform all sorts of gymnastics in order to persuade women to participate in something that has an indeterminate duration and no universally-accepted standard of quality. Why? Because women hold the power of contract. And, in Hitchens’ view, that is how it should be. If the opposite were true, sex wouldn’t be nearly as good or life-affirming as it is.

Having recently re-read the original article, I can’t help but agree once again with Hitchens’ premise. Men really do have the short end of the stick when it comes to humor. It’s not that men aren’t funny or that they’re inherently laughable. It’s that so many men try so very hard to be funny. Very often, too hard. And very often, they fail. Like, crash-and-burn fail. Fail with a capital F.

I wonder if this is because well-made humor is not only highly intellectual, but highly verbal. Men, being primarily visual creatures, seem more likely to stumble in the verbal realm than women, who are primarily verbal creatures. And so, when a man successfully achieves “funny” — especially “damn funny” or the high-end of “hilarious” — the woman on the receiving end of that labor seems to crumble in relief as she rewards him with her smiling laughter, encouraging him further. In laughter, she opens a little, her body relaxes, and her spirit becoming slightly more receptive to eventual intimate contact.

Of course, the first volley is setup, and this is where most men shine. However, it also sets a standard (and on the woman’s part, expectation). Tickle a woman’s mind well and early and, as a man, you’re in for a hell of a march.

And here is where failure is practically imminent. Rewarded by a woman’s (preliminary) genuine laughter, a man chooses one of two paths: overconfidence or overwork. In overconfidence, he decides his work is done and he can now float along toward what he now considers certain coitus. In overwork, he can’t believe his good luck and tries to reproduce his success with even greater effort. In both cases, they miss their targets completely and the women they sought to impress remain closed to them in every way.

Rarely does a man notice a third, more cyclical path. A witty remark leads to a clever turn of phrase which leads to a very amusing observation, then tapers off a bit to another gently witty remark…over and over again until there is no choice for a woman but to laugh, and laugh, and laugh until she is well and truly open and ready for…

…

Hmmm… does this sound familiar to anyone?

Of course, if you’ve read Hitchens for any length of time, it becomes evident that he’s a fan of sexually-flavored prose. Knowing that, I’m given to comprehend his “Why Women Aren’t Funny” article not as a treatise denigrating women or men, but as an acknowledgement that “funny” is sexual — good and necessary and inherently positive. The energy to laugh genuinely and robustly is sexual energy, a fundamental response to someone touching us at our core. And if someone wants to get that close to us, they better be prepared to work, and damn well at that.

When it comes to “funny,” no one gets to be lazy or clumsy and the best get fucked.