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We Killed: The Rise Of Women In American Comedy (2012)

by Yael Kohen(Favorite Author)

3.64 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0374287236 (ISBN13: 9780374287238)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Sarah Crichton Books

review 1: i really wanted to like this book. i was thrown by the hot pink cover, but i took it out of the library anyway.the topic is extensive, and is way too much to cover in just 300 pages. the writing was shallow at moments and delved deeper into stories and male voices that i truly wasn't interested in. i can think of about 10 formative female voices in comedy that were left completely out of the book.there were quite a few sections that seemed dedicated to quotes from men who worked with the women in comedy - but not the actual experience of those women working in comedy. by not getting first-hand information from the women, it seems that the author was endorsing the premise that this book needed quotes from men in order to be considered valid. no one wants to read rob petrie ... moretalking about sally's writing process - they want to hear sally talk about her time writing!the sections where it went deeper into the stories behind the women seemed forced and they rambled on for a lack of content, which is weird because there is a plethora of content to be shared. the story about gilda radner punching woody allen in the gut was worth a star, however, made gilda seem childish and impetuous.there was a subtext of women on women hate in this book - which i honestly couldn't bear to read. in a book about the rise of women in a male-dominated field, let's make it seem like all women are catty bitches who cut each other down!i highly doubt that this was the underlying message that yael kohen was trying to get across - but it spoke pretty loudly in the section about mitzi shore. the author turned a few quotes from female comedians who worked with mitzi into a cat fight. instead of celebrating that a strong female presence owned a comedy store (pretty unheard of for the 70s), the author rambled on negatively for an entire section about how mitzi was hard on female performers.no interview or even one quote from mitzi, a woman who still to this day runs a comedy club and is a woman. is mitzi not a woman in comedy too? yael kohen's version of mitzi's story in comedy treats her as if she were the enemy of all women in oversized blazers standing in front of a brick wall.why bother reading a book that is supposed to be a realistic women's history in comedy if the version that the author chooses to show can be reduced to cover stories on US weekly?
review 2: This is a very interesting book and the author was thorough in her quest to interview many female comedians going back to Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers. Being familiar with some of these women is almost a prerequisite to reading the book because it is rather boring if you don't know who she is referring to. From Phyllis all the way through the well known cast (women) of Saturday Night Live and on through Chelsea Handler and Sara Silverman, the stand-up woman comedian is profiled and examined from the point of view of why women were not recognized or given jobs as writers on the comedy shows in the early days. There is great commentary from Lily Tomlin, Paula Poundstone and others. less

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