Is Amy Schumer a “sex comic”? That’s the debate that has been raging in the US since her HBO special Live at the Apollo was screened on 17 October. In it, the standup took issue (not for the first time) with being described in those terms. “I feel like a guy could come out here and pull his dick out and people would say: ‘Oh, he’s a thinker.’” For Schumer, the “sex comic” label is used to dismiss her as just another female comic banging on about her periods – which is what people said about Emma Thompson on Saturday Live 30 years ago, and have said about many a female standup since.
Has Schumer got a point? Well, there is plenty of sex in her comedy, including, to cite examples from this most recent show alone, routines about the size and personality of her vagina, her democratic approach to oral sex (“I would let anyone go down on me …”) and her mixed feelings about semen. “It’s not a wonderfully regal moment as a woman when you take a load,” she tells us, before this killer, Sheryl Sandberg-inflected punchline: “When someone comes in you, you’re not like: ‘We can do it! I’m glad I leaned in!’”
None of that should see her branded a “sex comic”, though, not least because her show (and her work more generally) is also about body image, food, Hollywood and much else. But her sexual material is conspicuous. Notwithstanding her claim that men get away with this kind of thing all the time, there aren’t many acts as frank and focused on sex as Schumer is in Live at the Apollo. Sarah Millican is an obvious UK parallel, whose sexual frankness was notable when she appeared on the scene a decade ago. Man-wise, at least in the UK, it’s slim pickings. Anglicised American Rob Delaney talks a lot of sex. And there are several acts (Jimmy Carr, Frankie Boyle, Richard Gadd, etc) who mention sex – be it rape or uninvited gay sex – specifically to generate a transgressive frisson.
In the HBO show, Schumer criticises the cultural convention prevalent in TV comedy whereby men are always desperate for sex and women consent to it grudgingly. Her stance seems unarguable to me, and provides the context in which Schumer’s sex comedy plays out. When she addresses sex, it’s as a woman talking publicly and positively, on her own terms, about female sexuality – which is still a radical act. The context, the baggage and the cultural norms are all different when a man jokes about sex. Imagine a male comic performing the equivalent of Schumer’s line: “Dumb guys really pound you, because they’re dumb”, and you’re in Dapper Laughs territory. (Schumer knows that, of course, and says this stuff precisely because it hijacks chauvinist-male discourse.)
The only way to evolve beyond the Dapper Laughs paradigm – the idea of men as hunters, women as prey – is to have more voices like Schumer’s telling other stories about sex. Richard Herring’s Talking Cock leaps to mind: an intelligent male show about sex (“Oh, he’s a thinker!”). So, too, Sara Pascoe’s 2014 show Sara Pascoe v History, which challenged from an anthropological standpoint the myth that men are biologically promiscuous and women are bound to be homemakers. But there still aren’t many voices such as these, representing the realities of sex; its anxieties, its pleasures and its complicated common humanity.
To the degree that she is labelled just a “sex comic”, Schumer is entitled to her frustration. But she is also entitled to be pleased with herself, as she bulldozes through the pieties, cliches and silences surrounding our actual experience of sex, replacing the sitcom stereotypes with something richer and funnier.
Three to see
LetLuce
The excellent clown duo of Letty Butler and Lucy Pearman bring their Edinburgh fringe show Sea Men (A Naval Tale) to Soho. Expect daft costumes, prop comedy, undersea tomfoolery and two supremely endearing performances.
• At Soho theatre, London, 28 to 31 October. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
Bill Bailey
The gap between how we imagine our lives to be and how they really are, the future we dreamed of as kids and the world as it is now. That’s the stuff of Limboland, the new touring show from noodlesome “hobbit on speed” and the nation’s favourite hippie, Bill Bailey.
• At Royal Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, 26 and 27 October. Box office: 0151-709 3789. Then touring until Jul 2016.
Richard Gadd
One of the Edinburgh fringe’s most talked-about shows this summer makes its London debut, as in-yer-face schlock comic Gadd brings his multimedia prank comedy Waiting for Gaddot to the Soho theatre.
• Soho theatre, London, until 7 November. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
