Hysterical: Review of the new Hulu documentary, “Hysterical”

“Coming up next we’ve got a very pretty little lady, and if she can’t make you laugh at least she can make you dinner, please welcome to the stage…” 

Female comedians recollect being introduced in this objectifying, dehumanizing and career-minimizing way too many times to count. 

The Hulu documentary, “Hysterical” is an honest and hilariously told backstage pass into the lives of some of stand-up comedy’s most boundary-breaking women, exploiting the hard-fought journey to become the voices of their generation and their gender. 

I’m a frequent watcher of Netflix’s “Stand-Up” category, so when the hour-and-a-half long Hulu documentary came out on April 2, featuring comics such as Iliza Shlesinger, Margaret Cho, Fortune Feimster and many others. I was intrigued to learn more intimate details about the lives of some of my favorite stand-up comics.

The women featured in the documentary are at the top of their game. They’ve paid their dues — performing for empty rooms, staying in crummy hotel rooms and bombing more jokes than anyone could stand to think about without physically cringing. 

Regardless of their successful careers, they’re still subjected to the unbridled misogyny of the comedy industry. 

Each comic addresses stage time as one of their primary struggles to this day. 

Comedian Judy Gold commonly hears from bookers in clubs, “It’s not ladies’ night, we can’t book v*g, v*g.”

Another issue is payment and how they’re paid significantly less for shows or specials. 

“I probably earned about $75 million over the course of my career,” comedian Kathy Griffin said in the film. “Believe it or not, it’s still for real, like, a tenth of what my male counterparts have earned.”

I’m now reluctant to watch male comic’s specials which are very funny, but feel like a betrayal to the many women who are being paid so unfairly. 

Female stand-ups also face many threats to their safety when put up in hotels in sketchy neighborhoods with male comics they’ve never met before. They’ve had to learn how to handle unwanted comments, harassment and even assault within the comedy clubs. When compared to their male counterparts, they’re far more scrutinized and punished when a joke becomes controversial.

Griffin received extreme blowback for using a promotional picture of her holding a bloodied Trump mask for her upcoming political-comedy tour.

Regardless of the violent messages behind the photograph, male creatives have presented far more graphic depictions of the former president in their work, but have received far less scrutiny. 

“Many male artists have created far more disturbing imagery,” Griffin’s attorney, Lisa Bloom, argued, “A Marilyn Manson music video shows him beheading a Trump figure. The band Municipal Waste has an image of Trump with a bloody gunshot to his head on a band T-shirt. The band G-W-A-R has had violent images like this for president after president for years. They’re all just considered bad boys. Unlike these male artists, Kathy apologized.”

Not only are women in the comedy industry criticized for what they say, they’re criticized for their looks and instructed to be appealing, but non-threatening. 

“I’m always told, “‘You can’t look too pretty because all the women will be jealous of you, and all the men will just want to f*ck you,’” comedian Nikki Glaser said. 

Even though over 80 years have passed, parallels are still found between what Phillis Diller, a popular comic from the 1960s, and female comics hear today.

Schlesinger discusses how men have been in this and every industry longer because they’ve always been allowed to do things first. However, that doesn’t mean that women aren’t funny or that men should be booked more because more men are in the industry or described as “inherently funnier.”

It becomes clear that the reason why there are fewer female comics is not only that men had a head start, but also because it takes a specific brand of badass woman to overcome the stereotypes placed upon them and become successful. 

Viewing this documentary has made it all too clear to me that the comedy industry is in need of proactive reform and the atrocious reality that so little progress has been made since women first broke into the industry back in the ‘50s.