One Class, One Day: Women and Comedy
Did you hear the one about the husband who wanted to talk sex?
BU Today
By Rich Barlow
11-02-2011
Movie critics be damned: while many of them swooned last spring over Bridesmaids and its comedic take on a woman’s impending nuptials, Jillian McCarty says that the “whole pooping in the sink” scene grossed her out.
“I just thought some scenes were really distasteful,” says McCarty (COM’13). Ryan Schreiner (CAS’13, COM’13) also disses the movie’s humor for targeting one niche, “the stupid guy who thought it’d be funny to see the woman crap in the wedding dress.” Brooke Murphy (SED’12), however, reports that her aunts, who are in their 60s, found the scene hilarious in an “oh my God, I almost did that one time” way.
The students are dissecting the film as part of Women and Comedy, a College of Arts & Sciences class taught by Barbara Gottfried (CAS’74), an instructor in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. She found the movie’s take on marriage so bleak that it couldn’t really be called a romantic comedy. “It comes this close to tragedy,” she says, her thumb and forefinger together.