Raunchy, female-led comedies: Challenging the comedic tradition

Abstract

Due to the rise of women-led comedies focused on female friendship and homosocial bonding in the past decade, I am interested in studying this emerging subgenre of film. In this time frame, multiple comedies starring two or more women in lead roles have been released, but I will mainly discuss Rough Night and Girls Trip to identify the properties of comedy they make use of and how. Bridesmaids is also an important film to discuss because it is the touchstone to which all other raunchy female-led comedies are compared to. I will contextualize these films in terms of the general comedic properties they repurpose and the cultural ideologies of the time. Comedy generally uses cultural codes to position itself to the audience and because of this, it has always demanded a relationship with culture. Therefore, comedic films require audience participation or understanding of cultural movements to successfully convey their messages. Analyzing comedy through a cultural lens to identify aspects of female-driven comedy that result in financial success, audience enjoyment and markers of social change seems to best fit the confines of addressing a genre in a moment in time. To establish the conversations the comedy subgenre is having with our culture, I'll be collecting demographic data from The United States Census Bureau, as well as data from PostTrak Surveys and other film industry studies.