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Abstract
In this article, we use a critical analysis of the first season of the Amazon 2017-9 series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as the starting point to examine its central proposition: that a female Lenny Bruce could have existed at that particular time and place in comedy history. We furnish contextual analysis, and survey some routines depicted in the show in terms of both form and content, examining the titular Mrs. Maisel against female comics of her own time and later eras. We chart the ways her comedic development touches on the hallmarks of American stand-up and we assess the development of her comic persona—the main plotline of the first season of the show—by comparison with the personae Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl shaped for themselves through their routines, and in contrast to the kinds of personae adopted by Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller. Our argument is that by conflating and blurring distinctions across comedy history, the show illustrates its most important and perhaps least remarked upon development, that of the stand-up persona. It offers, then, an interesting starting point for further scholarship on the emergence of the persona as well as providing a frame for grasping its political, social and psychological utility.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 This nomenclature is due to Gerald Nachman (Citation2003)
2 These problems are described in many sources. See for e.g., Sarah Blacher Cohen (Citation1990), Aarons and Mierowsky (Citation2014) and references contained therein.
3 In a highlight, the show portrays the lunch counter at Hanson’s Diner where the comics of the day used to hang out.
4 Like many institutions in the US that seemed to attract Jews only, the establishment and subsequent popularity of the Catskills resorts emerged as a result of Jewish exclusion from mainstream society. This can be seen in the exclusion of Jews from universities, clubs and professional organisations. In the US, Jews formed their own institutions, and lived in their own, increasingly prosperousneighbourhoods.
5 Shmutzik may be translated as dirty, or even smutty.
6 Most of these claims have been made on Internet sites, and with the exception of Grace Overbeke’s Citation2018 article, they are not scholarly.
7 An Audience with Joan Rivers, Citation1984.
8 Joan Rivers to Jonny Carson on The Tonight Show,“no man put his hand up a skirt looking for a library card.”
9 The origin of the brick wall as the background for the comedy stage is contested by the bitter end, the New York comedy club that claims it was the first to use it.
10 The story of Mort Sahl is one that is not followed through in TMMM. Sahl continues (at the time of writing) to be a political commentator, harsh, critical, and iconoclastic. His career as a stand-up comedian was compromised by his deep involvement in the political intrigues following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. He maintains a bitter, resentful rage against the machine.
11 There are a few video clips on You Tube that show versions of this routine, and also a CD compilation album brought out in 2004, by Sony. The audio can also be heard on Lenny Bruce, Live at the Curran Theater 1971 (Fantasy Records).
12 This was a real club in Greenwich Village.
13 Don Rickles, a famous comedian of the old school, showing that Midge knows something of the entertainers of the day.
14 Fanny Brice (1891–1951) is an early example.
15 This is the title of Sara Blacher Cohen’s Citation1990 essay.
16 The actor who plays Midge, Rachel Brosnahan, has said that she was inspired by Rivers’ performances.
17 Later, in her feathers and frills and fur days, when still immaculate but plasticised and totally over the top, Rivers riffed on age and physical atrophy, especially of her breasts and vagina. But this was not a new trope for her. It was always her shtick.
18 “I adore my apartment in New York. It was a ballroom that I remade, so it's like a loft but done by Louis the Fifteenth.” JR
19 Overbeke recounts that Rachel Bronaghan who plays Mrs. Maisel studied the available footage and modelled her delivery and style on Carroll’s.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Debra Aarons
Dr. Debra Aarons is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of New South Wales in Australia. She is the author of Jokes and the Linguistic Mind (Taylor and Francis, 2012). With Marc Mierowsky, she is co-author of a series of articles exploring the history, practice and style of Jewish stand-up comedy.
Marc Mierowsky
Dr. Marc Mierowsky is a McKenzie Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He publishes on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature and intellectual history. With Debra Aarons, he is co-author of a series of articles exploring the history, practice and style of Jewish stand-up comedy.