Former Disney Chief Michael Eisner: A Woman Who Is Funny and Beautiful Is "Impossible to Find"
Former Disney Chief Michael Eisner: A Woman Who Is Funny and Beautiful Is "Impossible to Find"That's what the former Disney CEO told an audience Thursday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, according to The Atlantic.
During an onstage conversation with Goldie Hawn, he theorized on why she'd been so successful: "From my position, the hardest artist to find is a beautiful, funny woman. By far. They usually — boy am I going to get in trouble, I know this goes online — but usually, unbelievably beautiful women, you being an exception, are not funny."
For her part, Hawn replied that she might owe her comedic talents to the fact that she thought of herself as an "ugly duckling" when she was young.
"You didn't think you were beautiful," Eisner said. "I know women who have been told they're beautiful, they win Miss Arkansas, they don't ever have to get attention other than with their looks. So they don't tell a joke. In the history of the motion-picture business, the number of beautiful, really beautiful women — a Lucille Ball — that are funny, is impossible to find."
Eisner, who served as CEO at Disney from 1984-2005, also held senior posts at ABC and Paramount Pictures.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/disney-chief-michael-eisner-a-806748?utm_source=twitter
Dos it fucking matter??
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Last edited Wed Jan 26, 2022, 05:23 PM - Edit history (13)
The funniest women I grew up with rooted their humor (and success) in exploting either their inadequacies (Goldie Hawn, Joan Rivers, Marlo Thomas, Mary Tyler Moore, Katey "Peg Bundy" Sagal, Juila Louis-Dreyfuss), their lack of desirability by men (Totie Fields, Phyllis Diller, Minnie Pearl, Moms Mabley, Patricia "Hyacinth Bucket" Routledge), or both (Roseanne, Mo'Nique, Lucille Ball, Jennifer "Edina Monsoon" Saunders, Fran "The Nanny" Drescher). The only woman I can think of who might qualify for Eisner's "highly beautiful, highly funny" category is Barbra "I Dream of Jeannie" Eden.
Just as Goldie says, she didn't start out in life as being beautiful -- she learned to "cure" her "ugliness" by getting others to join her in laughing at her. And I remember reading that when Gilda Radner was asked if she would rather be funny or glamorous, she replied, "Glamorous is too hard."
To answer your question, it does matter, because Eisner doesn't seem to realize that his "problem" finding beautiful, funny women is caused by what Dr. Bell Hooks calls capitalist patriarchy -- a fancy way of saying that Eisner does not fret about highly attractive, highly funny MEN being in equally short supply. From Fran Leibowitz:
"The cultural values (of humor) are male: For a woman to say a man is funny is the equivalent of a man saying that a woman is pretty. Also, humor is largely aggressive and pre-emptive, and what's more male than that?"
Beautiful women don't HAVE to invest in being funny -- or smart, or brave, or competent, or good leaders, or talented, or even particularly sexy: why knock yourself out if your beauty can win you male approval (and access to their wealth and power) just as easily?
rocktivity
Last edited Sat Apr 1, 2017, 06:40 PM - Edit history (1)
I can buy the Phyllis Diller story: she was certainly as funny as any man, and getting everyone to laugh at her looks was the way she avoided threatening them as an "equal."
Who was it who said that women fear men will kill them, and men fear that women will ridicule them?
That line is so good, I had to look it up. The envelope, please:
And the winner is: Margaret Atwood -- I should have seen that coming...
rocktivity
I was only praised for being bright and making good grades, and playing musical instrument. Nobody told me I was beautiful. My mom gave me a backhanded compliment: "You're pretty when you're fixed up." She thought that meant makeup, and to her, being a young adult in the 1940s, that meant red lipstick and nothing else but eyebrow pencil. Think Joan Crawford. Very unnatural look, and no foundation, no eye makeup, nothing for the dark circles or the spots. I would spend twenty minutes doing my face and she would say "DON'T YOU HAVE ANY LIPSTICK?"
When we moved into our house, which was my grandparents' house previously, my husband found a large 11 x 17 studio portrait that was taken of me and I had given it to my grandmother. It was taken in the early 1980s when I was in law school in my 20s. None of those other future lawyers wanted to date me. They wanted a tall, thin, blonde trophy wife, not competition.
My husband was absolutely flabbergasted. He told me that picture of me was the most gorgeous brunette he had ever seen.
