Comic revisions? Motherhood and women's comedy in contemporary Germany. Issue 6 (1st November 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Stone, Katherine
• Is Part Of: Feminist media studies. Volume 16:Issue 6(2016)
• Page Start: 1014
• Page End: 1028
• Publication Date: 2016-11-01
• Subjects: Motherhood -- sketch comedy -- Germany -- feminist comedy -- new momism -- ambivalence; Feminism -- Periodicals; Women in mass media -- Periodicals; Mass media and women -- Periodicals; Feminist criticism -- Periodicals; Mass media and sex -- Periodicals; 302.23082
• DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2016.1178159
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1468-0777

Abstract

Abstract: Maternal stereotypes and the realities of mothering are prominent themes in Anke Engelke's Ladykracher and Martina Hill's Knallerfrauen, two of the most popular sketch shows in twenty-first-century Germany. This article relates their success to social anxieties about motherhood, which Engelke and Hill illuminate through the theme of their sketches as well as through their very use of comedy to do so. I begin by using close-readings of Ladykracher and Knallerfrauen to illuminate the political potential of the sketch form to challenge maternal myths and articulate taboo feelings such as maternal ambivalence. I then consider the innovation of these maternal sketches in view of traditional theories of comedy, which paradoxically draw their imagery from the realm of the maternal even though they discount real women and mothers as comic agents. I argue that the maternal sketches of Engelke and Hill are thus doubly subversive, challenging maternal taboos as well as the discursive and generic norms they sustain.