A Brief Look At Elizabeth Stamatina
Elizabeth Stamatina "Tina" Fey is a renowned American actress, comedian, writer, and producer. She was born on May 18th, 1970 in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. Fey graduated from the University of Virginia in 1992 and proceeded to move to Chicago in order to take improvisational classes. Her career began to take off when she repeatedly submitted scripts to NBC’s sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL) until 1997, when she was interviewed and hired as a writer for the show. After writing various sketches and the resignation of head writer Adam KcKay, Fey was approached to fill the role, which she accepted. This led her to becoming SNL’s first female head writer, a feat which Fey, in a 2002 interview with E! News, claims wasn’t “a big deal” as SNL
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wasn’t looking to push an agenda and picked her because she was right for the job (Harrison, 00:00:59-00:01:14). Fey would later write and star in the hit TV sitcom 30 Rock which ended up receiving 112 Emmy Nominations over the course of the show. Later, in 2015, Fey created and produced a hit Netflix show Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt which was well-received and is currently renewed for a third season. Fey is also a firm advocate and donor for the Autism Speaks foundation. She is also a big contributor to the Dress for Success non-profit organization which aims to provide low-income women with the “support, professional attire and the development tools” that they need to succeed in both their work and their life (“What We Do”).
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A great example of Tina Fey’s work and humor is in a sketch she wrote for SNL called Weekend Update: Tina Fey on Playboy. In this sketch Fey prods jokes at Playboy’s announcement to remove naked pictures from their magazine. She later goes on to joke that to combat female nudity, she made a website where women show their “arm-butts” or the gap in between your forearm and your bicep when flexed. Fey further mocks Playboy by saying that it will now be impossible for her to achieve her dream of modeling for the magazine and proceeds to imitate various revealing poses that she wanted to do for the magazine. The sketch’s organization allows it to really be successful as Fey first informs the audience of the situation, jokes about the situation, and then gives her input on the situation.
While there is a lot of humor used in this sketch, under all of the jokes, Fey is offering an important message through a comedic tone.
She criticizes playboy for even having the nude photos in their magazine in the first place. Fey later describes the story of a young girl climbing her way up to the industry where she then has a “5-way with a hundred year old sex monster,” further commenting on the disrespect and sexualization of the magazine modeling industry. On top of that, she comments on the how disrespectful the magazine is towards women when she offers up her own alternative website for the “arm-butts.” Fey also says the end of the nudity is a step into the future and towards female economic independence, in which young girls move away from commercialized industries like Playboy and towards science and technology fields such as “coding.” The posing at the end solidifies the purpose of her sketch by showing the audience how inappropriate and revealing these young women are forced to seem in order to succeed in the industry. Through her use of humor, Fey is able to tell the audience her message and make them laugh at the same time, all without taking away from the true meaning of the
sketch. Tina Fey is a prime example of a women succeeding in the modern-post feminist era. Her success is even more significant due to the fact that she prospered in a very male-oriented genre. Fey’s work and success both highlight and challenge the “gendered labor of comedy stardom, as well as the feminized space of television stardom” (Patterson, 232). In her autobiography Bossypants, Fey’s advice for women trying to succeed in a “male-dominated” field is “no pigtails, no tube tops. Cry sparingly” (10). Her honest and aggressive humor has earned her the respect of many of her peers. On top of that, her candor about the “treatment of women in the male-dominated business of comedy” allows us to see life from her shoes and the struggles that she had to go through in order to “make it” in a patriarchal field (Lauzen, 106). Tina Fey was a trendsetter in the modern era of feminism and if more young girls aspire to be like her, then the future seems to be very bright.
wasn’t looking to push an agenda and picked her because she was right for the job (Harrison, 00:00:59-00:01:14). Fey would later write and star in the hit TV sitcom 30 Rock which ended up receiving 112 Emmy Nominations over the course of the show. Later, in 2015, Fey created and produced a hit Netflix show Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt which was well-received and is currently renewed for a third season. Fey is also a firm advocate and donor for the Autism Speaks foundation. She is also a big contributor to the Dress for Success non-profit organization which aims to provide low-income women with the “support, professional attire and the development tools” that they need to succeed in both their work and their life (“What We Do”).
Picture
A great example of Tina Fey’s work and humor is in a sketch she wrote for SNL called Weekend Update: Tina Fey on Playboy. In this sketch Fey prods jokes at Playboy’s announcement to remove naked pictures from their magazine. She later goes on to joke that to combat female nudity, she made a website where women show their “arm-butts” or the gap in between your forearm and your bicep when flexed. Fey further mocks Playboy by saying that it will now be impossible for her to achieve her dream of modeling for the magazine and proceeds to imitate various revealing poses that she wanted to do for the magazine. The sketch’s organization allows it to really be successful as Fey first informs the audience of the situation, jokes about the situation, and then gives her input on the situation.
While there is a lot of humor used in this sketch, under all of the jokes, Fey is offering an important message through a comedic tone.
She criticizes playboy for even having the nude photos in their magazine in the first place. Fey later describes the story of a young girl climbing her way up to the industry where she then has a “5-way with a hundred year old sex monster,” further commenting on the disrespect and sexualization of the magazine modeling industry. On top of that, she comments on the how disrespectful the magazine is towards women when she offers up her own alternative website for the “arm-butts.” Fey also says the end of the nudity is a step into the future and towards female economic independence, in which young girls move away from commercialized industries like Playboy and towards science and technology fields such as “coding.” The posing at the end solidifies the purpose of her sketch by showing the audience how inappropriate and revealing these young women are forced to seem in order to succeed in the industry. Through her use of humor, Fey is able to tell the audience her message and make them laugh at the same time, all without taking away from the true meaning of the
sketch. Tina Fey is a prime example of a women succeeding in the modern-post feminist era. Her success is even more significant due to the fact that she prospered in a very male-oriented genre. Fey’s work and success both highlight and challenge the “gendered labor of comedy stardom, as well as the feminized space of television stardom” (Patterson, 232). In her autobiography Bossypants, Fey’s advice for women trying to succeed in a “male-dominated” field is “no pigtails, no tube tops. Cry sparingly” (10). Her honest and aggressive humor has earned her the respect of many of her peers. On top of that, her candor about the “treatment of women in the male-dominated business of comedy” allows us to see life from her shoes and the struggles that she had to go through in order to “make it” in a patriarchal field (Lauzen, 106). Tina Fey was a trendsetter in the modern era of feminism and if more young girls aspire to be like her, then the future seems to be very bright.