Jayne Clarke 250577059Women's Studies 2283Andrea AllenApril 5, 2014Bridesmaids: Finding Desire in HumorFor as long as there have been jokes, there have been people who say women can't tell them. For more than a century, figures in popular culture have publicly peddled this assertion of a false idea. In 1884, Richard Grant White, one of the most powerful cultural critics of the 19th century, wrote, "a sense of humor is the rarest quality in a woman," to Jerry Lewis in 1998, stating that he “can't sit back and watch a woman belittle her. lowest common denominator qualities,” and more recently in 2012 Adam Carolla, asserting, “The reason you know more funny guys than funny girls is because guys are funnier than girls” (Moss). If there's anything that can put these men in their place, it's the cinematic success of Paul Feig's 2011 film Bridesmaids. Since its release, the film has been nominated for 24 different awards, winning 6 and generated over $288 million in sales worldwide, making it the highest-grossing female-led comedy of all time (Buckley 5). Bridesmaids thus represents the way in which the symbol of women in the space of cinema is questioned and modified. This essay argues that the film Bridesmaids transcends traditional representations of female desire that present women as spectacles of erotic pleasure, through the symbolic reversal of gender identity. in cinematographic spaces. By discussing feminist perspectives on film, as well as psychoanalytic theory and ideological narratives about the female image, this essay will prove that Bridesmaids embodies a new form of female desire coded within the space of the comedic film industry. The film is directed by Kristen Wiig, who plays Annie, a broke, lovestruck, soon-to-be bridesmaid, who attempts to...... middle of paper ......e, transcend traditional depictions of female desire beyond eroticism. rejects patriarchal structures while supporting them establishes a unique ideology: in order to meet the cultural comedic conception, these female characters reject particular norms of patriarchy, but the way in which they achieve this is due to their adherence to masculine norms and their symbolic reversal. (Buckley 19). In this way, Bridesmaids resists the male gaze and empowers women to play an active role in comedy, liberating them in the sense that it equates their humor with that of men, to embody new forms of female desire for women in cinema . In response to the men at the beginning of this essay who would say that Bridesmaids doesn't deliver that, Tina Fey has a few words for them: "We don't care if you like it" (Moss).