An Adult Swim Star Has Quit Over The “Misogyny” Of The Network’s Executives
Brett Gelman has been supported by other comedians.
Adult Swim — the network that produces Robot Chicken, Rick and Morty and Tim & Eric — has come under fire this year for the inescapable gender gap in their programming. In June it was found that despite the fact that women make up 43 percent of their audience, all 47 series creators were men.
One could imagine that this would cause Adult Swim’s management team to look at their programming and think up ways to address this problem. Right? Well, you’re wrong. Because instead the creative director Mike Lazzo was quoted as saying: “When you have women in the writers room, you don’t get comedy, you get conflict” and later was moved to clarify these statements on Reddit:
What I actually said was women don’t tend to like conflict, comedy often comes from conflict, so that’s probably why we (or others) have so few female projects. Nonetheless this was a dumb answer to a good question as Lucille Ball and Gilda Rather to Amy Poelher and Amy Schumer prove my statement a load of generalised nonsense.
Hm, okay. It seems that not everyone was satisfied by this non-apology, because today Brett Gelman from Dinner in America has announced that he’s leaving Adult Swim over the “misogyny of their policies” and lack of action when it came to actually addressing the gender gap (oh, and the fact that they host a white supremacist show). Kumail Nanjiani has also emphasised Lazzo’s disinterest in tackling the issue.
@Z0NU5 @brettgelman "women aren't good in writers' rooms because they don't like conflict?" We have different definitions of sexism.
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) November 14, 2016
@Z0NU5 quote: "women don’t tend to like conflict, comedy often comes from conflict, so that’s probably why we have so few female projects.”
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) November 14, 2016
@Z0NU5 that is exactly what he said. He said they don't have female created shows cuz women don't like conflict. Split hairs on ur own time.
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) November 14, 2016
Yep, it’s a pretty big bummer all in all.