Women We Love: Maria Bamford

Maria Bamford the Funniest Woman (And Human Being) in the World

Maria Bamford is an unbelievably hilarious actress and stand-up comedian who grew up in Duluth Minnesota. She is currently starring in Lady Dynamite on Netflix, as well as touring her unbelievably funny stand-up comedy act. I first discovered Maria Bamford on John Oliver’s New York Standup Show, on Comedy Central, and instantly fell in love with her. She is easily one of the funniest standup comedians today, and one of my all-time favorites. I am not alone in being a champion of Maria Bamford and her greatness, one of the top comedy producers in the world, the ubiquitous Judd Apatow, wrote in his very funny and insightful book Crazy in the Head that Maria Bamford is his favorite comedian in the world, and has described her as “The funniest woman in the world… the funniest man in the world… the funniest being in the world.”

Describing Maria Bamford’s comedy is much harder than it might seem, because it is incredibly different, than just about anything else out there in the comedy world. It is simultaneously bizarre and absurdist, as well as relatable and observational. This mixture has helped her to create one of the most impressive and original bodies of work among anyone making comedy today. Maria Bamford talks about just about everything in her act, and on Lady Dynamite, but has become known for talking open and honestly about her experiences with depression and mental illness. She has an uncanny ability to find humor in her pain, and in turn help the audience to be able to laugh at themselves and to hopefully feel encouraged to speak more honestly about their own emotional state. When asked about the stigma associated with mental illness in an interview with Slate, Maria brilliantly described her take on how mental illness needs to be taken more seriously and treated like an illness rather than a choice or a weakness. Maria told Slate

“I have a joke about how people don’t talk about mental illness the way they do other regular illnesses. “Well, apparently, Jeff has cancer. Uh, I have cancer. We all have cancer. You go to chemotherapy you get it taken care of, am I right? You get back to work.” Or: “I was dating this chick, and three months in, she tells me that she wears glasses, and she’s been wearing contact lenses all this time. She needs help seeing. I was like, listen, I’m not into all that Western medicine shit. If you want to see, then work at it. Figure out how not to be so myopic.”

This quote, like so much of Maria Bamford’s work, is especially funny, and insightful, because it is dealing with an honest and painful experience in a comedic and original way. Having personally struggled with depression, and having felt forced to hide it, due to the enormous stigma, and the feeling that it was my own fault, or something I just needed to “get over” I found Maria’s take on mental health to be incredibly uplifting. She is speaking first hand, from her experience, and I think this is what makes so much of her comedy, as bizarre as it can be, ring true and connect with her audience.

If you haven’t seen any of Maria Bamford’s work, I highly recommend you check out her brilliant specials, such as Plan B in which she acts out various roles in a faux sitcom about her life, and does some of the most hilarious impressions of her family members imaginable. As well as, the brilliant The Special Special Special! in which Maria performs her stand-up routine at home in front of only her parents. It’s unexpected comedic decisions like this, that make watching Maria Bamford such a delight. If you are a fan of absurd comedy, hilarious impressions, and unpredictable insights, then you will greatly enjoy Maria Bamford’s act.

Maria’s most recent work, and perhaps what she is now best known for, is the hit Netflix series Lady Dynamite. This series is incredibly different, bizarre, and at times down right strange. This, however, is simply Maria’s style. Everything she does could not be duplicated, it is 100% her. The New York Times described Lady Dynamite as “a layered, surreal sitcom of mental illness that takes up residence in her hilarious and unsettling psyche.” They expressed their admiration, like most critics, as the series has been very well received, that unlike many semi-autobiographical day in the life stories about comedians, Maria’s performance is not built on edginess, or a projected image. Instead they felt that

“Ms. Bamford… is decidedly breakable. So much standup is about the projection of toughness, even if it’s a neurotic kind — the willingness to go there and damn the consequences. Ms. Bamford builds her work on fragility.”

This fragility is something that, to me, makes Maria especially relatable, even as she bounces from one outlandish scenario to the next, we can always relate to her emotion, and to her uncertainty. By being open about her emotional struggles, and deciding to incorporate these things into her act and her series, Maria is opening up to her audience, and in turn helping us get to know her, and hopefully ourselves better. The best part about all of this though, is that not only does it talk about these serious, and difficult topics, it talks about them in a way that is gut wrenchingly funny. A comedy without real comedy has become a common staple among many of today’s “dramedies”, but make no mistake, Lady Dynamite is a comedy to its core, and the fact that it can deal with such heartbreaking moments of Maria’s real life, and still make them truly and remarkable funny, show’s Maria Bamford’s incredible talent for navigating the crossroads of the absurd, and the real. Ms. Bamford revealed to the Daily Beast, that she felt making a comedy about mental illness was important because

“Whenever I found out that someone, whether it’s a public figure or somebody in my personal life who told me that they had experiences similar to mine, I felt so much relief,” Bamford says. “So I think, I would like to provide that for somebody else. It’s definitely becoming less and less of a stigma than it was, which is so great.”

Maria Bamford has given the world an abundance of brilliant comedy, which makes it incredibly difficult to choose just 5 of her best jokes, but I have put together this collection so that hopefully men and women who are interested in comedy will be drawn in and inspired to seek out more absurd, brilliant comedy from incredibly talented women like Maria Bamford. Just like Judd Apatow I think that Maria Bamford is the funniest woman, man and human being on the planet, and hope that these jokes will make you laugh until you cry, just like they did for me. I have included a brief synopsis of some of my all-time favorite Maria Bamford jokes, but keep in mind that some of her jokes lose something when written down, but hopefully you can wet your whistle with these, and really sink your teeth into her specials after wards.

1. “Schizophrenia is hearing voices, not doing them”. This joke, as described to Slate was Maria’s imagined response to a rude radio DJ, who implied that because she does strange impressions, and characters she must be schizophrenic. Maria, was not a fan of the way he demeaned mental illness, so naturally she worked him into a very funny stand up bit.

2. “I already know what I’m going to name my kids, Donut and the Golden Hen, and I know what you’re thinking. How do you know they’re going to be girls? But a mother knows.” The first time I heard this joke I laughed for at least five minutes straight, some of it is lost in text, so I highly recommend you checking out Maria’s act to see the full bit, but this joke may be my all-time favorite.

3. “That sounds like church” Maria doesn’t like it when people try to trick her into going to their hip church, and recommends that instead of using vague names like “The Rock” and “Crossroads” they should just call their church something everyone likes, like “Sex Hole”.

4. [Impersonating her mother] “Now, Maria, if a boy doesn't like you, I would just like you to know that he is intimidated by your beauty, because you are the most beautiful girl in the whole world and if you would stop doing impersonations of me I think other people would see that.” One of Maria’s funniest impressions is of her mom, which she does frequently throughout her act, which makes the punchline to this joke even funnier.

5. “My family plays a game I like to call joy whack a mole. It’s where you bring up something your happy about, and then someone whacks it down!” This great bit comes from Maria’s set on John Oliver’s New York Stand Up Show and describes an all too familiar feeling for anyone with a big, loud, opinionated family.

I hope these jokes, encourage you to go check out more and more from the brilliant Maria Bamford, and to keep pushing yourself in your own comedic pursuits. There are so many brilliant and hilarious women in comedy today, and hopefully we will see more and more of them reaching the level of respect and admiration that Maria Bamford has achieved. I think Ms. Bamford should be a role model for all females in comedy, and really all people in comedy. She has worked for years to hone her craft, and put in the time and the work to get to where she is today. I look up to Maria Bamford as in inspiration for why we should always be true to ourselves in our comedy and our work, why we should not be afraid to talk about our pain and our struggles, and how sometimes the hardest things to talk about are the most important and even the funniest.

Sources

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