Joan Rivers and Emily Dickinson : Two fearless women who paved the way for others.

Today, September 4th/ 2014,actress and comedian Joan Rivers died at age 81. For the last 12 hours all I´ve seen on the internet has been links and videos showing River´s best puns, jokes and comments. Web pages have been flooded with comments appreciating Joan´s unapologetic, satarical and offensive sense of humor. One of the BuzzFeed comments says " Joan was a truly fearles comedian, a woman ahead of her time. She re-invented the concept of female comedian"

" Man don´t like smart women, no man has ever put his hand up on a woman´s dress looking for a library card"

 One may think " how does Joan River´s death relate to any of the authors or contents of the class?", well, just like Joan, there was another female who was also fearless, ahead of her time, rupturist, innovative and that re-invented the concept of female writer: Emily Dickinson. Believe it or not, both artist have more in common than what one may expect, despite their obvious differences.

Woman in a world ruled by man.
Emily Dickinson lived in a period of time where all literary genres where ruled by man. Although there was a fair amount of creative female writers, not a lot of them were publised, nor gained any success. Emily´s early publications were heavily critized (by man critics and authors). Dickinson was a pioneer among female poets and dared to step outside the confort zone by being an author. Although there were other known female writers at the time, such as  Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dickinson has become known for breaking the patriarchal nature of american peotry.

On the other hand, Rivers also became known for breaking the patriarchal pattern in comedy. Joan was the first female to have a solo stand up comedy show, she was also the first woman to have a late night show and one of the first woman awarded by her comedy skills. In a world were there comedy was a field of men, Rivers made a career of her own.

Creative , innovative and rupturist.
 Unlike her predecessors, Rivers was an insult comedian, which basically mean she made fun about everything (incuding herself) even if it was politically incorrect.  In the 70's she talked about topics that no comedian had talked before : sex, drugs, abortion, plastic surgery, homosexuality, celebrities and her own personal life. Joan was not only innovative in her topics, but also in her style of delivering jokes: a single woman and a microphone,fast-talking, sharp tongue, raspy voice and ugly facial expression were all part of this artist style.

Emily Dicksinson was also an extremely innovative artist, unlike many other
transcendentalist authors, this artist was not only inetrested in nature, the connection with god and the meaning of humankind, but also talked about more secular and personal matters such as love, rejection, beauty, family and house. Her witing style has also unique and creative : un.structured grammar, random dashing and capitalization, layout of lines, iregular rhyme and lack of punctuation make Dickison´s work stand out from the poetry at the time and the common writing conventions.

Dickinson's style

 

Rivers' creative topics

Misunderstood and ahead of their time.

Joan´s offensive style was not always (and still is) completely understood by the public. She was heavily critized by her conflictive nature, lack elegance, lackk of touch and lack of empathy. At the beginning of her career, this comedian was concidered tacky and un-lady-like, yet within time her sense of humor became a trend and it is the inspiration of many current comedians. Rivers has definetly ahead of her time, since her signature style remains current as of today.

The same phenomena happend with Dickinson´s work. Misunderstood at the begening and praised years later. In early publications,some called Emily " talentless". It has not until the beginning of the XX century when her work started to be priased and considered a classic.


As we can see, both women have many features in common: they paved the way for many other artist due to their singular creative and innovative style.

Can you think of other artists that we have read that share similarities with modern artists?

Is the world of literature and comedy still ruled by man?

"I´ve had so many plastic sugeries, that when I die, you will have to donate my organs to Tupperwear" (Joan Rivers)

 Sources

Melani, Lilia. "Emily Dickinson: An Oerview." Department of English: Lilia Melani. Brooklyn College, 24 Feb. 2009. Web. 24 Mar. 2010. <http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/dickinson.html>.

web pages used as source

 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/emily-dickinson

 http://www.emilydickinson.org/

 https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/