My Irrational Hates: Part I - Ellen DeGeneres

On a recent stay in New York City, I saw countless print advertisements for a brand of vitamin water endorsed by Ellen DeGeneres. When I first saw these ads I thought it was somehow apt that Ellen would be promoting a product such as flavoured water, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why that was. It was a good fit and yet I was irritated by their union; it seemed to increase my distaste for both the beverage and the comedienne-cum-talk show host. And then it occurred to me: Ellen IS vitamin water! By that I mean that Ellen is the entertainment personality equivalent of vitamin water. She is just as harmless, just as flat, and just as bland.

Vitaminwater zero has no calories and this is appropriate for Ellen because her public persona is similarly devoid of substance and her comedy lacking in nourishment. I have long disliked Ellen for being an offensively inoffensive comic; she is to comedy what Will Smith is to rap. People with little or no sense of humour like her because she doesn’t rock the boat by dropping the F-bomb or bringing up controversial topics. This would be fine but these humourless people go on to criticise good comedians for cursing or having shocking material because “Ellen doesn’t need to swear or be offensive to be funny”. But let’s get one thing straight: Ellen ISN’T funny. She has just been working as a comedian for so many years that people believe she must be funny otherwise she wouldn't have been able to make a living out of it for this long. Ellen's success is down to sheer drive and enthusiasm, not her talent or her wit. The really excruciating thing is that she is lauded while her wife, Portia de Rossi, is an unbelievably funny comic actress whose talent is overlooked. It is so unfair that Portia is dismissed as ‘Ellen’s pretty wife who used to be on Ally McBeal’ (anyone who has seen Arrested Development will know she is SO much more than that!) while her wife is given so much undeserved praise.
Anyone who has seen Ellen’s stand-up knows that it is atrocious. I remember watching a comedy gig of hers on television and she LITERALLY made jokes about airplane food. She half-heartedly ranted about packets of peanuts you get on planes for what seemed like days. It was some of the most nauseatingly unfunny material I have ever heard; she was like a parody of a hack comedian.

While constantly going for shock value can be tiring, nonetheless it’s true that comedy needs to be out there sometimes. It’s one of the few spaces in entertainment where boundaries can be pushed and there can be free discussion. Comedians such as the late Bill Hicks, who made angry rants about U.S. politics in his shows, and Joan Rivers, who makes angry rants about ageing and the injustices of life, show us that raw emotion makes for comedy that is not only hilarious but thought-provoking. By its nature, comedy is best when at its most concentrated, but Ellen’s brand of humour is so watered down (get it?!) that it’s hardly humorous at all, and is nothing but joyless, soulless wisecrackery.

Another reason why I dislike Ellen is because she wants to be everyone’s friend. She recently announced that she would be leaving American Idol after a fairly disastrous one-season stint, citing that 'while I love discovering, supporting and nurturing young talent, it was hard for me to judge people and sometimes hurting their feelings'. While it's a nice statement, one wonders why she agreed to be a judge in a talent competition when she doesn't like judging people. The clue's in the job title, I would have thought. Also, it is important to remember that we are talking about being a judge on a television show, where your job is to prepare adults to survive in the entertainment industry; it's not the time to act like a playschool teacher, giving out gold stars to everyone and saying ‘well done’ all the time. The entertainment industry is one of the cruellest and most vicious industries of them all; unbelievably harsh things are going to be said about contestants in magazines and online as soon as they are in the public eye.

Ellen showed her dislike of meaness in all its forms when the genuinely funny Kathy Griffin appeared on her show in September 2007. She was hostile towards her guest and criticised her for saying mean things about celebrities, citing the time she came out publicly and everyone was making cracks about her, to which Kathy (who incidentally is far more vocal about gay rights than she is) said that she wasn’t one of those people. I think when someone doesn't have a good sense of humour one of the biggest signs is that they cannot handle it when the joke is on them. A real comedian would have weathered that storm and come out of it defiant and unapologetic, like Russell Brand did in his show Scandalous, after his BBC radio controversy, Sachs-gate. It seems Ellen’s reaction to the mocking she withstood after her coming out was to make herself as conventional and mainstream as she could so she would never be the butt of anyone’s joke again.

Career-wise, playing it safe has worked incredibly well for her. While a lot of female comedians fall out of favour because of their ‘big mouths’ (eg. Joan Rivers, Rosie O’Donnell and Roseanne Barr), Ellen has escaped scandal and disapproval by keeping things Vitaminwater zero-light on her show. While both Oprah and Tyra are known to occasionally tackle weighty issues on their talk shows, Ellen has stayed well clear of anything serious or informative that could possibly be divisive. In order to be a guest on Ellen’s show, one has to be a happy person devoid of any negativity. She claims that she is promoting positivity, but I think she is actually repressing realness (which as y'all know, is what I'm all about).

The thing that annoys me most of all about Ellen’s nice guy schtick is that she couldn’t have possibly gotten to where she is in such a tough business if she was that nice or naive. I believe that she is disingenuous, and honesty is what I value most in people and something I expect from a comedian. This is because honesty is essential for good comedy; the amazing thing about comedy is that you are free to publicly say the things you talk about with your friends inside your living room. Of course, there are lines that shouldn’t be crossed and there are repercussions for speaking your mind too freely, but this is part and parcel of being a comedian. Sometimes when you’re pushing boundaries, you overstep them, but it is this bravery and this willingness to put yourself in the firing line and possibly be made a whipping boy by society that I admire most about real comedians.

In conclusion, I find Ellen’s dancing at the beginning of her shows mildly amusing and I enjoyed her as the voice of Dora in Finding Nemo, but apart from that I find very little else to recommend the woman. If Ellen was a colour, she’d be beige; if Ellen was a flavour of ice-cream, she’d be vanilla; and if Ellen were a drink, she would most definitely be vitamin water.
Comedy isn’t supposed to be good for us; it’s supposed to be enjoyable. A real comedian would have endorsed an alcoholic drink... or at least something with sugar/caffeine.