ABSTRACT
Under third wave feminism, there has been a renaissance in female characterisation in comedy programming. This is exemplified by Armando Iannucci’s Veep (2012–2017) which is a satirical take on the first female Vice President of the USA, Selina Meyer (Julia Louis Dreyfus). Women have historically been relegated to the more passive roles of the “straight man”, “love interest” or “nagging wife” in television comedy, merely facilitating the humour of the male characters. These male characters were permitted to take a more active role, with the agency to monopolise humour by exploring the full spectrum of human flaws. Veep shows Meyer to be narcissistic, incompetent and badly behaved. These characteristics make her at once flawed and nuanced, but most importantly hilarious.
This chapter explores how the scripting, direction, and performances of Selina Meyer in Veep breaks with tradition, through a uniquely subversive blend of masculine crudeness, private and public representations of female sexuality and situational comedy grounded in femininity. It analyses Meyer’s framing as a woman in political power within the tropes and genre of political satire and by doing so, it argues how Meyer represents what Margaret Atwood deemed “Spotty Handed Villainesses”. Like the blood-spotted Lady Macbeth, the prototypical villainess, Meyer’s moral complexity comes from her “bad behaviour” which Atwood saw as a crucial element to storytelling and characterisation. Although bad behaviour has traditionally been the monopoly of men, shows like HBO’s Sex and the City, The Comeback and Girls paved the way in the television landscape for the more complex characterisation of women in Veep. Hou, Stewart and Chabbi emphasise the importance of humour as a powerful vehicle in representing and exploring women’s flaws, experiences and complexities as human beings.
