Not Funny by Jena Friedman: Full-Book Quiz (20 Questions)

Part I: Plot and Sequence (Questions 1–8)

Question 1 (Multiple Choice)

What event, watched on live television before starting college, inspired Friedman to pursue comedy?

A) The 2016 presidential election

B) The September 11 attacks

C) The O.J. Simpson trial

D) The Challenger disaster

Question 2 (Short Answer)

What was the title of Friedman's undergraduate anthropology thesis?

Question 3 (Multiple Choice)

What happened after a comedy blogger posted Friedman's thesis online?

A) She was praised for her academic rigor

B) iO owner Charna Halpern canceled her show and removed her from her team

C) She was offered a writing job at Saturday Night Live

D) The Chicago Reader published a feature praising her work

Question 4 (Multiple Choice)

What parody doll company did Friedman create for her musical comedy?

A) Trauma Dolls

B) Crisis Kids

C) Refugee Girl

D) War Babies

Question 5 (Multiple Choice)

What Alabama law created the so-called fetus lawyers that Friedman covered in a Daily Show segment?

A) HB 1337

B) HB 494

C) SB 8

D) HB 481

Question 6 (Multiple Choice)

What happened to Friedman at the Bowery Poetry Club open mic?

A) She was heckled off stage

B) She fainted and broke three front teeth

C) She was offered a writing job

D) She met her future manager

Question 7 (Multiple Choice)

What was the name of Friedman's first hour-long show performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival?

A) Miscarriage of Justice

B) Refugee Girls Revue

C) American Cunt

D) Not Funny

Question 8 (Multiple Choice)

What major award nomination did Friedman receive in 2021?

A) Emmy for The Daily Show

B) Grammy for Best Comedy Album

C) Tony for Best Musical

D) Oscar for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

Part II: Character Motivation (Questions 9–13)

Question 9 (Multiple Choice)

Why did Friedman shift her thesis focus from stand-up to improv?

A) She found stand-up too competitive

B) There was a dearth of women in stand-up comedy in Chicago

C) Her adviser suggested the change

D) She was offered free improv classes

Question 10 (Multiple Choice)

Why did Friedman use dead baby jokes as a preteen?

A) To shock her parents

B) To deflect classmates' racist and anti-Semitic humor

C) To impress her comedy idols

D) To practice for her stand-up career

Question 11 (Multiple Choice)

Why did Friedman accept the sex columnist job for a men's fitness magazine?

A) She had extensive experience in the field

B) She wanted to write about relationships

C) It paid well despite her lack of qualifications

D) Her manager recommended it

Question 12 (Multiple Choice)

Why did Friedman conduct gender-reversed interviews with male comedians?

A) To promote her new show

B) To expose the absurdity of sexist questions female comedians face

C) To find material for her stand-up

D) To build relationships with famous comedians

Question 13 (Multiple Choice)

Why did Friedman tweet about headlining comics pursuing younger comics they employ?

A) She was angry about a self-proclaimed woke male comic's predatory behavior

B) She wanted to gain social media followers

C) She was promoting her new special

D) She was responding to a news story

Part III: Theme and Symbol (Questions 14–17)

Question 14 (Multiple Choice)

In the Jeff Koons chapter, what does the gazing ball symbolize?

A) The artist's creative genius

B) Art as escapism and commodification

C) The importance of classical art

D) The beauty of self-reflection

Question 15 (Multiple Choice)

What does Friedman's asteroid-crashing-into-democracy metaphor represent?

A) The 9/11 attacks

B) The 2016 election results turning against Clinton

C) The Covid-19 pandemic

D) The overturning of Roe v. Wade

Question 16 (Multiple Choice)

What does the swimming-in-a-toilet metaphor represent in the book?

A) The difficulty of breaking into comedy

B) The low bar for good behavior in comedy

C) The financial struggles of comedians

D) The competitive nature of improv

Question 17 (Multiple Choice)

What does the dead baby joke form represent for Friedman throughout the book?

A) A way to shock audiences into attention and deflect bigoted humor

B) A sign of her dark personality

C) A rejection of mainstream comedy

D) A tribute to British humor

Part IV: Synthesis (Questions 18–20)

Question 18 (Short Answer)

How does Friedman's experience with her high school English teacher Mr. F connect to her broader themes about power dynamics in comedy?

Question 19 (Short Answer)

Trace how Friedman uses comedy to address reproductive rights throughout the book.

Question 20 (Short Answer)

What does Friedman's Oscar experience reveal about her definition of making it?

Answer Key

Question 1: B — The September 11 attacks

Friedman watched the attacks on live television before starting college, and the event inspired her to pursue comedy. The 2016 election is a plausible distractor because it features prominently in the prologue, but it came years after her career began.

Question 2: Whose Truth and Comedy: An Ethnography of Race, Class and Gender in Chicago's Improv Comedy Scene

Friedman wrote this thesis as a Northwestern senior, studying the improv community at iO through a feminist-Marxist lens. The thesis later provoked backlash when a comedy blogger posted it online.

Question 3: B — iO owner Charna Halpern canceled her show and removed her from her team

The thesis provoked backlash; two female teachers also reprimanded Friedman for writing about sexual harassment. She declined an interview with the Chicago Reader and left iO.

Question 4: C — Refugee Girl

Friedman created Refugee Girl as a parody of American Girl dolls, which grew into The Refugee Girls Revue musical. The other options are plausible-sounding parody names but do not appear in the book.

Question 5: B — HB 494

Alabama's HB 494 created fetus lawyers, which Friedman covered in a Daily Show segment with Jessica Williams. HB 1337 is a distractor from the Indiana miscarriage burial law mentioned later in the same chapter.

Question 6: B — She fainted and broke three front teeth

Friedman fainted in the basement of the Bowery Poetry Club after smoking what she believed was pot, breaking three front teeth. An unnamed famous comedian and his wife arranged an after-hours dental appointment.

Question 7: C — American Cunt

Friedman performed American Cunt at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival after being dropped by her management company. Miscarriage of Justice was a later Edinburgh show, and Refugee Girls Revue was the earlier Chicago musical.

Question 8: D — Oscar for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

Friedman received an Oscar nomination for her work on Borat Subsequent Moviefilm in 2021. The other awards are plausible given her career but are not mentioned in the book.

Question 9: B — There was a dearth of women in stand-up comedy in Chicago

Friedman found too few female stand-ups to study, so she shifted her ethnography to improv at iO. The free shows were a perk of signing up for classes, not the reason she changed her thesis topic.

Question 10: B — To deflect classmates' racist and anti-Semitic humor

As a preteen, Friedman used dead baby jokes to stun classmates into silence and shift conversation away from bigoted jokes. The other motivations are not supported by the text.

Question 11: C — It paid well despite her lack of qualifications

Friedman took the sex columnist job because it paid well, even though she had no qualifications for it. The chapter emphasizes the economics of comedy as a motivating factor.

Question 12: B — To expose the absurdity of sexist questions female comedians face

Friedman posed real questions journalists had asked her and other female comedians, with genders reversed, to male comedian friends and mentors. The men expressed surprise and described the experience as demoralizing.

Question 13: A — She was angry about a self-proclaimed woke male comic's predatory behavior

Friedman tweeted after learning that a woke male comic had been propositioning younger female comics he took on the road. The tweet circulated widely and led to a famous male comic ranting about her on his podcast.

Question 14: B — Art as escapism and commodification

The Koons exhibition briefly distracted Friedman from news about Trump, which she welcomed as a respite, while the gazing balls themselves symbolized the commodification of art. She judged the current series stale and lazy.

Question 15: B — The 2016 election results turning against Clinton

Friedman used the asteroid metaphor on Colbert's election night special as results turned against Clinton. The overturning of Roe v. Wade came later and is referenced separately in the prologue.

Question 16: B — The low bar for good behavior in comedy

The swimming-in-a-toilet metaphor describes how low the bar is for what counts as good behavior in comedy, particularly for men. The other options are plausible interpretations but do not match the chapter's usage.

Question 17: A — A way to shock audiences into attention and deflect bigoted humor

Dead baby jokes gave Friedman a tool to distract and deflect, and later taught her to write comedy that forces confrontation with issues like reproductive rights. The form is a comedic strategy, not a reflection of her personality.

Question 18 (Model Answer):

Mr. F used journal assignments requiring personal disclosure to groom a student, exploiting his authority as a teacher. This parallels the power dynamics Friedman documents throughout comedy: teachers sleeping with students at iO, bookers propositioning comics, and executives using their positions to extract favors. Both settings involve authority figures who weaponize their power over people who depend on them for advancement.

Question 19 (Model Answer):

Friedman's reproductive rights comedy arc moves from dead baby jokes as deflection, to abortion jokes inspired by a drunk-driving gynecologist, to the fetus lawyer segment on The Daily Show, to the NARAL rally at the Supreme Court, to miscarriage jokes on tour, and finally to pitching a morning-after pill scene on The Conners. Each iteration uses comedy to normalize reproductive health discussions and confront legislative absurdity.

Question 20 (Model Answer):

Friedman felt she had made it for about twenty minutes at the Oscars until she lost, and the best part was getting ready with friends. This reveals that making it is not about external validation or awards — it is about the journey, the relationships built along the way, and the internal sense of fulfillment. The goalposts of success keep shifting, so true value comes from the people and experiences surrounding the achievement.