Netflix's Hannah Gadsby's Nanette

[zomgmouse]

Surely saying "gender not normal" is not in any way erasing trans or nonbinary identities - you're assuming any cis identity that doesn't fall within gender norms is automatically the product of terf discourse, which it's not. That's a pretty shaky leap. Just because terfs assume trans identities aren't real because they maintain a large part of feminism is critiquing gender norms, it doesn't necessarily follow that any cis identity that doesn't conform to gender norms is somehow trans-exclusive. It's also not as if she's denied trans identities. Sometimes cis is just cis.

And surely it's not up to you to decide how Hannah Gadsby identifies?



I thought this special was a lot to take in emotionally and I'm definitely going to rewatch it. There were also some very very funny lines in there, and the way she manipulated tension was really quite impressive. I also hope that this doesn't mean she quits comedy, just the type of comedy she was conditioned to perform and spoke out against.

[Hank Venture]

I didn't actually write that, I just found it online and posted it here, pretending I did. As a joke, because it's so ridiculous on its face. I was satirizing the undeserved praise it gets by posting an even more demented criticism, with the language and sentiment turned up to 11.

[mojo filters]

I didn't actually write that, I just found it online and posted it here, pretending I did. As a joke, because it's so ridiculous on its face. I was satirizing the undeserved praise it gets by posting an even more demented criticism, with the language and sentiment turned up to 11.

That's easy enough to say now. However it does not correctly account for the questionable stewardship of your mobile phone...

[zomgmouse]

I didn't actually write that, I just found it online and posted it here, pretending I did. As a joke, because it's so ridiculous on its face. I was satirizing the undeserved praise it gets by posting an even more demented criticism, with the language and sentiment turned up to 11.

I don't think the praise is undeserved. It's clearly meant a lot to a lot of people. I'm not sure you posting that makes a coherent point on your behalf.

[Z]

It's well performed as a one woman show, and she's got some really good jokes in there (less a fan of her comedic delivery) but it's another one of these things where writeups about it being this intensely raw eye opening experience just leave me a bit baffled and I wind up focusing on that more instead.

Like, maybe I'm just absurdly empathetic or something? or just so focused on miserable shit that it's hard to surprise me? or maybe I'm a bit overly aware (and tired of) EdFringe/MCIF themed shows, which makes it a bit hard to view as especially raw when knowing it's probably the 100th time she's done the show?
"I'm quitting comedy" is surely a pretty common theme for a lot of the more ambitious but jaded comedians in their late 30s. It's generally about as easy to believe as a wrestler retiring.



She done a good job though, it'd be obvious 5 star best of festival type stuff had I seen it in Edinburgh. If she's quick witted in general (as I'd say her better jokes suggest she is?), she's probably got a fuckton of potential as some kind of television personality if she finds the right project

[up_the_hampipe]

https://quartzy.qz.com/1333263/nanette-and-why-a-new-wave-of-comedians-dont-want-to-be-funny/

It never ends!

[mr. logic]

I hadn't heard of her before watching this. I thought a big failing- as previously pointed out- was that when it came time to deconstruct the act, I was still reeling from how unfunny her awkward delivery made everything in the first half hour. At one point she said something about being a 'funny fucker'. It was delivered chippy and as though we would excuse the arrogance because it had been proven as demonstrably true- like Stewart Lee pointing out how good he is in a deadpan way. Except she hadn't been funny at all. It didn't really ruin her points but it did strike me as jarring.

Interesting that she didn't name Louis C.K when she listed famous celebrity men accused of sex crimes. I don't think she would have been fearful of doing so, so it was a striking ommision.

[The Always Red Society]

She wrote and was performing the show months and months before the full allegations against Louis CK were published so it may just have been a case of not re-writing it.

[clarkgwent]

My main bugbear (and it isn't that much of one seeing as I am no fan and don't think he was greatest artist of C20th) is that she has declared Picasso a "pedophile" to suit her narrative, He was a horny bugger and we knew that (there is even a song about it) but not a sex criminal in Paris then (or here, now.)

When being against altering art history to suit a narrative is her main thrust its a mite pot/kettle.

 

[iamcoop]

Having finally watched this the other night, I thought it was an excellent piece of work. As a stand up comedy special however it didn't really make me laugh at all. Even the first half which ostensibly is supposed to work more as a straight up piece of stand up (at least how I understand it) it didn't really make me laugh at all.  I don't think it's unfair to make the point that I should reasonably expect to laugh a fair bit at something that bills itself as stand up comedy.

I must point out though that I'm not sure how much my judgement was clouded by everything I'd read about it before I'd actually seen it, so there's that I suppose.

[The Always Red Society]

He was a horny bugger and we knew that (there is even a song about it) but not a sex criminal in Paris then (or here, now.)

Not convicted, no, but it's hardly that controversial an allegation. At best he was a sex criminal with older women - his mistress and muse Marie-Therese Walter said 'He violates women first, then we work'. Then his biographers have disagreed whether he met her when she was 15 or 17, either way he was in his mid 40s. Perhaps not technically a paedophile, definitely a wrong un.

[garbed_attic]

The more I think and read about the special the more I dislike it if I'm honest... it's very prescriptive to the degree that it seems to be criticising performers (including women) who think there is value in comedy. I hate the "we need to go deeper than comedy" rhetoric. I think, for instance, Maria Bamford's stand-up has provided a lot of people with mental health issues with healing and compassion, while being reliable hilarious. Nathan For You manages to dissect late-stage capitalism more clearly and adeptly than most academic or journalistic texts I'd read on the topic.

I feel like there's a lot of "Boom! I conquered stand-up by mastering it and found it to be empty and hollow inside and just a site of privilege and emotional abuse and now I have transcended it unlike those other crappy comedians" ...

IDK my feelings about it are oddly similar to my feelings about Haneke's Funny Games, despite the fact that Nanette is clearly rooted in real pain, abuse and oppression.

[Desirable Industrial Unit]

At one point she said something about being a 'funny fucker'. It was delivered chippy and as though we would excuse the arrogance because it had been proven as demonstrably true- like Stewart Lee pointing out how good he is in a deadpan way. Except she hadn't been funny at all. It didn't really ruin her points but it did strike me as jarring.

You've taken that the wrong way - 'funny fucker' isn't a boast, it's a pejorative, but it is sort of regional.  'Oh, you're a funny fucker, aren't you?' is the sort of thing someone says when you're trying to diffuse a situation and are about to get lamped.

[neveragain]

There is at least one moment where she describes herself as "fucking good" at comedy. Like those above, I found her stand-up a bit lacking but that doesn't harm her point.

Though personally I have no problem disconnecting the art from the artist. Especially when they're safe in their graves.

[up_the_hampipe]

SNL's Michael Che doesn't seem to be a fan http://thefederalist.com/2018/07/23/snl-writer-michael-che-criticizes-unfunny-comedy-culture/

It's not very eloquently put and he hasn't even watched the special, but I relate to his frustration.

[c]

SNL's Michael Che doesn't seem to be a fan http://thefederalist.com/2018/07/23/snl-writer-michael-che-criticizes-unfunny-comedy-culture/

"It's becoming a goddam mild inconvenience" is a great line though

[Timothy]

Hannah Gadsby has admitted she is not quitting stand-up – despite promising to do so after her acclaimed show Nanette.

The comic says her plan to walk away from comedy backfired because of the huge success of the special, especially after it landed on Netflix.

Speaking to Jimmy Fallon on his US talk show lat night, Gadsby said her plans for Nanette was for it to be 'a quitting show.... to drop a bomb and leave.

'I thought it would divide audiences,' she added. 'And it didn't. The plan's backfired.'

She has vowed never to perform the show again after a swansong at the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal tomorrow, explaining: 'It's on Netflix now I don't have to do it any more.'

But that will not be the end of her comedy career.

'Oh yeah, I'll do something,' she told Fallon. 'I said I was quitting, but if I quit [now], I'm an idiot.

https://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2018/07/26/40576/hannah_gadsby%3A_im_not_quitting

[BeardFaceMan]

Always nice to see a comic with a bit of integrity.

[Twed]

Hmm. That highlights one of the problems I had with this:

The other thing is that I don't think the "I have to quit comedy" stuff rings true at all. Clearly never her intention, it just sounds dramatic. But perhaps that's part of building tension.

I don't care about her personal integrity, but as a main premise of the show it didn't work.

[up_the_hampipe]

Always nice to see a comic with a bit of integrity.

She's on Jimmy Fallon.

[up_the_hampipe]

I like this pic of Gadsby in front of a Jerry Sadowitz poster, presumably the same reaction he had if he watched her special.

[neveragain]

Yeah he hates rape victims, bloody hates them.

[CaledonianGonzo]

Who doesn't seek out Jerry's opinions on the hot topics of the day?

[The Boston Crab]

Netflix presents: HAHA RAPE

[rue the polywhirl]

Got the impression at the very end of the special it was turning into a butch les Hitler rally ("I AM IN MY PRIME" *flicks spilttle*).

Somewhat trumpeting of her own abilities as a stand up. Show at best could be described as tittersome. Actual joke content was pretty tepid (oop... she said the word 'lesbiany' again. That'll be the comedic peak of that skit), joke construction stuff didn't 100% ring true. Seems like she'd rather regale her experiences under the umbrella of comedy or worse the cloak of deconstructed comedy rather than crafting it into comedy as such. Her act becomes more alive simply through the process of immense hand-wringyness. Overwhelming impression definitely in the first 30 minutes was 'Why is she speaking so strangely and is she deliberately trying to sabotage her own act?'. Something pretty intense about the stare that she does every time she tries to sell a punchline, eyes harden and narrow to a sabre point and you'd get stabbed by them if you got too close.