That’s not completely fair though is it? that was not the sum total of the criticism and I think the rest of the poster’s comment very much did focus on the act and not the person. Indeed, they seemed overall to be supportive of Hannah.
Anyhow, I was not supporting or attacking any individual’s reaction as such. I do think it is a very bad idea to equate “not liking the act” with somehow being politically, morally or ethically suspect. No-one has done that directly here but it something to look out for and call out when it happens.
I’m not sure why you think this is a gotcha. Very Special Episodes are mocked because they fail miserably as both comedy and as drama, much less as worthwhile learning experiences. They’re just embarrassing tedium good for making fun of, ten years later. If that’s the company you’re lumping this comedy special in with…
Then I, for one, am confused about exactly what it is you were attempting to discuss. Of course the act deliberately set the audience up for the feeling of being “conned”, “betrayed”, “caught off guard”, etc. Gadsby says as much during the performance. That feeling is part of the experience that she intended the audience to have, and if you happened to notice you were having it, congratulations, so did pretty much everybody else.
But you have been talking in this thread as though your criticism is that there was something wrong with her deliberately constructing that “flip-the-script” experience as part of her comedy show. You’re complaining that it “was not a comedy routine” and “the premise was a lie” and it “rubbed you the wrong way”, etc. As though her viewers were in some sense genuinely betrayed, rather than just experiencing a feeling of betrayal as part of the deliberate effect of her act.
And that’s where you’re getting all the disagreement in this thread. Because just because a comedian sets you up with a joke and then deliberately takes the joke away, making you feel something very different from amused or tickled, doesn’t necessarily mean that the comedian is doing comedy “wrong”. There are no industry specifications for a comedy act requiring the performer to supply a minimum average of X jokes per minute and not go beyond a maximum of Y consecutive minutes without a joke and so on.
If you’re mad because Gadsby’s performance didn’t match your personal preferences for what a comedy act should be like, that’s fine, you can just say you didn’t like it very much and move on. But trying to impose some abstract criteria on comedy performances after the fact, so that you can charge her with having done something objectively wrong or incorrect, suggests an axe to grind at a deeper level of butthurt than you appear willing to admit to.
I almost completely agree with you. I kept saying that halfway through her routine her show flipped from a comedy show to a “Ted Talk.” Others were saying it never happened. Here is a transcript of the show. I have read it, show me the jokes in the last half after she says she is quitting comedy. You can also see where she feels so sorry for me. Can she do whatever she wants with her show? Of course. I don’t even dislike her routine, but the last half was not a comedy. Also, is she really going to quit?
There are also transcripts from other comedians such as Tig Notaro and Patton Oswalt who recently shared personal heartbreaking stories but within the structure of a comedy. How long is too long to lecture an audience without any type of joke when they have paid for a comedy show? I don’t know, but I draw the line at half the time.
Anyways, if I haven’t made my point, I guess I am just not able to. By the way, this thread is on page one of Google for the terms I was searching for.
I’m not sure exactly what you mean by “the last half”. Do you mean the two long final paragraphs after this line?
Even in the part after that line, when the tone got much more consistently earnest, the following remarks come across to me as intentionally comical:
You’ve mentioned that before, but I’m not seeing exactly what part of the transcript you mean: a search turns up the word “sorry” only once, in a different context. Is it this bit you’re talking about?
You personally may or may not have found that funny, but I think it’s undeniable that it contains jokes.
You’re asking me? I have no idea: I interpreted her show as a performance, a deliberately scripted act, not some kind of official contractual pledge. She may be actually planning to quit comedy, or she may just have been using that statement as part of the impression she was trying to produce with her act.
You can draw that line wherever you want, as far as your own personal preferences are concerned. You just can’t invoke any kind of Official Comedy Statutes to support any claim that there’s any place where that line objectively has to be drawn.
Also, as I noted, Gadsby’s audience overall seems to have been just fine with her choices for the content of her show, so getting indignant on the audience’s behalf on the grounds that “they have paid for a comedy show” is not a very persuasive argument.
I think it was groundbreaking and emotionally devastating, a true cultural milestone that redefines the idea of standup and ensures that comedy will never again be viewed in the same way.
I know this from several articles I read about the show. I got bored while watching it and didn’t make it to the end.
The assertion was that Nanette isn’t a comedy because (apparently) it flipped from a comedy routine to a Ted Talk so it is incorrect to categorize it as a comedy.
So where is that line drawn?
Does Different Strokes cease being a comedy because occasionally they have a few Very Special Episodes?
I don’t really care about your opinion of the quality or the worth of the Very Special Episode. Does the mere existence of the Very Special Episode mean that Different Strokes is no longer a comedy? And if it doesn’t, then where is the line? (If you disagree with the assertion that “Nanette isn’t a comedy” then the question really isn’t for you.)
How was the live show marketed? For the extended run(s), those who got tickets later would have known what the show was about from the word of mouth and reviews, wouldn’t they? I’d have thought generally that the only ones who might have been “misled” would have been those who bought tickets early if they were told it was a riproaring comedy show.
I’m not a huge consumer of stand-up but from shows like the montreal comedy festival and other ones they show on tv with a variety of comics, it’s not all sweetness & light funny. There are some pretty grim topics raised in the “jokes”.
I’m not sure how Hannah could have raised personal things and kept it “comedy” throughout the whole show. You couldn’t disclose some awful thing that actually happened to you and then tell a “regular joke” straight after. It seems like it would take the form of “straight comedy” and “serious”.
… yeah, but why do I need to hear her story, though ?
Do you think the feelings she expressed, the experiences she relates are somehow alien or new to me ? I know *intimately *what it means not to fit in, and how ugly it turns people. I know what it means to get beat the fuck up while nobody lifts a finger to help, and teaching yourself that you deserve it, that’s it OK and even normal. I know what it means to profoundly loathe oneself and mask it with clever jokes - I suspect most comedians do, too. Hell I suspect most people do. You don’t have to be gay to know any of this, to feel any of this, to go through any of this, to be thoroughly and permanently fucked up by it all. And newsflash : you can feel it all while being a straight white bourgeois man. With your socks down.
I don’t really care about the LGBT stuff *qua *LGBT stuff - even though, as I said I thoroughly empathize with her and her feelings. She’s kin. I know she’s telling the truth (or her truth anyway), and I don’t object in any way to *what *she’s saying.
I am simply a bit irked by *how *she’s opted to say it. You see, comedy’s a powerful thing. Making people laugh makes them feel connected with you, makes them lower their guard, makes them feel at ease. That’s why satire and humour is such a great medium for social change or to promote positive things like science or humanism or giving a shit about the plight of LGBTQ people.
But when you take advantage of your audience being relaxed to flip the script and tug at heartstrings, it’s very manipulative. Yes, it does increase the effect of said tug, it’s a known trick - and it’s a cheap trick, even if she’s really good at it from a technical/acting point of view.
You and **Kimstu **mentionned “Old Holmes”, but y’alls completely missed the point and context of that skit. Yes, it’s suddenly and jarringly dreadfully sad - but that’s not the point of it. Mitchell & Webb were taking the piss out of British comedy shows that suddenly turn serious and weepy in the last act of their finale, Blackadder Goes Forth in particular, which capstoned some 3 hours of making light out of everything about WW1 (including much of its darkness) with a super heavy-handed reminder that “But War Is A Very Sad Thing And People Do Die In Them, You See ?”. Mitchell & Webb did so all the better that the “funny” bits of the Holmes sketch prior to the needle-scratch are in fact cringe-worthy because dementia antics aren’t ha-ha funny at all - it’s pretty sad *before *the sad bit. They’re pointing their finger at the cheapness of the trick *by *brilliantly playing the trick and subverting it at the same time. It’s bloody clever and meta- as all getout, is what it is.
Nanette however plays the trick straight. That’s not quite as clever.
Oh c’mon. Do you really think that the LGBT struggle is somehow new, unheard of, unspoken of in media ? *Boys Don’t Cry *came out almost 20 bloody years ago.
And again, I don’t really have an issue with what is being said. But if I had wanted to watch Boys Don’t Cry, I’d have watched Boys Don’t Cry.
I expect thought-provocation in my comedy. I expect social commentary. I even expect poignancy or angry rants. But I also expect wit and levity throughout. Patton Oswalt was mentioned upthread, and that’s a great exapmple : he released a dark as fuck stand-up immediately following the sudden death of his wife - but it was funny and good-natured throughout. He didn’t try to make you feel sorry for him, even though sometimes you do. Tig Notaro did a stand-up about being gay and surviving cancer + double mastectomy that was funny throughout - same deal.
To me, the whole point of laughter and comedy is to suck the drama out of tragedy so you can go on living with it. Not dwell on it, or *increase *the fucking drama.
Now, maybe Kimstu’s right and my sort of irritation at having been manipulated and feeling like I’ve been taken advantage of by someone who used me for a shrink/as a support for her catharsis has to do with The Shit Wot I’ve Been Going Through, which I won’t write reams about but suffice to say that I’m probably overly sensitive to people laying their issues on others, making them carry their baggage for them and emotional manipulation in general.
So maybe that’s why I feel the bait-n-switch was so uncool, or unfair. shrug I’unno.
Actually Carlin’s last few specials were pretty damn bad. He seemed to have forgotten that while you can make good comedy that integrates angry or heartfelt social commentary (and he certainly did !), the salient part you shouldn’t forget is the “fun” bit. It’s Bad For Ya felt like nothing **but **bitter old man rants, with mean sarcasm maskerading as satire.
Ok, I’m convinced. The gold standard of innovative comedy, Different Strokes, has set the precedent and so A Very Special Netflix Comedy Special is merely following in their footsteps. Which makes it all the more baffling – why are they calling her show so ground breaking when Different Strokes did it 30 years ago?
You certainly don’t, if you don’t want to. I don’t think anybody here is saying that everybody’s required to watch Nanette or that nobody’s allowed to dislike it or find it boring or annoying. I already noted that I was more lukewarm about it myself than many viewers seemed to be, though I thought it was really good meta-comedy and very skilled.
I’m just calling bullshit on the notion that a comedian who does a comedy act in a way that some people don’t care for is therefore somehow “doing comedy wrong” in any objective sense.
I’d also question why this is coming up now. There are plenty of comics that I find NOT IN THE LEAST BIT FUNNY (Andrew Dice Clay, anyone?), whose comedy is racist or sexist. But of all the comics to call out for not doing comedy to our standards, people are choosing to pick out a lesbian?
So, her show wasn’t to your liking or to your style (I watched it on the recommendation like a friend and was also lukewarm about it - but the same friend thinks Outlander is hot, and I just find it disturbing, so we don’t all share the same taste).
Different Strokes was a bad show. Honestly, it just blew. It’s a go-to example for the “Very Special Episode” thing because it was so ham-handed. the point being made is simply that comedy is not necessarily non-stop laughter.
Hannah Gadsby is a natural outcome of the confessional style of standup, the dominant trend in standup today.
Over the last 20 years or so, standup has been strongly moving towards the sort of comedy Louis CK mastered, which is laying bare the inner weaknesses and foibles of the comedian her/himself. This is more than just making fun of oneself, it’s being extraordinary honest and raw. The comedian seeks to be both authentic and to achieve a level of audience discomfort with the level of honesty they present.Gadsby is not some outlier in comedy; this is a very commons style today. If you’re surprised someone would do this, you aren’t watching much standup. I have literally seen scores of comics who try to do this, to varying levels of alarming discomfort and skill. Believe me, Gadsby is good. When you’re watchin g a guy go on and on without saying anything very funny about being raped by his piano teacher when he was 8, and you realize it’s the third comic in a row like that (yes I really saw this) you start to appreciate Hannah Gadsby.
Is this something you have to like? Absolutely not. I personally don’t like it. Many successful comedians don’t like it. Some comics are good at it and some suck at it and you don’t have to like the good ones, just as you don’t have to like prop comics or comics who do their whole set about being gay or comics who do 100% battle of the sexes humour or insult comics or political comics. It is however a legitimate, common, respected type of comedy; saying it’s not comedy is like saying jazz isn’t music because you don’t like jazz.
