Who watched Nanette on Netflix or elsewhere by Hannah Gadsby?

Cafe Society
61

But that’s not what I’m saying, or objecting to, at all ? I’m merely trying to express why, after the dust of the show settled down and I started to think about it rather than just rawfeel it, I did feel… well “wronged” or “used” are ten shades too dramatic words to use, but something in that ball-park - only very diluted obviously.

I’m not sure how much better I can try and express this. Like, OK : imagine I’m your friend (it’s all right, it’s just pretend, you can go back to thinking I’m an asshole at the end of the post I promise). And unbeknownst to you I’m going through some shit and I really need to get this Real Shit off my chest.
Now there are plenty of valid, socially accepted ways I can unload Real Shit on you, mate. I could be all detached and disengaged and you’d ask me “hey is something wrong ?” and I’d say “I don’t want to talk about it” but really I’m hoping you’re going to insist we talk about it. Or I could just say “Hey, there’s something I need to say to you, can we Talk ?”, with that sort of hesitant, sort of serious, sort of pleading tone - you know the one. And that would be OK too, because we’re friends, and all those verbal and non-verbal cues act as a warning to you that you’re about to receive a dose of the Real Shit, which lets you prepare yourself to deal with it emotionally - or even opt out (in which case I don’t think we ever were really friends :(). That’s half of my part of the social contract ; the other being that I then have to be there for you when you have some Real Shit of your own to unload. That’s how friendships work.
And comedy usually works the same : sometimes amidst the barrage of dick jokes the comedian has some Real Shit to get off their chest, but before getting to the meat of said Real Shit they’ll cue you in to what’s about to happen by changes in rhythms and tones and so on ; and they’ll lighten the emotional burden of what they’re saying by sprinkling jokes throughout the Real Shit. And typically they’ll conclude the Real Shit bit with some feel-good bullshit for your benefit (“It’s chaos, be kind”). And that’s ha-ha-only-serious comedy : the comedian and the audience connecting to process some Real Shit together. And maybe all the audience gets out of it is laughing at jokes, maybe everybody grows even a little bit. Kumbafuckingya.
I’m not saying you have to follow that formula, btw. Christopher Titus’ Norman Rockwell Is Bleeding is pretty much wall-to-wall Real Shit of his, from the word go to the last punchline - but it’s an amazing trainwreck to watch and I dare anyone to not crack up throughout. I’m saying that’s the general shape of the deal with a comedy show, the give-and-take. “I’ll help you with your Real Shit, but I gotta be able to laugh with you”.

But now imagine I’m your friend still, but instead of talking to you about my Real Shit, I invite you to dinner with our friends at my place. And beer is drunk, and fun is had, and Kevin did his DeNiro impression and everything’s going good, and I go “And now there’s ice cream for dessert ! Who’s up for ice cream ?! I’ve got chocolate, vanilla, and ROBERT RAPED ME”. And then I fill the shocked silence with graphic descriptions of Robert beating me, getting increasingly more intense and emotional. Then when I’m done I storm off and slam the door, leaving you, my friends, to deal with and process this shit on your confused, angry, teary, heartbroken own.

Now maybe at this point in the scenario you think that it was some dark truth that just *needed *to come out, or I was drunk and lost my filter, and maybe you’re even more moved by the outburst because you think you just witnessed me, your friend, completely losing my shit and breaking down on live television and you really need to help me. But when you come to talk to me about it later I tell you that nope, it was my little setup, in fact the outburst was the reason I invited you all to dinner in the first place and I deliberately fucked with all your heads and sent you from a safe place straight into emotional Fallujah because Reasons.

Now if I did that, be honest, would you still be friends with me ? Wouldn’t you at least think I’m a bit of a manipulative arse ? That I maybe could have tackled the Real Shit differently, in ways that would have been more fair to you, the friends I’m supposed to care about ? And the $5000 question : would you happily come the next time I invited you guys to dinner :slight_smile: ?

That’s the paradigm, to me. It’s not that she “did comedy wrong”. It’s that she fucked with the program in ways that I don’t feel are OK from an ethical standpoint. She makes the audience feel at ease, the better to land a big ol’ uppercut right in the feels without warning - and then even outright says something like “you need to feel that bad, because I do”.
And that ain’t cool, man.

62

And that’s part of my point. There have always been comics whose brand of comedy you might not find funny. There have always been comics I don’t find funny. You might find it preachy, or offensive. That goes back to the purpose of a court jester (if you want even older than Different Strokes) And it suddenly occurs to you NOW that not every comic practices comedy in the way you approve? Because an Australian lesbian does an hour than you don’t find funny and which preaches at you?

63

Wasn’t ADC basically shunned for his comedy for several years? I have no experience with him but I still hear podcasts today that talk about him as if he was the prequel to Donald Trump.

64

I would say that a VSE of the show isn’t a comedy. The show as a whole may be classified as a comedy but a music-less spoken word track on a rock album is not a rock song and an interstitial poem in a novel is not prose just because it has prose on both sides. But trying to hammer in a comparison to an episodic show is weak from the start. A rock album can be a rock album despite one of the tracks being traditional folk, even if you acknowledge that the track in question isn’t rock. The bulk of a sitcom’s catalog can be a comedy even if you acknowledge that an episode or two didn’t actually have comedy as its main function but rather Very Important Drama to teach a lesson. Gadsby can be a comedian even if this particular piece isn’t so much comedy as a Very Special Episode using some comedy as an entry point.

65

What makes the “friends” more important to be protected from Real Shit than a person who has been traumatised by criminal conduct’s need to offload?

There often seems to be this “tone” online that nobody should do anything that upsets somebody else (even if they are being absurd in their “upset” by complaining about trivia like the colour of somebody’s socks at a wedding).

Shit happens. Sometimes there’s drama and it happens when you aren’t “prepared” for it. If it’s too much, you can leave. These “friends” could have stood up, said “we don’t want to hear about your problems, serve the dessert and can we please go back to having a nice time because we are so self-absorbed that all we want is our own comfort” or just have walked out. Personally, I consider the trauma of a rape victim to be higher than “we just want to eat our roast beef with drama” to understand the “inappropriate” venting.

Same with the show. People could have left, or switched off the computer if watching on-line.

I don’t understand where this “we must be insulated from everything we don’t like” comes from.

66

…that wasn’t the question.

This addresses the question.

So how should Netflix categorize Different Strokes to avoid people getting upset that they are watching a Very Special Episode? If the whole show is categorized as a comedy do they then need to give a special category for Very Special Episodes? Do they need to employ somebody to review every episode of every TV show and rank them according to a “jokes per hour” ratio so they can get categorized appropriately?

And there were jokes in that Very Special Episode weren’t there? So how many jokes do you need to make a comedy a comedy?

But it is a comedy. To claim its a “Very Special Episode using some comedy as an entry point” kinda makes me think you actually haven’t seen it. There is comedy from start to finish. It won awards for “best comedy.” I laughed out loud for almost the entire show. There are some long bits where I didn’t laugh. But the blurb for Nanette said “Australian comic Hannah Gadsby reshapes standard stand-up by pairing punchlines with personal revelations on gender, sexuality and childhood turmoil” and that is exactly what we got.

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[Edit: Actually, I don’t care that much]

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…it was literally an answer to a question that I didn’t ask. So no it wasn’t “appropriate.”

Claiming a comedy routine isn’t a comedy routine because of it has a few serious bits is stupid. Its a terrible claim.

Schindler’s List is correctly categorized as a drama despite the presence of a few jokes. Just like Nanette is correctly categorized as a comedy despite the presence of a few serious bits. You do realize that you are making my point for me don’t you?

69

As I said, I disagree but I don’t really give enough of a shit to go in tedious circles about it. Enjoy your “comedy” :slight_smile:

70

Maybe her show needs an extra warning label for those men whose outrage is triggered when a woman dares make them feel uncomfortable.

71

She can (and should) say what she wants. If anyone is offended or outraged then fuck them. There is an off-button and an exit door. But I really don’t think that has been the drift of this thread.

How many people have be outraged and uncomfortable? Certainly not me. A little bored and un-entertained?..perhaps.

72

What is this show “Different Strokes” that everybody seems to have heard of?

73

Why do you and **Dangerosa **apparently reflexively dismiss any criticism of the show because “she’s a lesbian woman ! She must have triggered them [del]soyboy cucks[/del]white males !” ?

I mean, I can’t speak for anyone else in the thread but for my part I’d like to remind you that this here is 2018 and many people don’t have a problem with the womyn or Teh Gheys at all. I feel like I have elucidated on my hangups with the show enough that maybe there could be some substantive points there to deal with, possibly ? Obviously unconscious bias is a thing, so if I exhibit some of that do feel free to point it out.

But if this is just recreative outrage and posturing, then I feel moved to ask COULD YOU MAYBE NOT ? It’s not helping anyone, and it doesn’t make you look good either, I assure you.

74

Whatchu talkin’ bout, Mr Shine?

75

Just a diff’rence of opinion I guess.

76

This is about the seventh time that a poster has taken this same cheap shot. If I don’t like being emotionally manipulated for effect, maybe the real problem is a deep-seated hatred of lesbians I may not even be aware of?

Andy Kaufman was another comedian who had real talent but also liked to fuck with his audiences. He was exploring what he thought was comedy and what was funny to him. One time, for a college audience, he came out on stage and did his laundry and read the newspaper. That was the whole act until everyone eventually left, booing. Andy loved it. If I had been in the audience, I would also be bitching about being fooled into thinking I was going to a comedy show. If it was a Netflix special, I would be here with another thread, lol.

So what kind of extra warning should there be? “Hannah plans to betray the audience’s trust (her words) but we don’t want to spoil the scolding!”? Actually, that would make me just want to watch it more, I’m kind of dark that way.

As Kobal2 said, she employed a cheap device to manipulate her audience for extra effect. I am not horrified, I could now care less, but fool me once…

77

What people are pointing out is that straight white men are the only demographic who have the privilege in America to go for a substantial chunk of their adult lives while never confronting art that is not for them or does not take their viewpoint into account.

Art targeted at any other group is “niche” or “genre” and is safely wrapped in codes and labels that allow straight white men to either avoid & dismiss it or emotionally gird themselves with clinical dispassion in order to engage with the art. There are chick flicks, gay musical theatre, angsty YA, black rap and all the other “genres” that are for someone else and it’s remarkably easy to go through life without having to encounter any of it if you so choose. On the other hand, there’s “mainstream” art and “mainstream” art is any art that caters the straight white male sensibility. “Mainstream” art might be about women or gayness or people of color but they are about them in the way that has to make sense to the presumed “mainstream” straight white male audience.

“Mainstream” art is unavoidable. Every other group in America has had to go through the experience of seeing themselves reflected through a lens that is unrecognizable to their day to day existence. They see themselves as straight white men see them. This happens early enough in their development and often enough since then that it becomes wholly unremarkable by adulthood. In fact, it often happens with such totality that the moments where they get to genuinely experience for the first time art that is made by them and for them from a traditionally “mainstream” source, the bracing emotional jolt hits them with such overwhelming force that they feel an outpouring of emotion in response they were totally unprepared for. This is why people have been “going nuts” over Wonder Woman and Black Panther and Get Out and Crazy Rich Asians. This is why people say “Representation Matters”.

But what these non-mainstream audiences also notice is that, now we’ve reached a point in our media landscape that straight white males are encountering art that is not made for them on a regular basis, the set of emotional responses that emerge in a response to that fall into largely predictable buckets. And one of the very predictable responses to emerge from that is to believe that, because this art is different from all the art I’ve experienced previously, something must be wrong with the art. All the previous art I’ve ever consumed was either talking to me or making great pains to let me know that it wasn’t talking to me. If this art suddenly isn’t talking to me, something must have gone wrong in the making of the art and the cause is ethics in video game journalism… um, I mean accuracy in describing how comedy routines work.

But of course, nothing is wrong with the art. Artists have been making art that isn’t for someone since art was invented. It is literally not possible to make art that isn’t for someone because art that is for everyone is not art. This is what makes Nanette so brilliant and what makes the bait and switch an essential part of the piece. Nanette is a piece that is meta and reflexive. It’s about the audience’s own realization that the target for the art is not what it is billed on the surface and the audience’s experience of the art includes moments of self-reflection as the audience absorbs it’s own reactions to the art. Simply by posting this piece, you are, in your small way contributing to the art piece of Nanette because you’re laying bare how our culture at it’s present moment is conditioned to respond to a piece like that.

So yes, I wouldn’t say you have a deep seated hatred of lesbians, at least the lesbians who “know their place” which is to exist in a sphere in which straight people are made comfortable. What I do think you have is a deep panic and sense of an eroding sense of order at people who are not willing to defer to your comfort and actively make an effort to rub in your face that there are audiences they care more about reaching than you.

78

seriously? you’ve read the comments in this thread and this is the conclusion you’ve managed to come to? You really see the world in such arrogant, black and white terms?

I can’t speak for others but I love being challenged and offended by art. I didn’t find myself challenged or offended by Hannah’s work I found it boring and preachy and not entertaining. I have heard other comedians who…shock …may have been gay as well as being women and sometimes even black if you can imagine such a thing. They have dealt with the subject in other ways that get the same point across. They offended my sensibilities and challenged my assumptions but they also did it decades ago. Her message is only new to those who weren’t listening before and they definitely do exist but I don’t think they are the ones in this thread.

Her approach is *an *approach that *may *work for some, it is very much *not *the definitive approach that now stands as a litmus test by which all humans can be judged. No art or comedy can be.

You may be one of those people who found Hannah’s approach enlightening. Good. you probably needed to hear it then. Have the humility to understand that others may have already taken all that on board and who’s dislike or disinterest in the delivery is purely aesthetic rather than political.

I have visceral dislike of Jazz and it says nothing to me and leaves me bored and annoyed. I don’t however have a dislike of the themes and subjects that Jazz pieces can speak to.
My reaction to Hannah’s piece is exactly the same.

Your post just reads as variation on the theme of “Lots of people liked it, I liked it and therefore ones who don’t must be different to me, idiots perhaps or they must hold the “wrong” views” Which, if you know anything about art, you must know is nonsense.

79

But then why even bother to interject and provide your opinion? The work was not for you, she doesn’t care if you find it boring or preachy or revelatory or any other emotion. You’re free to have those emotions but why do you feel it’s so important for your opinion to be heard? Is it because you’re so used to everything being for you that you’re now needing to air your opinions loudly so that you can try and make it for you?

There’s a bajillion things in the world that are not made for you and you correctly understand that your opinion is neither wanted nor appreciated. You don’t go into threads about children’s television and talk about how the plot is inane and the visuals are garish. You don’t go into makeup tutorials and talk about how they are irrelevant their tips are to your life. You correctly understand that your contribution in those discussions is minimal and unwanted, that your role is at most to listen and absorb.

But there are certain other spaces in which other people are trying to have discussions about issues not pertaining to straight white men that straight white men persistently try and barge into and make it about them. It’s hard for women to have a public space to talk about their personal experiences with sexual harassment without men barging in and trying to make it about them. It’s hard for POC to have conversations about racism without white people turning the conversation onto themselves. It’s a universal experience of minorities that certain groups of white people feel so threatened by conversations in which they are pointedly not invited because it is not for them that they cause all sorts of drama and hysterics to forcefully make it about them.

There is plenty of work by lesbian, black and other minority artists that is for you. They are patiently working their way to help a straight white male understand the lesbian/black/minority experience and they can be judged on whether they succeeded on their stated intentions or not. This is not that, this is pointedly not that. That’s what other people are seeing from this work that you are not.

80

Yeah, how dare you talk about a creative work in Cafe Society, you mad man! Just sit tight and someone will let you know when you’re allowed to have an opinion and post it here.