Vulture did a long take asking how funny comedy has to be. Much of the discussion is around Hannah Gadsby. LINK <http://www.vulture.com/2018/09/post-comedy-how-funny-does-comedy-need-to-be.html>
On Fri, Aug 31, 2018 at 11:07 PM Steve Timko <steveti...@gmail.com> wrote: > There’s been no discussion of Hannah Gadsby’s “Nanette” so I thought I’d > get it started. > This is a Netflix show billed as standup comedy and Gadsby recounts her > life as a lesbian in Tasmania, Australia. It includes the standard stories > of being marginalized as well as horrific accounts of being beaten and > raped. I follow many comedians and comedy performers on Twitter and my feed > was buzzing with praise for the show a few months ago. It was perfectly > timed for the #MeToo movement. It has won several awards, including a best > standup show award from the comedy festival in Montreal. > Vox described it thusly: > “Nanette is nominally a standup special, but it is so meta and so > thoughtful about the issues inherent to standup comedy as a genre that it > seems to break through those boundaries: It is funny, and it is > uncomfortable, and it is immensely moving. And since its premiere on > Netflix in June, it has become wildly critically acclaimed.” > My feelings are more ambivalent. While Gadsby is a skilled comedian, my > biggest problem is calling it a standup special. For me, there’s an > especially poignant moment when Gadsby reveals an unexpected twist about > her mother. But too much of the rest is anger and rage. There’s no comedy > at the core. Richard Pryor dealt with social issues; Sam Kinison raged with > the best of them. But it was built around comedy. I think if I went in > expecting a one-person show, I would have liked it better. A bigger problem > that I’ve had is that she performed this show dozens of times before she > recorded the Netflix special and apparently now more than a hundred times > altogether. When she summons the rage and anger like she does in “Nanette,” > it’s no longer an honest, soul-revealing moment for me if she’s done it so > much. It’s artful manipulation. I’m sure Pryor told his childhood stories > thousands of times, but the fact it was built around comedy kept it > believable. > Michael Che of “Saturday Night Live” fame criticized the show on his > Instagram account and other places. Che has since deleted all of his > Instagram posts. He was used by a couple of conservative publications to > attack the show. > This is some of what Che wrote: > “ya know some critics say rape jokes arent funny. but you know whats > DEFINITELY not funny? rape stories. just flat out, fully detailed rape > stories. I dunno about you, but that hasnt made me laugh once.” > Che also wrote: > “I dont wanna have to ‘survive’ a comedy special. I wanna laugh. lets not > make this what its not.” > Another quibble is that Gadsby targets white males for the oppression of > LGBT and for the violence against her. Clearly white males are a strong > influence in the world’s culture. But I wonder how her perspective might > have changed if she didn’t live in a country that is 90 percent white. > Tasmania, being situated south of the populated cities, may be even whiter. > A few years ago I visited Los Angeles and a group of us were going to > dinner. I suggested Chinese or Thai places. A black lesbian absolutely > vetoed that. As a teen her family was forced by poverty to live near > Koreatown. The East Asian population did not wants blacks moving in. She > was harassed and sometimes beaten when she walked to the near grocery > store, which was in an Asian neighborhood. Even the store owners were rude > to her. Her mother tried to talk to the parents of the teens doing the > attacks. They weren’t sympathetic. She at first attributed it to a language > barrier, but finally her children explained that the whole community didn’t > want them there and that the adults would look the other way. The woman > suffered discrimination and brutality both because she was black and > because she was a lesbian but not at the hands of white males. > I agree with much of what Che is saying. And I think Netflix should list > it as a one-person show and not a standup special. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
