In recent months, Netflix has become somewhat of a comedy stockpile, marked by its increasingly robust cache of comedy specials. Standup legends Sarah Silverman, Jerry Seinfeld, and Chris Rock all have a special or two on the streaming service, not to mention smaller, independent acts the likes of Ali Wong or Jo Koy.
For the most part, those specials prove that Netflix's comedian lineup are insanely talented at their jobs — they get laughs, they use tricks of the trade to get even more laughs, and at certain moments, the jokes almost seem to contain hints of wisdom; or, better to say, they let audiences peek into the traumatic experiences from where those jokes originated.
Nanette, The Comedy Special To Change All Comedy Specials Forever
But Nanette, Netflix's latest comedy special by Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby, deserves a different category altogether. It's a typical hour of standup — there are jokes, and then there are more jokes, and then even more jokes after that. But halfway through the show, the atmosphere shifts dramatically — at first Gadsby makes her audience laugh. But then she turns the tables and becomes the audience. She becomes the one watching them as they laugh, and then she begins to ask why we laugh, or how comedy, as a shared experience, is often unable to bring out our true stories.
The Limits Of Comedy
Nanette is a comedy, that much is true. But it also asks why it's a comedy. Boldly, it asks why we even do comedy at all. Gadsby is not that naive, however. She has built a career on comedy. She knows what jokes will work, and she knows how to tell a traumatic story to get laughs.
Jokes, she says, have two parts — a question and an answer. A setup and a punchline. The setup builds the tension, and the punchline releases it. The more unexpected the release of the tension, the funnier the joke will be.
"That's my job. I make you all feel tense, then I make you laugh, and you're like, 'ah, thanks for that, I was feeling a bit tense.' I MADE you tense, this is an abusive relationship," Gadsby says.
Jokes, however, are very different from stories, which Gadsby explains have three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. The end is the most important part of a story, she goes on to say, because it is where introspection can occur. It is when we get time to think, to contemplate the aftermath of our experiences.
But to tell a joke, you are required to leave out some parts, she explains.
So, Gadsby brings out a couple of her jokes from earlier in the set. These, about her realizing she hasn't come out as a lesbian to her grandmother yet, and being mistaken for a man by another aggressive man who was all but ready to beat her up, initially ended in punchlines, to uproarious laughter. But Gadsby tells the whole story. The second time they're told, properly and in full, no one dared to laugh.
Comedy, According To 'Nanette'
Nanette is game-changing work. It is the kind of searing, envelope-pushing genius that unravels the pitfalls of a thing, in this case comedy. Later in the special, Gadsby says that with comedy, she has learned how to crystallize her own trauma, package it in a neat setup-and-punchline format, and exploit it repeatedly for laughter. But she's simply not going to do it anymore. Unsurprisingly, she is quitting comedy altogether.
Nanette is the kind of work that'll inevitably affect all other works like it, even though it bears no direct relationship to them. It's high time that's happened. As an art form, comedy rarely gets questioned. Should certain things be censored? Are gay jokes funny? Are Holocaust jokes funny? Are rape jokes okay? It's hard to imagine anyone has a clear answer to those questions, but surely if a joke gets a laugh, then it's funny, right? — and "funny," by the way, is the only currency comedy considers legitimate. Never mind if a joke is about assault, power imbalances, or racism; never mind if it points a finger at the marginalized and exploits their pain for a little bit of laughter. If it's funny, it's funny.
Right?
Nanette is now streaming on Netflix.
