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The Killjoy Comedian: Hannah Gadsby's Nanette

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2020

SARAH BALKIN
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Abstract

In her 2017 show Nanette, Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby announced that she was quitting comedy. In the show, Gadsby argued that as a marginalized person – a gender-nonconforming lesbian from rural Tasmania – she was doing herself a disservice when she invited audiences to laugh at her trademark self-deprecating humour. Gadsby framed her decision to quit comedy partly as a problem of persona: her practice as a comedian was to take actual, sometimes traumatic, events from her life and turn them into jokes, which she described as ‘half-told stories’. So framed, the problem with Gadsby's comic persona is the way it both presents and truncates her traumatic experience. When she refuses to be funny, Gadsby casts herself as something like Sara Ahmed's ‘feminist killjoy’, a spoilsport figure whose unhappiness positions her as a source of tension. In this article I consider how Gadsby's decision to quit comedy, and the terms in which she articulates that decision in Nanette, can help us think about varied modes of humourlessness and comic possibility.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 72 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2020

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References

Notes

1 There were changes to the show over this period; for instance, its Melbourne International Comedy Festival incarnation coincided with Australia's Marriage Equality Law Postal Survey, a widely criticized initiative that purportedly gauged public support for marriage equality. In the version of Nanette I saw in Melbourne, Gadsby discussed the postal survey, comparing it to virulent public debates over the decriminalization of homosexuality during Gadsby's childhood in rural Tasmania (the last Australian state to decriminalize in 1997). By the time I saw the show in New York, the postal survey was less relevant and had been cut, though the discussion of Tasmania remained. The Netflix special – inevitably the version on record – likewise excises the postal survey and retains Tasmania. Quotations from and descriptions of Nanette refer to the Netflix version unless otherwise indicated. Nanette was staged in two venues at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, moving to a larger one when it was extended. Hannah Gadsby, Nanette, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne, 18 April 2017; Gadsby, Nanette, Comedy Theatre, MICF, Melbourne, 29 April 2017; Gadsby, Nanette, SoHo Playhouse, New York, 27 March 2018; Gadsby, Nanette, Netflix, 19 June 2018.

2 I found this discussion ahistorical and reductive, but Gadsby's related point about reputation is well made: Picasso's paintings are not expensive because of how objectively great they are; they are expensive because Picasso painted them; therefore we separate the man from his art only selectively.

3 On the myth that women are humourless see, for example, Gray, Frances, Women and Laughter (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 8.

4 Ahmed, Sara, The Promise of Happiness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Berlant, Lauren and Ngai, Sianne, ‘Comedy Has Issues’, Critical Inquiry, 43, 2 (2017), pp. 233–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here pp. 236, 240.

6 Ibid., p. 241. Berlant makes this link to Ahmed's feminist killjoy concept explicit in a 2019 interview. See Charlie Markbreiter, ‘Can't Take a Joke’, The New Inquiry (blog), 22 March 2019, at https://thenewinquiry.com/cant-take-a-joke, accessed 26 April 2019.

7 Berlant, Lauren, ‘Humorlessness (Three Monologues and a Hairpiece)’, Critical Inquiry, 43, 2 (2017), pp. 305–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here pp. 309, 313; and Markbreiter, ‘Can't Take a Joke’.

8 Berlant and Ngai, ‘Comedy Has Issues’, p. 245. See also Luis Gomez, ‘7 Famous Comedians Who Said Political Correctness Is Killing Comedy’, San Diego Union-Tribune, 22 September 2017, at www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversation/sd-mel-brooks-comedians-say-political-correctness-killing-comedy-20170922-htmlstory.html, accessed 30 May 2019.

9 Limon, Josh, Stand-Up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), p. 117CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Gilbert, Joanne R., Performing Marginality: Humor, Gender, and Cultural Critique (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004), p. 140Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., p. 141.

12 Jennifer Reed, ‘Sexual Outlaws: Queer in a Funny Way’, Women's Studies, 6 (2011), pp. 762–77, here p. 771. On the many possible meanings of and relations to self-deprecation see, for example, Gilbert, Performing Marginality; Deveau, Danielle Jeanine, ‘Navigating the Boys' Club: Debra DiGiovanni and the Performative Strategy of Comic Self-Deprecation’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 19, 5 (2016), pp. 535–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Tomsett, Ellie, ‘Positives and Negatives: Reclaiming the Female Body and Self-Deprecation in Stand-Up Comedy’, Comedy Studies, 9, 1 (2018), pp. 6–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 See Emily McManus, ‘How Hannah Gadsby Broke Comedy’, TED Blog, 18 April 2019, at https://blog.ted.com/how-hannah-gadsby-broke-comedy, accessed 6 June 2019.

14 Maxim Boon, ‘Hannah Gadsby on Quitting Comedy, Her Identity Crisis and Finding Inner Peace’, The Music, 7 March 2017, at http://themusic.com.au/interviews/all/2017/03/07/hannah-gadsby-nanette-maxim-boon, accessed 9 February 2019.

15 Yasmin Nair, ‘No, No, Nanette: Hannah Gadsby, Trauma, and Comedy as Emotional Manipulation’, Evergreen Review, at https://evergreenreview.com/read/your-laughter-is-my-trauma, accessed 22 March 2019.

16 Seanna Cronin, ‘Josh Not Ready to Grow Up Quite Yet in Please Like Me’, Fraser Coast Chronicle, at www.frasercoastchronicle.com.au/news/josh-not-ready-grow-quite-yet-please-me/3107685, accessed 25 June 2018.

17 Josh Thomas, ‘Ham’, Please Like Me, Season 2, Episode 2, 19 August 2014, accessed via Netflix June 2018. Subsequent quotations from Please Like Me are from this episode.

18 Uptalk is commonly said to have spread rapidly from the Pacific Rim region, with Australian, New Zealand and California Valley Girl English often named among its sources. See Warren, Paul, Uptalk: The Phenomenon of Rising Intonation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While in the US it is stereotypically feminine, this is questionable in Australia, where uptalk is widespread. See also Joseph C. Tyler, ‘Expanding and Mapping the Indexical Field: Rising Pitch, the Uptalk Stereotype, and Perceptual Variation’, Journal of English Linguistics, 43, 4 (2015), pp. 284–310, here p. 287, at https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424215607061, accessed 8 February 2019.

19 Critchley, Simon, On Humour (New York and London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 4Google Scholar, 5.

20 Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, p. 67.

21 For a scathing critique of Nanette by a woman see Nair, ‘No, No, Nanette’. Here we might also distinguish responses by Nanette’s international mediatized Netflix audience from those of its live audiences. A full analysis of the differences between the live and Netflix iterations of Nanette is outside the scope of this essay, though I discuss them when relevant.

22 Ryan Reed, ‘Watch Hannah Gadsby Talk Failed Comedy Exit Strategy on “Fallon”’, Rolling Stone, 26 July 2018, at www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-news/watch-hannah-gadsby-talk-failed-comedy-exit-strategy-on-fallon-703869, accessed 25 January 2019.

23 Ian Royall, ‘Comedy Festival 2017: Hannah Gadsby, Nanette’, Herald Sun, 6 April 2017, at www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/arts/comedy-festival-2017-hannah-gadsbys-nanette-is-a-bittersweet-farewell-from-a-muchadmired-artist/news-story/85731f19fc7cb4859d08b6e870a5742f, accessed 19 April 2017.

24 Erin Jensen, ‘Louis C.K.’s Comeback Performance Sparks Criticism from Fellow Comics’, 28 August 2018, at www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2018/08/28/louis-c-k-performs-comedy-cellar-sexual-misconduct-claims/1118659002, accessed 1 February 2018. On rape culture in stand-up see also Christopher A. Medjesky's discussion of the controversy that erupted when American comedian Daniel Tosh, who often tells rape jokes, responded to a female heckler by telling the audience, ‘Wouldn't it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now?’ Medjesky, Christopher A., ‘How Can Rape Be Funny?: Comic Persona, Irony, and the Limits of Rape Jokes’, in Meier, Matthew R. and Schmitt, Casey R., eds., Standing Up, Speaking Out: Stand-Up Comedy and the Rhetoric of Social Change (New York and London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 195–212Google Scholar, here p. 195.

25 See, for example, BWW News Desk, ‘Hannah Gadsby's NANETTE Extends Off-Broadway’, Broadway World, 30 April 2018, at www.broadwayworld.com/off-broadway/article/Hannah-Gadsbys-NANETTE-Extends-Off-Broadway-20180430, accessed 1 February 2019.

26 Reed, ‘Watch Hannah Gadsby Talk Failed Comedy Exit Strategy on “Fallon”’.

27 See Goddard, Cliff, ‘“Lift Your Game, Martina!”: Deadpan Jocular Irony and the Ethnopragmatics of Australian English’, in Goddard, Cliff, ed., Ethnopragmatics: Understanding Discourse in Cultural Context (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2006), pp. 65–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 68.

28 Leigh Sales, ‘Comedian Hannah Gadsby Talks to 7.30 about SSM, Abuse and Quitting Comedy’, ABC News, 15 September 2017, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbjbTb3s6Xo, accessed 24 February 2018.

29 The talk was moderated by New York Times gender editor Jessica Bennett. ‘TimesTalks: Jill Soloway + Hannah Gadsby’, YouTube, 16 October 2018, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbnwjKeBy48&t=2208s, accessed 1 February 2019.

30 Sara Ahmed, ‘Resignation Is a Feminist Issue’, Feministkilljoys, 27 August 2016, at https://feministkilljoys.com/2016/08/27/resignation-is-a-feminist-issue, accessed 24 May 2019.

31 Jenny Valentish, ‘“I Broke the Contract”: How Hannah Gadsby's Trauma Transformed Comedy’, The Guardian, 16 July 2018, at www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/jul/16/hannah-gadsby-trauma-comedy-nanette-standup-netflix, accessed 25 May 2019.

32 Billig, Michael, Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Laughter (London: Sage, 2005), p. 173Google Scholar.

33 See Aarons, Debra and Mierowsky, Marc, ‘Obscenity, Dirtiness and Licence in Jewish Comedy’, Comedy Studies, 5, 2 (2014), pp. 165–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 165, at https://doi.org/10.1080/2040610X.2014.967017, accessed 10 February 2019.

34 Andrea Greenbaum, ‘Stand-Up Comedy as Rhetorical Argument: An Investigation of Comic Culture’, Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 12, 2 (1999), pp. 33–46, here p. 33, at https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.1999.12.1.33, accessed 7 May 2019.

35 Hannah Gadsby, ‘I'LL SETTLE THIS: my show is NOT stand up comedy because i got jack of an art form designed by men for men. Female artists often defy genre’, @hannahgadsby, 2 November 2017, at https://twitter.com/hannahgadsby/status/926127034526560258?lang=en, accessed 25 May 2019.

36 Markbreiter, ‘Can't Take a Joke’.

37 Medjesky, ‘How Can Rape Be Funny?’, p. 199.