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HomeOpinionHannah Gadsby's Nanette reclaims space for women in comedy

Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette reclaims space for women in comedy

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Hannah Gadsby suggests that if her routine sounds like a diatribe against cis white men, it is so.

To call Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette a comedy show would be grossly wrong. It is a show on comedy, the genre – one that talks about the space of women in it and their right to tell stories as it happened, and not reduce their lives to punchlines.

On her final stand-up, Gadsby is the master of control and the watchers are putty. When was the last time you watched a stand-up and felt changed? Nanette gives you something to laugh about, and a minute later shows you that our laughter is the very thing that holds in place the rigid power dynamics in society. We laugh because we want to ease tension and live in denial. Because, it is easier to laugh at that joke about homophobia or lesbians than accept our own hate towards those on the margin.

Gadsby declares this is the end of the road for her and comedy. Because, as a lesbian woman from the Bible belt of Tasmania, and as a victim of sexual abuse and misogyny, self-deprecating jokes are not humility but humiliation. And, she is angry – anger that most women feel but can’t express. Just like any other emotion that gnaws at our throat but is suppressed because we would be called “too sensitive”. But Gadsby does not have time for that because “when is insensitivity something to strive for?”

Gadsby suggests that if her routine sounds like a diatribe against cis white men, it is so. Such men have taken the centre stage for too long. However, with more voices calling out their upper hand in everything after the #MeToo movement, men now feel afraid.

“It’s just a joke” no longer works.

Women should be able to tell their full stories, without becoming a punchline. Because, stories matter. Just like the story of the 17-year-old girl who was believed to be raped by Picasso and never got to tell her truth. And the world assumed that it does not matter because this woman supposedly could never equal Picasso’s talent.

For art enthusiasts, Nanette is a slap in the face. Artists don’t need to live through that exalted pain to be creative. Van Gogh was reportedly under medication, which is why he drew the bright yellow sunflowers. And Picasso may have got it right with Cubism, but he was far from being a great man because he hurt others.

With assault and rape allegations being levelled against Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Picasso and Harvey Weinstein, people’s first response has been: ‘we need to separate art from the artist’. But the answer to ‘what do we do with the art of monstrous men’ is simple – chuck it. Picasso’s doodles would not be worth anything without his name on it.

On a side note, if you want to see the art of powerful women, see the paintings of Artemisia Gentileschi. A Renaissance painter from Italy, she drew Judith slaying Holofernes in the 17th century, wherein the Biblical characters were replaced by her story. Gentileschi is Judith and she beheads not Holofernes, but the man who raped her, her tutor and artist Agostino Tassi.

(Galileo was Gentileschi’s friend, so the blood spurting out of Holofernes follows parabolic projectiles, something Galileo had just discovered at the time.)

Like Gadsby, Gentileschi needed to tell her story and did.

Because “there is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself”.

Nanette leaves one crying, laughing and wondering. It’s a show like no other, it doesn’t fit in a genre – exactly how Gadsby wanted it.

It makes one think about the Indian comedy scene, which is also male dominated. At Rajeev Masand’s recent round table for comedians, there was only one woman comic. What a shame that we still don’t buy enough tickets to go see women do stand-up or can’t take the feminism because ‘hey I came to laugh, not to introspect’.

India needs a Nanette. A transformative hour.

As my college roommate’s poster read: In theatre, blood is ketchup. In performance, everything is real.

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