Rethinking Comedy with Nanette...and other things

1. So here and there various people were recommending this Austrialian stand-up comedy routine, filmed in the Sydney Opera House, entitle Hannah Gadsbys Nanette. [NPR Link, because Firefox decided the Washington Post Link was insecure and wouldn't let me link to it in DW.]

I'd been ignoring it for the most part. I don't tend to like a lot of stand-up comedy. I find it isolating and a lot of it is "humiliation" comedy, which doesn't work for me. Although, the self-deprecation style of comedy does work...and I admittedly use it myself, mainly as a defense mechanism that I've developed over time to keep the biting dogs at bay.

But, after about fifteen-twenty people on FB rec'd it, and a couple on DW. I thought, alrighty then, let's check this puppy out...

And...


Oh My Ghod. Whoa. This blew my mind.

From the Washington Post article I read, which convinced me to watch it finally...

Here's the link - assuming it works: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2018/07/03/why-hannah-gadsbys-netflix-special-nanette-is-so-remarkable/?utm_term=.1d2ebedcc667

The first half of “Nanette” falls more within the boundaries of a traditional special, with jokes about penicillin, identity and growing up “a little bit lesbian” in conservative Tasmania. (“I don’t even think lesbian is the right identity for me,” she quips. “I identify as tired.”) But midway through, Gadsby starts methodically dissecting how comedy works to explain why she needs to quit stand-up altogether.

“I built a career out of self-deprecation, and I don’t want to do that anymore,” she says. “Because you do understand what self -deprecation means from somebody who already exists in the margins? It’s not humility. It’s humiliation.”

You’ll laugh, but you also may cry several times while watching “Nanette.” It’s not a comedy special that offers escapist laughs but, instead, demands that the audience not shy away from considering harsh truths.

Weeks after the show premiered on Netflix, fellow comedians are still buzzing about the hour and how it calls into question the common comedic devices performers have relied upon for so long.

“I’ve been a professional comic for 30 years. I’ve been studying comedy for even longer. I thought I had seen everything … until I watched Nanette,” tweeted comedian Kathy Griffin. “I was blown away. I urge you to watch it ASAP – one hour and it’ll change your life.”

“This is one of the most incredible, powerful, wrenching pieces of comedy and art I have ever seen,” tweeted comedian Aparna Nancherla.

Yeah, I'd agree with pretty much all of the above. I was sobbing by the end of it. Very cathartic by the way.

She starts out with the jokes, and then gradually begins to deconstruct them, explaining what comedy does and how in it's current state it undercuts the story being told. Mainly because comedy is just a beginning and a middle...we never get the end, because the end would kill the joke. We aren't really united in our laughter, anymore than we are in our anger. Blind rage unites people in blind hate..and it's not constructive. And comedy enables bad behavior if used improperly to cut tension. It should be used as the honey to help digest a painful tale.

Our stories are what is important. Sharing as many different perspectives as possible...connecting to each other through them.

I'm not relating any of this very well. I fear I do not possess the right words. Just watch it, if you can. You will not be the same afterwards. I'm still reeling from it. It's made rethink a few things, such as art, how I relate to artists, whether we can separate the artist from their work, and how we handle and deal with comedy and anger.

Best thing I've seen in a while.

2. Suits

I watched the pilot...again. Okay, I never really made it through the pilot when it first aired because at that time, which was about five or six years ago, I still had a bug up my but regarding law and law degrees...etc. Now? I don't care anymore. My lawyer issues are sort of kaput. Age and experience does heal old wounds or they just fade away and you wonder why whatever it was that bugged you five years ago did. The things that made me crazy in 2009-2014, no longer do. It's funny, but true. They seem oddly trivial.

Anyhow, having watched the pilot with fresh eyes -- I rather like it. It holds up well and could have easily been written this year (well except for the fact that it stars a young Meghan Merkal as a paralegal, and she's since left the series to marry Prince Harry of England. No, you can't make this stuff up -- it really happened, last month in fact.) It's a pseudo-satire on the New York legal profession, specifically law firms in NYC. And how they place a lot of importance on well...which school someone went to, how well they did on the Bar Exam, if they can test well, etc. Megan plays an excellent paralegal who never became an attorney because she can't take tests. She bombed the LSATs.
While one of the leads is a con-artist who passed the Bar without going to law school, because he tests remarkably well, but lacks her knowledge and critical thinking skills. He's good at other things that make him a good lawyer. Reminded me of what a fellow law student once said ages ago -- that law school was BS, what they should do is give everyone an apprenticeship with an attorney and learn by doing. Instead of sitting in some lecture hall listening to someone and taking a stupid test. Practicing law has zip to do with that. He's right -- it has zip to do with that. This show basically proves his point and makes fun of the whole law school/Bar Exam/join big firm bit.

Characters are likable. The satire light. And the issues topical. If it had been filmed today or begun now...I have a feeling it would have a far more diverse cast. (Not two white guys as the leads.)

3. Happy 4th everyone who celebrates. We defeated one tyrant, with any hope, we'll see the defeat of another soon enough.

I'm chilling here in NYC. It's overcast. In the upper 80s and very muggy. So feels like the 90s and my allergies are beating me up. Did a little cleaning. Liking the quiet. Took a walk -- to the pharmacy and snuck pictures of gardens hidden behind hedges. Being outside -- was enough to convince me not to stay outside.

Meetups had a huge picnic in Prospect Park with over 130 people attending and I thought, eh, no. I'm a quiet sensitive soul...crowds scare me. Particularly crowds where I don't know anyone.

(no subject)

1. Someone is setting off illegal fireworks behind me, every once and a while the sky lights up with explosions of color. (No, it's not the fireworks over the East River -- I'm too far away, plus why bother -- I get to see explosions every once and a while light up the sky outside my living room window from the comfort of my armchair. Also with the fireflies.) I've seen the big fireworks display in NYC several times, it's okay. I liked the one in Martha's Vineyard better. Location is 98% of it.
And comfort.

2. John Scalzi recommended The Hollow on his blog -- so I tried it out. It's okay. Kid's cartoon about three kids who find themselves in a sealed room with just an old fashioned type-writer. No clue who they are, how they got there, or why. Nor do they have any idea where they came from. One white boy, one black boy, and one Asian girl. So..all bases covered, I guess. For once, I'd like to see two girls and one guy in these things. You can tell men wrote it.

Anyhow after a bit of whining, worrying, and freaking out -- someone finally decides to try the type-writer, sort of by accident actually, and clue arises on how to escape the room. They do eventually, only to run into one dangerous trap after another.

Each kid has special skills, one is super-strong, one can talk to animals, and one is mechanical (can fix anything mechanical -- so a born engineer, and he's incredibly annoying, so apparently the writers have had experiences with mechanical engineers? Think Howard from Big Bang Theory to the third power, with no memory).

I feel like I've seen it before...but can't quite place where. (I've admittedly watched a lot of cartoons and anime in my life time.)

I do however agree with Scalzi...cartoons and anime have really evolved since I was a kid. It's sort of annoying. The best we could hope for back in the 1970s and 80s was well Scooby Doo Where Are You and all it's rip-offs of which there were many, and the Looney Tunes Cartoons (which were heavily edited for content). No, that's not true -- there were a few bright spots, but you had to know where to find them -- such as School House Rock, Kimba : the White Lion, Battle of the Planets...and well, Voltron (which was formerly Battle of the Planets), also Speed Racer (But this was "early" anime and nowhere near the quality of the stuff that came out in the 1990s.) We also got reruns of a Beatles Cartoon (which was sort a precursor to the Monkeeys (not a cartoon), Jackson 5 cartoon, and Superfriends (a precursor to Justice League and nowhere near the quality of Justice League on any level.) My favorite was actually the short-lived Drac Pack -- about three friends who fought crime by turning into monsters, because they were the sons of monsters so had it in their DNA with the Drac Mobile. I thought it was clever and entertaining.

Kids today are spoiled on content. Actually, I thought they were spoiled in the 1990s.

I mean I remember in the 1980s hunting for anime, and not finding it. Didn't find it until the 1990s and even then I had to hunt through the racks of independent video stores. Occasionally I'd find something in Blockbusters (which was decimated by Netflix -- I foresaw that.) Oh, prior to Netflix, I took an advertising/marketing course and we had to come up with a good idea. This was way back in 1990 or thereabouts. And I pitched that you send movies to people in the mail and they send them back. Nobody saw it as a viable idea -- because how were you going to ship a VHS tape to and from someone in the mail without it getting damaged? VHS tapes were easy to screw up. Also what would keep them from copying the tape and stealing the content. (You could copy VHS tapes back then.) I remember thinking...well if we could come up with something smaller say the size of a floppy disk, it would not be a problem. Or better yet just download from the TV.

I admittedly read a lot of sci-fi back then, including Ray Bradbury, who predicted huge flat screen television screens and downloadable content.

25-30 years later....guess what? VHS is defunct. We have DVDs which are rapidly becoming defunct, and you can download everything and store it in the cloud.

We live in Ray Bradbury's universe. Not sure this is a good thing. He didn't exactly write positive stories.

3. Speaking of dark sci-fi...I tried to watch BladeRunner 2049 -- I'll say this much for it, it's pretty. But everyone in it is expressionless and it's told through a white straight guy's perspective, so of course, there's a lot of fetishing of women and/or objectifying of women. Which I've grown weary of. The first film was so much better, not as pretty, but gritter, and pulled you in from the get go. I don't care about Ryan Gosling's character in this nor do I have the faintest idea what his name was after watching thirty minutes of it. (I'm wondering if the film would have pulled me in faster if I found Ryan Gosling appealing -- I don't. The actor does nothing for me. His appeal is completely lost on me for some reason.) It's also incredibly slow pacing wise. Like watching something underwater.

While the first film, BladeRunner, was amazing. It gripped me from start to finish. And ranks as one of my all time favorite sci-fi films. Which may be another problem with the sequel -- BladeRunner 2049, I loved the original.

As far as special effects go...it's hard to be that impressed by BladeRunner 2049...after watching an episode of Altered Carbon or The Expanse. I mean..it's no better, if anything those two have better special effects. And storywise? Ditto.

While the original came out before all that...it was ground-breaking in its special effects, it had done new things, and looked different. Now, the look the first film created has been copied across various sci-fi films and television shows.

Add to all of this...Rutger Hauer was the best thing in the first film. Not Harrison Ford. Not Scean Young. But Hauer, Daryl Hannah, and various others -- who did not get to come back in the sequel.
An older Harrison Ford (much older, he wasn't exactly young in the first one) and Ryan Gosling just don't cut it.

I was bored and slightly annoyed by the blatant fetishing of women, and gave up after thirty minutes.
I'll probably watch Altered Carbon and The Expanse instead.