Although I found all of the concepts within the different readings interesting and applicable, the one that really stood out to me was the article titled "Hannah Gadsby: On the Limits of Satire" written and told by Rebecca Krefting. Within this piece, the author expands on the concepts that comedian Hannah Gadsby has dealt with in her stand-up shows, which contain an array of different pressing social justice issues. It is said that Gadsby had chosen in the past to use forms of satirical comedy in order to elicit laughs from her audience, but as time went on, Hannah Gadsby began to unravel the many harmful and ongoing twists and turns there are when it comes to trying to successfully present yourself as someone who you are not. Additionally, it is said that the comedian oftentimes uses strategies such as self deprecatory humor because "as a lesbian, gender "nonnormal", woman performing comedy, she intentionally devalues her skills as a practitioner, as a society has taught her to do in order to command the power that comedy demands." (Krefting 94) I find this to be rather interesting, because I feel like so often within our society there is a constant discussion of what kind of woman is "too much" or too little"
A perfect example of someone who contradicts this kind of talk that comes to mind for me, is American politician and activist, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Representative AOC is someone who consistently is scrutinized in the public eye (on one side more than the other), for being a woman who does not succumb to all of the bitter and negative things that are said about her, but rather continues on choosing to express herself and her viewpoints in oder to evoke change for the betterment of our society.
Hello
ReplyDeleteYou do a great job of analyzing the Krefting article and looking at what Hannah Gadsby had to go through within the comedian community. In the last line of your first paragraph, you stated this idea of how society depicts women as being too much or too little which I found to be really interesting. A lot of times when women are in places of power society finds ways to belittle them and diminish their accomplishments in an attempt to bring them down. One example of this that I think also can relate to your example of AOC and Hannah Gadsby is Taylor Swift. She started off her career in country music and once she started to gain popularity received a lot of backlash. She is criticized for only writing break-up songs and switching her genres but she argues that men do the same and are not criticized for it. At first, she tried to appease her critics but she soon realized that no matter what she did they always complained about her and stopped succumbing to their wants but now she sings and does what she wants and often will even poke fun at the media within her music.