I think that the Krefting piece talking about Hannah Gadsby is really interesting in how it talks about the general ideas that we and other people place on people as part of an "identity". Gadsby does a lot to talk about not being "lesbian enough", or at least not what people have told her about what a lesbian should be or do (Krefting, 2). She layers these sincere sentiments under cleverly layered satire, I feel like calling them jokes isn't the most accurate way to classify it after seeing the special. I agree with the author's sentiment that "Gadsby believes she must dispense with satire; she fears that otherwise the public will ignore it" (Pg. 8) because there are really difficult topics laced delicately with humor or satire, that feel almost wrong to laugh at, because then it would degrade the gravity of the words themselves. She does a good job in explaining the nuance of identity categorization, or society's trouble with it, and it raises the good question of "what does it mean to be x?" or anything. Part of the satire's job seems to work as a mask for the sincerity of Gadsby's feelings. What is interesting about Nanette is the way that gender and sexuality permeate the various aspects of communication in Gadsby's life, and subsequently complicate her interpersonal communication at that. The expectations placed on her as a woman and as a lesbian are explored in a unique way through her storytelling, and I agree with Krefting that her lean in to humor "softens the blow" of the satire and heavy content she speaks about.
I think that Nanette made me think about the way that certain messages are able to get across to audiences that don't understand or frequently see certain struggles that people go through. I think that comedy is interesting because it aims to help people relate to the speaker, and there are ways to layer emotion and difficult subjects into more digestible pieces, under the common goal of laughter. But, I think issue that can sometimes come up, is whether a comedian is minimizing an issue by joking about it, even if it is something that the comedian themselves have experienced. I think that throughout Nanette, you can sometimes get the full picture of how Gadsby feels about something, but other times I can't help but wonder if satire is placed to hold a barrier between the content and discomfort from Gadsby. Her storytelling is fantastic and easy to follow, but there are times where I don't know if I should laugh, because the content gets so heavy. I think this special is such an interesting dichotomy between comedy and monologue, that I don't think it fits into either of those categories.
I think that you touch on a very interesting point surrounding comedy and sincerity. In a typical setting, these two would be opposed, with comedy used to make light of points of potential connection, but in contrast to this, some comics are able to use humor to build sincerity. It has been discussed that comedy is often derived from tragedy, and the ability to share painful or difficult events without the material becoming too heavy is perhaps a pathway to sincere expression and connection. It is also interesting that in this particular style of comedy, the central figure is telling a story, with humor as an affect, not simply attempting to extract laughs from an audience. The ability to spin a story, and mix sincerity with irreverence is, in my estimation what many would say makes one comic stand out above others.
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