cloama:

Me: I was right to give myself time before watching Nanette on Netflix. I knew it was going to be great but A Lot™

Also me: HANNAH GADSBY’S NANETTE IS ONE OF THE BEST WRITTEN THINGS I’VE SEEN ALL YEAR. IT IS BRUTAL AND BRINGS THE HARSH TRUTH ABOUT COMEDY AND WELLNESS AND HATE AND ANGER THAT EVEN COMEDIANS SUGARCOAT. SHE IS RIDICULOUSLY GOOD AT COMEDY BUT ALSO THE LAST PORTION OF HER SHOW EVOLVES INTO THE MOST HONEST AND CONCISE PIECE ABOUT THE VIOLENCE OF MEN, AND THE CULT OF PERSONALITY THAT ENABLES IT. IT IS NOT THE SAME POINT OF VIEW YOU’VE HEARD. IT’S SO GOOD. I AM PISSED THAT I’VE NEVER HEARD OF HER BEFORE THIS. SHE LITERALLY SET HERSELF FREE ONSTAGE. SHE DESERVES ALL THE AWARDS.

I am giving myself time before I watch it. I have seen Hannah before and I know she’s amazing, and back in 2004ish when I saw her, I was just so excited to see a lesbian comic onstage who wasn’t Ellen, but even then she was performing about being a lesbian in Australian society, and she was doing the material that is the jokey flipside of the hate crime she breaks down in Nanette, and I don’t think I’m ready to see her talk about it live yet, when even the stills with captions I see daily on my feed are upsetting me. I never really took the jokey routine at face value the way that a lot of people might have. I’m a queer woman the same age as Hannah who grew up in the same society, and though I personally have not been beaten for being queer, one of my butch friends was, by a man who thought she was disgusting for holding hands with her girlfriend. So he beat her, in public, on a high street, in front of his children and other people, who as in Hannah’s assault, did absolutely nothing. I felt the edge of darkness in the way she joked about it, even then. Comedy, at its best, is about horrific truth told nakedly, and Hannah’s comedy was always about the danger inherent in difference, for those who knew to look for it.