#FILMFRIDAYS: NANETTE

Year: 2018.

Written and Performed by: Hannah Gadsby

I watch stand-up comedy to momentarily escape this hellscape; To laugh and release tension through a repeated routine of setup and punchline. Stand-up has also served as a medium for political commentary and a podium to listen to the multiplicity of marginalized voices and gain insight into the lived experiences of minorities.

And Nanette, a Netflix comedy special by Australian newcomer Hannah Gadsby, starts off as all of these things. In the opening minutes, Hannah hilariously explores topics such as her sexuality, her growing up, and her experience with casual sexism. It is unassuming, comforting and wickedly funny until it is not.

To plainly label Nanette as subversive would be true but somehow still lacking. It is transcendent, audacious, discomforting, but utterly relevant anti-comedy. Hannah Gadsby gives not just a powerful commentary on history, identity, and power but a searing attack on the nature of comedy itself; The dangerous ability of the setup-punchline structure to truncate painful stories into bearable jokes for the cheap reward of catharsis.

There is art that makes you a fan, the kind that leaves you enamored by the work and unwilling to let out of sight, tongue and memory and there is art that makes you a believer, an unflinching tour de force that converts you into a digital evangelist convinced that the world would be a better place if we all went through the same baptism of bitter truths. Nanette is the latter. This is not a recommendation, this is an invitation to an hour of worship and I hope to see you come Sunday.