<em>Nanette</em> Is a Radical, Transformative Work of Comedy
Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix special, filmed at the Sydney Opera House, dismantles and subverts everything about how humor is supposed to work.
The most radical thing Hannah Gadsby does in is simple: She stops being funny. It’s about 35 minutes into her 70-minute comedy show, filmed live at the Sydney Opera House, and Gadsby, a 40-year-old Tasmanian comic, has riffed on the gay pride flag (“six very shouty, assertive colors stacked on top of each other”), the pointlessness of bald babies wearing pink headbands (“Would you put a bangle on a potato?”), and her home island (famous for “our frighteningly small gene pool”). Her jokes are riotous, but they’re laced with something darker, more caustic. There’s an anecdote about a man who
