A queer tension: the difficult comedy of Hannah Gadsby: Nanette
A queer tension: the difficult comedy of Hannah Gadsby: Nanette
This article concerns itself with feminist comedy that is deemed angry and difficult in an era of postfeminism. Hannah Gadsby’s live show Nanette, released as a Netflix film, can be described as difficult because it is politically challenging, emotionally demanding and disrupts the established format of stand-up comedy. Yet it has had critical and commercial success. Nanette challenges the underpinning assumption of postfeminism: that feminism is no longer needed. It is feminist and angry. To explore the phenomenon of angry feminist comedy in the postfeminist era, the article considers the comedy of Gadsby through the figure of the feminist killjoy, coined by Sara Ahmed, to reflect how the killjoy and the queer art of failing offer forms of political ‘sabotage’ that subvert comedy as masculinist popular culture.
30-46
Jenzen, Olu
ea2f2c5f-197f-4595-8f38-0548817bf25b
10 May 2021
Jenzen, Olu
ea2f2c5f-197f-4595-8f38-0548817bf25b
Jenzen, Olu
(2021)
A queer tension: the difficult comedy of Hannah Gadsby: Nanette.
Film Studies, 22 (1), .
(doi:10.7227/FS.22.0003).
Abstract
This article concerns itself with feminist comedy that is deemed angry and difficult in an era of postfeminism. Hannah Gadsby’s live show Nanette, released as a Netflix film, can be described as difficult because it is politically challenging, emotionally demanding and disrupts the established format of stand-up comedy. Yet it has had critical and commercial success. Nanette challenges the underpinning assumption of postfeminism: that feminism is no longer needed. It is feminist and angry. To explore the phenomenon of angry feminist comedy in the postfeminist era, the article considers the comedy of Gadsby through the figure of the feminist killjoy, coined by Sara Ahmed, to reflect how the killjoy and the queer art of failing offer forms of political ‘sabotage’ that subvert comedy as masculinist popular culture.
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e-pub ahead of print date: 10 May 2021
Published date: 10 May 2021
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Local EPrints ID: 488634
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/488634
ISSN: 1469-0314
PURE UUID: e136af98-66da-461d-9ff4-49febd03a95e
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Date deposited: 27 Mar 2024 17:58
Last modified: 09 Apr 2024 09:53
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Olu Jenzen
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