The article I want to talk about for my week’s blog post is On the limits of Satire. In the article, the author goes over a comedian named Hannah Gadsby. In the article, the author mainly focuses on how Hannah uses the style of satire for her comedy shows. Hannah covers challenging topics by using satire to get her message across. From the reading, it seems that she mainly covers gender-based issues. The article mentions that Hannah’s performances raise questions about sex, gender presentation, and race (Krefting 95). What I found interesting is that Hannah also questions if the practice of satire can be used equally across all individuals. The article states that satire has been taken away from many women in the field. More specifically, the dominant domain for satire is male comedians creating a negative stigma against women using satire. What I find most intriguing is the way Gadsby uses her satire. Later on, the article cites Hannah taking advantage of her style to create the ideas of homophobia and sexism as non-laughable topics(Krefting 95).
While it does not directly relate to what the main article was talking about, I could not help but think of the new Dave Chappelle special. If you do not know who Dave Chappelle is, he is arguably the most famous comedian of our generation and is incredibly popular. Recently Dave came out with a special where he seemingly attacked the Trans community. While Dave has received severe backlash, it feels like nothing really happened. Netflix, the company that produced the show, went on to defend Dave’s remarks(Biekekert). All in all, it seems like he is getting off free. To relate it to the main article, would this be a situation where comedians need to “police” their fellow comedians? I would argue that if more comedians chose the style as Hannah Gadsby, an occurrence like this might have been avoided.
Biekert, M. (2021, October 12). Netflix defends Dave Chappelle's anti-trans remarks. Time. Retrieved October 26, 2021, from https://time.com/6105846/netflix-dave-chappelle-transphobic/.
Krefting, Rebecca. “Hannah Gadsby: On the Limits of Satire.” Studies in American Humor, vol. 5, no. 1, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, pp. 93–102, doi:10.5325/studamerhumor.5.1.0093.
Hi,Jacob
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I think the best thing about her is how it portrays Gatsby as a comic. She can cleverly use the conventions of the comedy itself to take the audience to discordant and strange new destinations, and then combine these seemingly different ideas. When the "Big Secret" finally arrived, Gazbi made a point that her approach to comedy was only an extension of her way of thinking; Gazbi was obviously interested in shaping her social structure, but she rarely questioned them. When she joked that her "core population is wealthy, white, and empowered women," this is not what she thinks is acrimonious; Hannah Gadsby is a white woman, thanks to Nanette. She does not examine the same privileges, and she examines her own work from time to time. It depends on how it reaffirms the existing beliefs of its core audience. Although she criticized patriarchy and mentioned marginalization, she did not analyze it in any meaningful way.
Hi Jacob! I think your comparison to Dave Chapelle is really interesting. I feel like there are definitely certain people who can perform certain types of satire, and as a cis gender man I do not think he should be performing satire about trans people. Satire can only be comedy when it is not offensive, and Chapelle's way of going about it is not particularly funny for people who are apart of the communities he makes jokes about. Hannah Gadsby using satire to narrate her experiences as a woman is comedy, whereas Chapelle's feels like an offensive attempt to be edgy.
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