MovieChat Forums > Hannah Gadsby Discussion > Still Human

Still Human

posted 3 years ago by Ace_Spade (9577)
6 replies | jump to latest

I've seen a lot of threads ripping on Hannah Gadsby, flaring up for her recent remarks about Netflix and Dave Chappelle, but frankly, they've been here since her popularity bumped up with Nanette.

My personal thoughts about that special and Gadsby aside, I think a lot of these comments on the message boards are really pretty vicious and mean.

First aside: I'm a free-speech advocate and I don't want to say people should be censored.

Now, I understand that the odds of Hannah Gadsby personally encountering threads on Moviechat.org are low. But that almost makes the viciousness worse, because it's just throwing it around cheaply, with no real effect. So what's the point?

What's my point?

I'd like to see us step up our commentary game. Forget personal remarks about Gadsby's looks or persona, or her stage presence, and so on. Critique, evaluate, push back, disagree: perfect.

Basically, I'd just like to see moviechat as a place of great discourse on pop culture, not as a place to troll up and say nasty things because we disagree with somebody.

For the curious: I liked Nanette as art, but not as comedy, and I understand why people hated it. I disagree with her entirely on Dave Chappelle, who I think is hilarious and his last two specials are both art and comedy (The Closer even managed to do what Nanette did with the serious "final act", but did it better).

Some of this is just me parsing what's going on on these boards. So, if you read this and disagree, great. Let's have a discussion. That's what makes these boards great.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

You're never going to convince people on the Internet not to act like children. It's just too easy to get away with. I've done it several times myself!

Regarding this person Hannah Gadsby, what I've seen from her has not been funny at all. If it's art designed to mock someone like her, then it's spot on.

[–] Ace_Spade (9577) 3 years ago

Mocking her is fine. To some extent, it's all good with me anyway because I do believe in expression and in people being able to say what they want to on message boards, I just wanted to see if I could make people think, "Yeah, I don't want to be the type of person who posts this type of thing".

I have no real hope of "success", but maybe I can get a couple people to not be just spiteful. And that's the real thing, is that I don't care about people going, "Oh, I disagree," or "I really hate this person," but a lot of this feels just mean-spirited to me.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

I'm sure the mean-spirited part comes from their own frustrations with their lives. Almost any insult you see on social media is projection on the part of the person doing the insulting.

[–] Ace_Spade (9577) 3 years ago

Yeah, either personal frustrations in sad individuals, or just people who think it's funny to be mean online.

[–] CMX (265) 2 years ago

Her entire comedy is mean-spirited towards men so why cant people be mean-spirited towards her? Also since her rule of comedy is punching up than surely making fun of her is punching up since shes gotta bigger platform than people on these message boards.

[–] Ace_Spade (9577) 2 years ago

I don't see all of it as hating men or being mean-spirited towards men. She clearly has issues with men, but I think she has come by those issues "honestly." Which is to say, when she has experienced such vileness, I'm not surprised that some poison and vitriol has built up. That doesn't make hating men okay, of course. I doubt she would say she hates men. She might, she might not.

The point of her first special (Nanette, I believe?) was about healing, in my opinion. It ends on that note about Vincent Van Gogh's brother loving him, and that was very positive. I also appreciated it for its vigorous questioning of the premises of Comedy - particularly stand-up. I disagree with her conclusions (she has missed catharsis entirely) but I appreciated the challenge, intellectually.

I haven't seen her second special. If it's man-hatey, I stand corrected.

I don't follow the rule of punching up - strictly, anyway - generally, it works, but not all the time.

But let's say I did believe that comedy is punching up and I did agree that she was mean-spirited towards men. Let's go with that. I still think it's important to be the bigger man (so to speak) and not be mean-spirited back. One can rebuke, satirise, and even mock without being utterly cruel about it. What I see here are a lot of unnecessary (not to mention unoriginal) posts about how horrible she looks and not enough people engaging with her central arguments. I see some of the latter, but often mixed with cruelty.

There is a difference between even biting comedy to play the court jester and a heckler or troll. I see posts that are the latter, and I am hoping people would rather be the former.