/lit/ - Literature

A ‘serious’ interest in comedy

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GOT THAT, FELLERS? But seriously, I know nothing about comedy. Is this what happens when a medium gets revolutionised?

>Then something very strange indeed happens. With a decade of work in this vein behind her, Gadsby says she must quit comedy. Silence from the audience. And then, without a moment of pretension or pedantry, and without boring us for a moment, Gadsby spends nearly an hour explaining how a joke works, and why it just doesn’t work for her anymore. Jokes, she says, are created when tension is exploded by a punch line, and the marginalized comic creates that tension by stating the trauma and then - “What a guy!” - letting the audience off the hook, popping the balloon. Gadsby remarks eloquently of this practice: “It’s not humility. It’s humiliation.”

>The implicit question: What is the responsibility of the audience - presumably straight - when the queer comic puts forward the trauma. Gadsby has the answer, but she’s going to make you work to get there. She’s going to sit you down and give you an art history lesson, connecting the history of cubism to the #metoo movement, and then bring it home with a bravura rant linking Van Gogh’s sunflowers and harmful myths to the glorious suffering of artists. She is herself a lesbian artist who suffered to cultivate her identity against long odds in conservative Tasmania, and she’s going to tell you her story of self-discovery - including whatreallyhappened with that homophobe on the street - and you’ll get up from the futon unable to watch another stand-up special. At least, not for a while, and never again quite the same way.