<
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/mar/04/hannah-gadsby-gender-agenda-netflix-comedy-special-interview>
"Hannah Gadsby would like to set one thing straight: nearly six years after the
viral success of
Nanette, they’re still getting their head around how that
breakthrough moment reshaped their world.
“I feel fine, I’m OK, but I would like to go on record as saying, ‘I don’t know
exactly what I’m doing or why,’” the 46-year-old deadpans. “The world I am in
now is simply not the same as the world that I’ve worked slowly and laboriously
for over 40 years to understand. And now I’m just a fucking babe in the woods
again.”
Nanette was already an awards-scooping live show before Netflix’s cameras
started rolling, but its meteoric success made a proper international celebrity
of the festival circuit staple. It also made Gadsby, who grew up in a small
town in north-west Tasmania, an unexpected figurehead for LGBTQ+ representation
in Hollywood.
This hasn’t always been their cup of tea. In October 2021 they wrote and shared
an open letter addressed to Ted Sarandos, after the Netflix CEO namedropped
them while defending the streaming giant’s platforming of Dave Chappelle’s 2021
special
The Closer. The special, which included jokes targeting trans people,
provoked outcry among the LGBTQ+ community and a staff walkout at Netflix.
In their note, Gadsby pointed to the “real-world consequences of the
hate-speech dog whistling [Netflix] refuse to acknowledge”.
“It was a very particular moment, and I was mindful that just speaking in
opposition to things doesn’t get anywhere,” Gadsby explains now. “We all know
this, and yet we can’t help it.”
Gadsby spends much of their time based in Australia but has seen trans rights
become a divisive political issue in the US and UK, one often divorced from the
voices and experiences of trans and genderqueer people.
“It’s just part of the broader culture wars – trans people are being held up as
this wedge issue. It’s happened before, we know it’s wrong. We always feel
regret, culturally, after these moments – ‘Oh we were a bit harsh there weren’t
we?’ But these moral panics exist in a time of great uncertainty, which it is,
and certain groups of individuals cop it. And that’s what’s happening, and that
makes it very dangerous. And Australia isn’t immune.”
The result is Gadsby’s fourth Netflix special, an exercise in sharing the
microphone called
Hannah Gadsby’s Gender Agenda. Filmed in London last
October, the show features seven comedians each with different experiences of
gender, sexuality and, importantly, how to get laughs."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
