A new Netflix special calls out standup comedy’s most pervasive bad habit

Nanette seems more like the name of an elderly Shih Tzu than a groundbreaking comedy special. But Hannah Gadsby's Netflix hour is indeed called Nanette — and it is a radical tour de force that calls out some of standup comedy's worst shortcomings.

Stand-up has always been a dog-eat-dog world. From set stealers to hecklers, the obstacles facing the most privileged of comedians is substantial, and the underrepresented have it even worse.

Gadsby's hour is a profound breakdown of the disadvantages she has faced as a gay woman—not just in comedy, but in life. During the course of her special, she concludes that for her own well-being, she ought to quit comedy. At the center of her argument is a fundamental flaw in the "rules" of self-deprecation.

Pick up any guide to stand-up comedy (I personally recommend Franklyn Ajaye's Comic Insights) and you'll be taught that lucky, happy, attractive, wealthy, confident people are very rarely funny. It's the (oversimplified) bedrock of an important comedy lesson: We like to laugh with the people whose flaws we can relate to and celebrate.

Many comics turn to self-deprecation to create the basis of their set, Gadsby among them. But when you are regularly treated as less than because of your societal status, self-deprecation can turn from an easy punchline into a toxic soup of identity politics and degradation.

Gadsby explains the effects of this phenomenon to her audience, saying, "Do you understand what self-deprecation means when it comes from someone who is already in the margins? It's not humility. It's humiliation. I put myself down in order to speak, in order to seek permission to speak."

Doesn't sound particularly funny, right? Well, it isn't. What makes Nanette a transformative work is not Gadsby's comedic chops, though they glisten throughout. Instead, the beauty of this piece is found in its verbalization of what so many of us self-deprecators, professional and amateur alike, feel on a daily basis—a need to excuse our own existence.

Gadsby gives herself permission to reject stereotypical, two-dimensional "fat queer woman" humor and instead embrace her own revolutionary perspective. In doing so, she has given other marginalized comics permission to do the same, opening up a whole new world for audiences.

Prior to Nanette, Gadsby was forced to ask herself the question so many comics dread: are they laughing with or at me? By the end of Nanette, the answer is neither. Her quiet audience is left to ponder the realities of what they saw behind the curtain. And, hopefully, begin to demand change.

Nanette is now streaming on Netflix.