Female comedians who challenge stand-up
Hannah Gadsby, Ali Wong and Michelle Wolf push stand-up into new territory
Something is happening in standup comedy.
You can feel it in the slow-burn buzz of Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix special “Nanette,” a personal, deeply moving deconstruction of the genre. You can feel it in Ali Wong’s triumphant second special on the streaming service. And you can feel it in Michelle Wolf ’s banner year: an HBO special in December, a fiery White House Correspondents Dinner performance in April and a Netflix sketch series that wraps up its first season this month.
Gadsby, Wong and Wolf are just three examples of women skewering the standards of the stand-up genre. Gadsby is challenging the format, Wong changes up the content and Wolf upends the style. Helped by Netflix, which is pumping out a record number of stand-up specials, voices that perhaps wouldn’t have found a home 10 years ago are dominating social media chatter and making staid, traditional comedy look amateurish.
It’s Gadsby’s “Nanette” that has been the most acclaimed and surprising entry in this new wave of comedy. Released with little fanfare on June 19, the acclaim for the groundbreaking special has grown to a fever pitch. She offers at once a deep indictment of stand-up comedy and a mastery of the form.
Gadsby challenges her audience to think about why they are laughing at all. When marginalized people (she’s a lesbian in traditionally-masculine garb) make jokes at their own expense, it’s “not humility, it’s humiliation.” You were humiliating her, she says, when you laughed about a man nearly beating her up at a bus stop because he thought she was a he, just a few minutes ago.
The real magic of “Nanette” is that Gadsby doesn’t turn it into a lecture. When she riffs about Pablo Picasso, it’s hilarious and unexpected. When she weaves in her personal stories of trauma, it’s gripping, but she knows when to break the tension. She says she wants to quit comedy, but she’s evolving and moulding it before our eyes.
Wong and Wolf’s styles are more subtle, but nearly as effective at upending the audience’s expectations. In her first special, “Baby Cobra,” Wong was pregnant, speaking openly about her expectancy and other women’s issues rarely mentioned on the stand-up stage. Wong challenged the idea that women’s health is “icky” and taboo by addressing the issue head-on in her act.
In her recent special, “Hard Knock Wife,” Wong takes this even further. Her vivid, graphic description of childbirth and its after-effects is as shocking as it is hilarious. Wong is a loud, physical comedian who walks all over the stage and makes frequent use of gestures. When she talks about what happens to women’s genitalia after giving birth, she squats, uses her arms as props and lets her voice fall to a guttural whisper. It feels lewd, improper and taboo. We just don’t talk
about those kinds of things, let alone on a stage usually populated by men. You think fart jokes are funny? Try placenta laughs. Wong is a brash Melissa McCarthy character come to life. She achieves the monumental task of turning body horror into body
humour.
Wong uses her body and her subject matter to challenge you, but Wolf pushes the limits in every joke with a distinctive, high-pitched voice that is easy to hate. It’s a cloying screech that she acknowledges, sure, but it
never goes away. To hear her humour, you have to hear her voice. It’s so intensely feminine — a near-parody of femininity — that it challenges viewers to judge her for it. How can you take her seriously when she talks like that? Girly things aren’t meant to be taken seriously. Aren’t standups supposed to be men with deep baritones who make sex jokes and talk about how fat they are?
Wolf ’s girlish voice also makes you expect her humour to be on the softer side. But she gets in her audience’s face. When she sent up Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the correspondents dinner, the backlash was quick and harsh. Shouldn’t there be a “line” that comedians don’t cross? How dare she say it while Sanders was in the room? Shouldn’t comedy be all in good fun?
The “line” is often drawn by men, who cross it whenever they please. When Stephen Colbert stood up at the 2006 correspondents dinner and lambasted then-president George W. Bush, who was in the ballroom, there was no public outcry for civility. That’s because men speaking truth (or jokes) to power is expected. Women challenging figures of authority is subversive and uncomfortable, especially when their targets are other women.
It’s hard to be bold when cultural expectations suggest you shouldn’t be. But given the creative freedom at Netflix and other outlets unbeholden to advertisers, it’s easier to stray from the norm and push buttons. When Samantha Bee caused an uproar by calling Ivanka Trump a gendered epithet on TBS’ “Full Frontal,” she quickly apologized. Would she have done so if her show was ad-free?
Comedy isn’t going to change radically any time soon. But it’s worth noting that, especially in the vast Netflix ecosystem, few comedians can deliver a special that makes a real impact. You’re hearing about Gadsby, Wong and Wolf for a reason.
May they continue to keep audiences on their toes.
‘‘ Gadsby, Wong and Wolf are just three examples of women skewering the standards of the stand-up genre.
KELLY LAWLER