AustLit

'“What sort of comedian can’t even make the lesbians laugh?” the Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby asks in her new Netflix standup special, “Nanette.” “Every comedian ever,” she answers, grinning conspiratorially, her eyebrows darting behind horn-rim glasses. “The only people who don’t think it’s funny are us lezzes, but we’ve gotta laugh, because if we don’t—proves the point!” It’s a good joke, knowing and playful in the style that Gadsby, a star in her home country, has built her comedy career on. But it also contains a seed of discomfort: the image of the hypothetical gay woman in the audience, not quite comfortable with the joke, but being conscripted into laughing anyway, at her own expense.'  (Introduction)