The New Yorker Radio Hour - The Comedian Hannah Gadsby Renounces Comedy, and Patricia Marx Tries to Relax

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

The comedian Hannah Gadsby has been touring this summer with a show called “Body of Work.” She came to wide attention in 2018, with the Netflix special “Nanette.” It was a full-length comedy show, and, at the same time, a carefully structured critique of standup comedy which argued that comedians have to distort personal experience for the sake of a joke, inflicting a kind of violence on themselves and their audiences. Gadsby recently published a memoir about her breakout moment called “Ten Steps to Nanette.” The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum talked with Gadsby back in 2018, when “Nanette” had just been released. Plus, Patricia Marx tries the trendy relaxation technique called flotation therapy—formerly known as a sensory deprivation tank. But relaxing, Marx found, is just too stressful, and her microphone was the only thing that found peace. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The comedian Hannah Gadsby has been touring this summer with a show called Body of Work, and she's appearing in Minneapolis in Chicago this month. She came to wide attention a few years ago with a Netflix special called Nanette. It was a stand-up show that gave a kind of critique of stand-up comedy, and in it she says that comedians have to do it. distort personal experience for the sake of a joke. And she threatened to quit comedy altogether. But in fact, she didn't quit. She recently published a memoir about her breakout moment called Ten Steps to Nanette. I've built a career out of humiliating myself.

I'm putting myself down in order to seek permission to speak, to take up space in the world. And I have decided I don't want to do that anymore. I will not do that anymore. Not to myself. Oh, thank you. I mean, I mean, I'm not starting a rally. I'll finish the show as a comedy. But thank you.

The New Yorker's Emily Nosebaum talked with Gadsby back in 2018, when Nanette had just been released. Hannah's show is very carefully structured, doing different things to the audience at different points, soothing them, making them tense, engaging them, shocking them. There are stories that weave through the show. They start out as jokes. and Gadsby gradually unfolds them like a paper fortune teller to reveal that they aren't jokes at all. They're very serious stories about prejudice, power, and assault, but they're never polemical or simply pedantic. They have complicated unsettling things to say about the kinds of relationships that people have with one another. Hannah told me that early on in her career, her outsider status in many different ways, helped her to be funny.

I'm a very difficult human to categorise. Like I'm a larger woman, and I'm from Tasmania, which is the small state in Australia, and I'm a lesbian. And these come with stereotypes that I subvert. You know, Tasmanians are supposed to be stupid, but I'm quite cerebral, so I don't play to that. And then also with my being over a weight,

I don't, I'm not jolly. I don't make fun of my weight. And then lesbian, which means you're very angry. This is when I started particularly. I mean, of course, that's opened up a lot more. And I'm quite a gentle, sensitive. So that really, you know, helped me early in my career because, you know, when you disrupt, that's instant tension.

So that's actually handy. But as my career evolved, it became a real block. Right. And ultimately, what this show is, and I don't say it in the show at all. I don't make any reference to it at all, but essentially this show, about having autism and a late diagnosis.

And so instead of saying this is what I have, I decided to show what this brain can do, which is a real clear acknowledgement of how emotion works and how I feel it. It's really fascinating because I actually was thinking that that is one of the most powerful things about the show is that I've seen cerebral comedy shows and I've seen emotive ones

and it is both a cerebral and a deeply emotional show. And that combination is a very potent thing. And one of the things that's just beautiful in the show is that you explain the limits of stand-up while you're doing stand-up. And so you do this kind of seductive magician revealing their trick thing. So you make the audience self-conscious

of the power that goes back and forth. So we're going to play just a little clip of a section of the show in which you talk about how comedy works, how jokes work. Let me tell you what a joke is. If I boil it down to its absolute bare components, a joke simply needs two things, a setup and a punchline.

It's all it needs. And it works in the same way as a question and answer. You ask a question, the anticipation is the tension and the answer diffuses the tension. But with a joke, the answer is a surprise. So you laugh. So I wasn't expecting that.

There you go, lesson over. It's an easy job. I'll be replaced. Nobody will miss me. But what a joke is in this situation is a question that I've just artificially inseminated with tension. And then that's all I do. Like, I manipulate it. Like, I make you tense and I make you laugh over and over again.

And you're like, oh, thank you. I was feeling a bit tense. But fucking hell, guys. I'm making you tense over and over again. This is an abusive relationship. I love that part because it's a very deep insight, but it also has this dirty joke in it. Your bigger point that you're making, though, is that there's something harmful about jokes, and there's something harmful specifically about stopping at the punchline, like the perpetual stopping at the punchline.

Can you describe a bit what you think that harm is? It's the harm of the joke is the only reason to speak. The point is only to make people laugh, and that troubled me after a while. Because I've always told stories, and that whole idea that laughter is the best medicine, is not what I believe in. I believe laughter is the honey that sweetens the medicine story, really. It allows you to listen to the story. Here you're talking about storytelling as a psychological tool,

one we use to understand our own experiences by turning them into narratives. And it's about also the live experience because stand-up comedy has the potential to be such an amazing cultural gift because it is one of the rare occasions where a group of strangers get to sit in a room sharing and experience and I think that is a very potent human thing

to have. But I really think, I really am passionately concerned that story gets downplayed and dismissed. Because essentially what art is, any art, it's not special,

it's story. And stories are brilliant and they're wonderful and they're so important. But the story really does, in the traditional sense, need three parts, a beginning, a middle, and an end. And the end, the third part is so important. And that, that is what elevates you. That's where catharsis lives. That's where hindsight sits. That's where you get to look back through a narrative with a perspective, wisdom, and experience of someone other than yourself. Comedy doesn't do that. We stop short,

set up punchline, beginning, middle. There it sits. And it's a very good reason it's called a punch loan is because it deals with tension, hence it feeds trauma. We need tension in the room in order to get a laugh. But then we don't sort it out after. We just leave it there. This is like all these comedians going up and down the country triggering people and getting all confused. It was like, well, it was like, yeah, because you just keep saying the same thing and it hurts. So there's an ongoing debate about what is in what is not an acceptable joke. For instance, is a joke about rape ever actually funny? Is it okay to make a genocide gag?

Chris Rock has this idea that if people laugh, it means it's funny. Like, you disagree with that, I would assume, right? I do. Yeah. I've been in the audiences, and I've laughed at horrific things. I've also stood side of stage while comedians are doing material. I find absolutely horrific. Making people believe violence against women is funny,

and I hear audiences laughing. And I don't think that they would want to. You know, you can make anyone laugh if you make them tense enough because they want to get rid of the tension. So about 20 minutes into Nanette, the show shifts. And you tell personal stories on stage. A lot of it has to do with painful and traumatic personal experiences. I was wondering how it felt on stage for you

when you were first forming the show to have people crying or silent. Like, you're a person who's used to getting laugh. Like, what was that like for you as a performer? Structly, what I was doing there is I was using one of the best tools in a particularly longer form comedy show, and that's a callback. And it works on the premise of a shared joke. In comedy, often I do, that's what I do. Like, I, you know, work through an hour's stand-up, and eventually we have shared jokes. And I love that.

They make an average joke, brilliant. In this show, I subverted that, I used a call back to drop them into a huge hole and not give them the laugh. So to go against my instinct was really incredibly hard. To not break the tension. Really palpable silences in the show. And my instinct is a comic is to make people feel better and make them off. So that was difficult in the first. And also I was getting really horrific heckles in the first.

I was wondering, did people heckle you? Yeah, because now there's no room because it's really tight now. But when I first was doing it, there was a lot of room. The structure was different. And, you know, it was always guys. And always after I just told my audience that I'd been sexually assaulted, always at that point. That's amazing, too. Yeah.

And so then I'd get mans blank from the audience. I have to say, having seen the show, which is a very, like, and you really do have control over the audience. Like, you sort of critique the control back and forth. So people would shout cruel, insulting things to you? So this has evolved. This control has evolved pretty much out of that because I'm like, well, I don't want this to happen. I can't keep doing this show if this is going to happen.

So I learned from that, but it was really devastating because when I do that, when I am genuinely vulnerable and it is violence. It felt like violence to get heckled at those moments. But I think I really learned from that and was like, gosh, that is violence. and that's what comedy promotes. And so it really drove the show toward a more technical show because I wanted to show people what that is, that violence and what it feels like.

Well, you're obviously an extremely technically a great stand-up comic. Are there specific skills that you've picked up from doing this different kind of show? No, this is a showcase almost. What's interesting about the show is I'm high status. I've never been that in a show. But I discovered that voice doing, I had to do a spin-off at some festivals where I do comedy art lectures. I've done one on the Virgin Mary, the one on the nude and modern. Just to clarify, you have an art history background.

Yes, yes. Sorry. And when I did those shows, I discovered I had more authority. I could talk about interesting things and there wasn't that resistance going, where's my life? This is actually a great part for us to play this other clip that is actually partially about art and partially about an incredibly timely subject, sexual trauma, misogyny, art, and the Me Too movement. Honestly, I can draw a straight line from Pablo Picasso to Donald Trump by way of Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Louis C.K., Bill Cosby, they all cut from the same fucking clock, and I'm sick of it.

These men control our stories. They control our stories, yet they have a diminishing connection to their own humanity. What the fuck are we doing? Hindsight is a gift. Unwrap it. Like, I keep getting told, just separate the man from the art. You've got to separate the man from the art. All right, grow up, calm down.

Don't get emotional. It's hard. You've got to separate the man from the out. How about I don't? I will not separate the man from the art. And even if I did, the shit sticks. See, I've got to say, I loved this part of the show. It was also the part that, because I'm an arts critic, was the most challenging to me because it is the thing that I have been wrestling so much in the people who've influenced me, the people that I've written about.

I have my own ambivalent relationship. Are there artists that are basically like shitty guys who've done bad things that are important influences on you? What do you do with that stuff once you don't separate it? I believe, you know, art is important. I don't believe artists are important as individuals. My favourite comedians are being Bill Cosby, always. He's funny, I like his rhythm. I like what he talked about.

But I found it very easy to let go of him. Very easy. I don't feel easy listening to his comedy anymore, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't influence me. But I let go of the man. That makes a lot of sense. Comedian Hannah Gadsby talking about her show, Nanette in 2018,

with staff writer Emily Newsbaum. Gadsby's show is touring now, and it's called Body of Work. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnant. On the New Yorker's fiction podcast this month, Akiel Sharma reads a short story that he picked from our archive by Joyce Carol Oates. It's a pretty disturbing one, and it's called Zombie. Oates based it on the serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer. All the houses on Church Street are old, spacious Victorians.

They used to be single-family residences. Now they're rooming houses like ours or office buildings. QP Caretaker is neatly printed on a small white card beside my door. I printed it myself in black ink. Last night I was working late in the cellar, repairing seepage damage in the cistern. I'm a hard worker once I get started and lose track of time. I did not require sleep. I did not take my 10 p.m. medication,

and so sometime in the middle of the night, I climbed to the attic and looked out the window at the night sky where there was a moon so bright it hurt my eyes. Shreds of cloud being blown across the moon, clotted and cobwebbed like angry thoughts. So shameful, Dad said. but now we're going to turn over a new leaf, aren't we, son? That's Akeel Sharma reading zombie.

A short story, later it became a novel by Joyce Carol Oates. And he spoke about the story with our fiction editor, Deborah Treasman. That's on the New Yorker's fiction podcast. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Now, if the flood of news of late, the Supreme Court decisions, the January 6 hearings, the war in Ukraine, if all that has stressed you out, you might be looking for a way to relax. A while back, we asked staff writer Patricia Marks

to try one of the trendiest ways to relax, flotation, what used to be called sensory deprivation. Now, since we launched this program, Patty has made a salad from weeds in Central Park, one of which may have been poisonous. She practiced archery in her apartment, which drew a little blood, and she went shopping at a store for apocalypse preppers.

But disconnecting, that in the end, turned out to be outside of Patty's comfort zone. Here's Patricia Marks. Technology is pretty much all I do. If I told you the things I've looked up in a single hour on Google, you would probably commit me. And if there was Wi-Fi, I would probably go. I'm like everybody else experiencing a sensory overload,

and I was in search of a sensory underload. Wanted some tea? See? I'm already hallucinating. Or not? So I wanted to immerse myself in a flotation tank. Flotation tanks used to be called sensory deprivation tanks and isolation tanks, but it's kind of a downer of a name.

It's a very Manchurian candidate sounding. So now we call it Flotation Therapy. And that sounded kind of... cozy. I went to where else would I go? I went to Brooklyn. I went to Carol Gardens in Brooklyn to a place called Lift Floats. I was here early

because I'm always obnoxiously early and I was looking through the log of people have used it and I need to read you some things. Here's what happens. Okay, this person said did I just drop acid? Maybe. First I died,

then I returned to my mother's womb then I jumped to wife's womb and was my daughter. Then I observed my daughter. Then there was no there. And then I was reborn. That's some itinerary. I'm talking to Gina, whose name I will never be able to pronounce. What is your name?

Gina Antioco. And Gina is a co-founder of Lyft. Who's the typical customer and why do they come here? Are they kind of yoga people? It's really hard to say, you know, one is this type, one is that type. We really do see everyone. A lot of people who are coming in are looking to experience theta brainwave activity, which is just like a slower brain frequency state.

It's the state that you're in just before Delta, which is sleep. The main brain waves are the beta alpha. Theta and Delta, which means that I think of them as sororities. When you're in Theta, you're kind of on the verge of sleep. You're free associating. You're having really kind of zany but wonderful thoughts. So before I went into my pod, I met Vanessa Cranwinkel. I don't know if that was her name before she'd been in the pod,

but that was her name when I met her. She'd just got it out of the pod. she couldn't get weight to get back in. Did you hallucinate it at all? I felt like I was because I started with my head in like an S motion. I felt lightheaded and dizzy at the same time. And I would close my eyes and I would see like little flashes of light. So I knew something was up, but I couldn't tell what it was.

And what about did you hear anything? No. Well, I heard my, I didn't eat breakfast, so I heard my stomach. I feel like I heard my blood pumping. It was just so weird. It was so wonderful. I feel like a feather right now. I'm so happy. So, like, at peace. Maybe you shouldn't go out into the world.

I don't want to. So we wired the pot up, as most people don't do. And I walk into this room. It has a kind of a... The UFO has just arrived feeling. The pod itself looks as if... Let me put it. this way. If George Foreman had designed a suede machine for cooking human beings, it would

look like the pod. Shiny white and sleek and there was 10 inches of water in it. Getting inside, it's kind of a little warm. Now, this is the first time I've been around. Flotation pods were invented in 1954 by a scientist named John Lilly. So John Lilly started out as a pretty conventional scientist doing stuff like the physiology of high altitude flying. He was also really interested in states of consciousness. Of course, communication between dolphins and human beings and whales. And did I say LSD and ketamine? He even gave LSD to dolphins.

Before one can successfully do a spiritual trip, without tumbling in outer space and getting dizzy, one has to do the grounding and center. He claimed that he could communicate with alien beings while he floated and also Shakespeare. You're going to move out from this planet. Be sure you're well trained on how to keep a part of you going here while you go somewhere else.

That part of you, obviously, is your physical body. So I'm lying there, and I'm thinking, I'm just on the verge of getting somewhere, where I mean it's getting nowhere, when I say somewhere. And suddenly, there was a mini-disaster when the mic fell into the water, I survived, but the mic didn't. And might have been the only thing that found peace today.

Well, I feel really an ad with everybody. Trisha Mark's unofficial stunt woman of the New Yorker Radio Hour and a contributor to the magazine since 1989. You can read Patty's recent report called How to Buy a New Mattress without a Ph.D. in chemistry. at New Yorker.com. I'm David Remick. That's the show for today. Thanks so much for listening.

See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrato. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Avae Carrillo,

Greta Green, Calilea, David Krasnow, Louis Mitchell, and Gophane and Putubuele. With help from David, David Gable, Harrison Keithline, Alex Barish, Victor Gwan, and Mengfei Chen. We had additional help this week from Michael May and James Napoli. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.