” My favourite sound in the whole world is the sound of tea cup finding it’s place on a saucer, it is very very difficult to flaunt that lifestyle on a parade” says Hannah Gadsby while I take time to come into terms with the brilliant show that it is. Flaunting their lifestyle in a parade, my people, where do the quiet gays go? ‘ is how Hannah draws back the curtains from one of the many ‘hushed conversations’ in our society about people who are different than the apparent ‘normal’. From women, to lesbians to taboos and obsession over the white skin, this woman emerges into less of a man and more of a woman. Or shall I say, brings out there, the human being in her.
Comedians are often categorized into compact ice-box compartments which are thrown within strict definitions of humour. With comedians popping up on each doorstep now, it would be a unfair if I did not confess that I had been missing the sharp witty turns and sarcasm from among their content, unless I discovered this wonder of a show. If something needs to go viral on the internet, it needs to be this marvelous show where Hannah portrays emotions through comedy while saying why she intends to quit comedy, in turn. I perhaps did not make sense out there, but the flamboyance with which this woman describes identity, and manifests the idea of tolerance is a kind of portrayal I have never witnessed before. Through the night my only activity was to wonder, how someone could find the exact words to portray such sharp feelings as those.
There are talks, movements, discussions and debates on feminism, identity and voices against racial discrimination that I hear on social media, on a daily basis. Sometimes, I realize that the reason why I became a comfortable loner at the end of three years of college was more to do about my ‘different opinions’ about politics, identity, rights and sarcasm than my apathy for people in general. I would hence say Nanette made me feel at home in the middle of a world where I often feel like an outcast due to difference in my perspectives.
Watch it if you have not already. Watch her talking about the gender neutrality of colours, watch her talk about why comedy feels like self-deprecating humour for her and how she is not ready to succumb in it anymore. Watch her live in the same world as we do and still not transform manifested definitions into her own beliefs. I have given away a lot of ideas from the show, right here while writing my blog. The ideas have stung me and made me so angry that I wanted to scream. The words she used, made me cry and laugh and cry again. There is no spoiler I can probably give. I can tell you the lines she used and the sentences she exclaimed! but that can never do justice to her content, expressions and presence.
Hannah says ‘I don’t assume bald babies to be boys, I consider them to be angry feminists and I treat them with respect’, only to introduce me to a perspective perhaps I had never imagined before. If you’re feeling blue, don’t worry, blue skies are right ahead, says she. I believe so too.
If you want to change, create change, they say be the change yourself. Watch this to step on the first path of change. Watch this to learn, to know, to break preconceived false notions and watch this to be able to understand the amount of power words can really have, on minds. Watch this for only and only Hannah.
—Nikkon Balial
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