{"id":787,"date":"2019-05-15T12:22:38","date_gmt":"2019-05-15T20:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.viu.ca\/compassrose\/?p=787"},"modified":"2019-05-16T13:08:07","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T21:08:07","slug":"a-conversation-between-hannah-gadsby-and-aristotle-on-art-and-judgment-in-nanette-and-poetics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.viu.ca\/compassrose\/a-conversation-between-hannah-gadsby-and-aristotle-on-art-and-judgment-in-nanette-and-poetics\/","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation Between Hannah Gadsby and Aristotle: On Art and Judgment in “Nanette” and “Poetics”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Abbie LeBlanc<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a run-time of one hour and ten-minutes, Netflix bills Nanette <\/em>as one of its original comedy series. Commentators have dubbed it anything but \u201ccomedy;\u201d instead, their classifications range from \u201canti-comedy\u201d to \u201cstand-up tragedy.\u201d[1]<\/a> In addition to being a provocative and innovative piece of media, Hannah Gadsby\u2019s performance addresses many of the fundamental questions about art that Aristotle discusses in his Poetics<\/em>. Like Aristotle, Gadsby is deeply concerned with the power art possesses to bring coherence to our lives. However, for Aristotle, the coherence provided by narrative art serves as the basis for philosophical inquiry, as contradictions and misrepresentations within a piece become an invitation for reflection. Gadsby, on the other hand, perceives a serious danger in allowing certain narratives to shape our perspectives, as omission and fabrications in art can become tools to exclude and marginalise others. The development of judgement is crucial to both Aristotle and Gadsby\u2019s account of art; however, for Aristotle, this is a judgement tied to philosophy, while Gadsby calls for a judgment rooted in empathy to mediate our stories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Nanette <\/em>takes a form\nthat would have been unfamiliar to Aristotle, Gadsby adheres to Aristotle\u2019s\nfundamental precept that art should be a coherent representation of life. Nanette<\/em> is about a single and complete\naction, as Aristotle claims all comic, epic, and tragic poetry must be (1450b33).\nThe necessity of coherence in narrative art appears to be a self-evident\nassertion. If one were to encounter a series of statements that were in a\nrandom, illogical order, one would be hard pressed to call it a story. By\nnature, most stand-up comedy would not meet this requirement of having a\nbeginning, middle, and end, as they are collections of wandering anecdotes,\nmaybe connected by a humorous segue.[2]<\/a>\nGadsby\u2019s performance differs because all of her stories center upon reframing\nevents to give greater agency to the storyteller. The action of the show is \u201ca\nbroken woman who has rebuilt herself\u201d taking control of her story.[3]<\/a>\nThis broad definition of a single action is permissible, as both the Iliad<\/em> and the Odyssey<\/em> combined detail the events of a single action (1462b9\u201311). Just\nlike Homer\u2019s epics, removing any single anecdote from Nanette <\/em>would \u201cdisturb and dislocate\u201d the unity of the single and\ncomplete action that is the whole, as each of Gadsby\u2019s stories has its own\ncall-back built into the script (1451a34). Aristotle notes that life, on its\nown, does not possess this kind of unity (1451a19). Humans take pleasure in\nrepresentations because representations allow us to \u201cunderstand and work out\nwhat each item is\u201d (1448b16). Moreover, by representing life through coherent\nnarratives, one can use particular situations as a means to grapple with\nuniversal truths (1451b6).[4]<\/a>\nThese narratives, thus, provide the basis for all understanding and all\nphilosophical inquiry, according to Aristotle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gadsby, on the other hand, is not concerned with truth: she is concerned with the political consequences of narratives. Take, for example, her rapid-fire opening where she describes jokes from earlier in her career: \u201clots of cool jokes about homophobia\u2014really solved that problem.\u201d[5]<\/a> One such joke, based on a real-life experience, was about Gadsby being misgendered. A man, supposing Gadsby to be flirting with his girlfriend, threatens to assault her. However, when it is revealed that Gadsby is in fact a woman, the man apologises, claiming he mistook her for \u201ca fucking faggot.\u201d[6]<\/a> The audience laughs as Gadsby mocks the man\u2019s ignorance. However, around seventeen minutes in, Gadsby stops these jokes, explaining that her early comedy was built on self-deprecation. \u201cDo you understand what self-deprecation means when it comes from somebody who already exists in the margins?\u201d she asks. \u201cIt\u2019s not humility. It\u2019s humiliation. I put myself down in order to speak, in order to seek permission to speak. And I simply will not do this anymore.\u201d[7]<\/a> Gadsby then proceeds, with a seamless segue, into a series of jokes about gender-norms, artfully shifting the audience\u2019s focus from jokes about her identity to jokes about the societal binaries that dictate her identity to be \u201cgender not-normal\u201d in the first place.[8]<\/a> Gadsby recognizes, as Aristotle does, that the stories we tell become the narratives we use to make sense of the world, of life, and of our own identities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifty minutes later, Gadsby returns to her anecdote about being misgendered. She informs the audience that while it was, \u201ca very funny story,\u201d this was only because she edited the real-life event; she created a false representation of it. Upon revealing this omission, Gadsby now tells the actual ending of the story. The young man comes back, realizing his mistake, and assaults Gadsby because she is \u201ca lady faggot.\u201d[9]<\/a> The audience does not laugh\u2014Gadsby does not let them. \u201cThat is what happens when you soak one child in shame and give permission to another to hate,\u201d Gadsby says.[10]<\/a> This act of violence is a direct result of the stories told to these children, and how they learned to make sense of the world through them. Gadsby condemns our modern storytelling for allowing harmful and destructive narratives to proliferate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aristotle is aware of this dangerous power possessed by poetry; however, he does not seek to regulate it. Almost to the contrary, he directs poets to look to Homer in order to learn \u201cthe right way to tell falsehoods\u201d (1460a19). The way poets should tell falsehoods, he writes, is through the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Poets want to make it clear that B follows from A; thus, when they insert B the reader will assume A is present\u2014but this is false. This deception is necessary because a storyteller cannot simply lie and compromise their authority; they must trick readers and spectators into misapplying their own reason.[11]<\/a> Aristotle then turns to the \u201cbath scene,\u201d in Book XIX of the Odyssey<\/em>, as an example of a falsehood well-told.[12]<\/a> In this scene, Penelope calls for an old servant to bathe an unfamiliar newcomer. This servant\u2014Odysseus\u2019 nurse from his childhood\u2014recognizes the stranger to be Odysseus. Attempting to preserve his ruse, Odysseus tells the nurse that he merely looks like the missing king. However, when the nurse sees a distinctive scar, she realizes the truth. The fallacy of affirming the consequent in this case would seem to be the nurse\u2019s assumption that B\u2014the presence of the scar\u2014means A is true\u2014that the stranger who looks like Odysseus really is Odysseus. Yet, what would normally be a fallacy reveals the truth. Notably, when the nurse sees the scar, the narrative is briefly interrupted with a recollection of how Odysseus got the wound. The memory goes all the way back to Odysseus\u2019 maternal grandfather giving the newborn Odysseus his name, which means \u201cson of Pain.\u201d [13]<\/a> It then details the much later visit Odysseus paid to his grandfather where he was injured during a boar hunt. The anecdote reveals more about Odysseus\u2019s character\u2014the man of lies, disguises, and pain\u2014than it does about how to tell falsehoods.[14]<\/a> Instead, Aristotle has directed his readers\u2019 attention to a passage in which a story reveals the truth in the face of a falsehood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This peculiar tangent can be reconciled with the rest of Poetics<\/em> when one considers the importance of judgement in relation to poetry for Aristotle. Specifically, he advocates for scrutinizing contradictions in poetical works, \u201cin the same way as arguments rebutting a philosophical position\u201d (1461b16\u201317). Furthermore, to determine if something is good or bad in poetry, one must look \u201cnot only at the actual deed or words, but also the identity of the person saying or doing the thing, the person to whom [they] said or did it, plus the occasion, the means and the motive\u201d (1461a6\u20138). In directing his reader\u2019s attention to this puzzling section of the Odyssey<\/em>, Aristotle is calling for both his writing and Homer\u2019s to be understood in light of their context and their contradictions. Essentially, he is providing a guide for how to approach all textual art, from Homer to the Socratic dialogues, and possibly even the Poetics<\/em> itself. By following this guidance, readers will develop their capacity for judgement. Aristotle seems to imply that by developing this capacity for philosophical judgement in relation to poetry readers will be able to approach the truth, despite\u2014and perhaps necessarily through\u2014the falsehoods told by poets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is on this subject of judgement that Nanette<\/em> challenges Poetics<\/em>.\nGadsby sees quite clearly the falsehoods mimetic artists have told\u2014artists of\nthe likes Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, and Pablo Picasso. However,\nin casting her judgement on these artists, Gadsby is not as optimistic as\nAristotle. The falsehoods told by these individuals and those like them\nultimately serve to exclude people like herself from having a place in the\nworld. Gadsby says, \u201cart history taught me there\u2019s only ever been two types of\nwomen: a virgin or a whore.\u201d[15]<\/a>\nWithin this binary, Gadsby finds no place for herself and her \u201cmasculine,\noff-centre, lesbian situation.\u201d[16]<\/a> Likewise,\nGadsby is critical of the mythology built around figures like Picasso.\nParticularly, within Picasso\u2019s image as a \u201cpassionate, virile, tormented\ngenius, man, ball sack,\u201d there is no room for his misogyny and its\nconsequences.[17]<\/a>\nThis representation of Picasso allows for people to eschew the fact he slept\nwith an underage girl, Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se Walter, and allow for Picasso\u2019s claim she\nwas in her prime, just as he was in his, to go unquestioned. As Gadsby later\nshouts, \u201ca 17-year-old girl is just never, ever, ever in her prime. Ever!\u201d[18]<\/a>\nGadsby renders judgement on these falsehoods, on these stories, on these\nrepresentations of life, and her conclusion is political: we cannot allow for\nthese representations to dominate. This appears to be why she claims Nanette <\/em>will be her last comedy set, as\nshe will not contribute to this exclusionary and abusive institution of\nstorytellers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Gadsby\u2019s words need to be reconciled with the occasion of her speech: she is articulating her judgement of comedy through comedy\u2014or something like it. As she tells the audience, particularly any men who may feel persecuted by her performance, \u201cthis is theatre, fellas.\u201d[19]<\/a> This is a representation of the real and debilitating damage that has been done to Gadsby in her life. Yet, despite the fact that this damage has been in part caused by the stories we tell, Gadsby actions reinforce the importance of storytelling in the process of healing from trauma. Gadsby uses art to highlight the limits of art; yet, when scrutinizing this contradiction, the importance of art to Gadsby\u2019s understanding of human nature is evident. Indeed, Gadsby claims that stories are something we share, that connect us, that cure us. For this reason, she sought to tell her story properly to \u201cpeople with minds of their own\u201d\u2014people who are capable of making their own judgements.[20]<\/a> Her last words on stage are not a joke\u2014instead, they are a retelling of Vincent Van Gogh\u2019s story. Early in the show, she explains that, contrary to what some amateur art aficionados might think, Van Gogh\u2019s mental illness did not spur him to make beautiful art. Van Gogh actually took medication to deal with his mental illness, paid for by an older brother, which had the side effect of causing him to experience the colour yellow very intensely. When Gadsby first tells this story, she suggests that \u201cperhaps we have the sunflowers precisely because Van Gogh medicated!\u201d[21]<\/a> Now, as she ends her show, she reframes this story again, asking the audience, \u201cDo you know why we have the sunflowers? It\u2019s not because Vincent Van Gogh suffered. It\u2019s because Vincent Van Gogh had a brother who loved him. Through all the pain, he had a connection to the world.\u201d[22]<\/a> Gadsby suggests that through the particular stories we tell, we can begin to empathize universally. Both Gadsby and Aristotle understand stories to be the fundamental building blocks upon which we build our understandings of reality. Through these stories human beings create coherence, and through judging these stories human beings can learn. However, it is on this question of judging our stories that Gadsby and Aristotle begin to differ. Aristotle suggests that, through their falsehoods, stories may be able to teach individuals the proper, philosophical judgement. From particular lies, universal truths can be articulated. By contrast, Gadsby suggests that we need to develop a kind of political judgement to mediate our stories. Her performance is hopeful in suggesting that this judgement can still be cultivated through storytelling; however, it requires a shift. Rather than using our stories and judgements to seek truth, we need to seek empathy. The understanding of art embodied by Aristotle and Gadsby is not the same; they are potentially diametrically opposed. However, despite this conflict, Gadsby and Aristotle are participating in the same conversation about the nature of art, and what it means in relation to human life.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a>. Cassie da Costa, \u201cThe Funny, Furious Anti-Comedy of Hannah\nGadsby,\u201d New Yorker<\/em>, 02 May 2018,\nhttps:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/culture\/culture-desk\/the-funny-furious-anti-comedy-of-hannah-gadsby;\nAndrew Kahn, \u201cStand-Up Tragedy,\u201d Slate<\/em>,\n11 July 2018,\nhttps:\/\/slate.com\/culture\/2018\/07\/hannah-gadsbys-netflix-special-nanette-is-powerful-anti-comedy.html.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a>. See John Mulaney, Kid\nGorgeous at Radio City<\/em> (Netflix, 2018); Tig Notaro, Happy To Be Here<\/em>, (Netflix, 2018).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a>. Gadsby, Nanette<\/em>,\n01:05:08\u201314.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a>. John Herman Randall, Jr., Aristotle\n<\/em>(New York, NY: Colombia University Press, 1960), 290. This universal\nquality in narrative art leads Aristotle to claim \u201cpoetry is more philosophical\nand more serious than history\u201d (1451b5). Randall argues that, \u201cHerodotus in verse would still be merely\n\u2018history,\u2019 not poetry; it would remain an account of particular facts, while\npoetry is of the nature rather of universals, of what such a man would probably\nor necessarily say or do. Poetry is just the kind of thing Thucydides puts into\nthe speeches of his characters: Thucydides is clearly from Aristotle’s point of\nview a true poet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a>. Gadsby, Nanette<\/em>,\n00:09:45\u201351.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a>. Gadsby, 00:010:10\u201311:22. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/a>. Gadsby, 00:17:40\u201318:17. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8]<\/a>. Gadsby, 00:19:11\u201318.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[9]<\/a>. Gadsby, 00:58:55\u201359:58<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[10]<\/a>. Gadsby, 00:59:59\u201301:00:10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[11]<\/a>. Dorothy Sayers, \u201cAristotle on Detective Fiction,\u201d English <\/em>1, no. 1 (1936): 31.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[12]<\/a>. See Homer, Odyssey<\/em>,\ntrans. Robert Fagles (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1996), XIX.384\u2013544<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[13]<\/a>. Homer, Odyssey<\/em>, XIX.464.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[14]<\/a>. Silvia Carli, \u201cThe Love Affair Between Philosophy and Poetry:\nAristotle\u2019s Poetics<\/em> and Narrative\nIdentity,\u201d The Southern Journal of\nPhilosophy<\/em> (2015):153 n.4. This\nrevelation is in line with Carli\u2019s suggestion that the Poetics<\/em> is unique in Aristotelean thought as it allows for the\nnarrative construction of identities, offering an avenue to answer the\nquestion, \u201cwho<\/em> is it?\u201d Working from\nother texts in Aristotle\u2019s corpus it is possible to answer questions about what\na person is, such as if they are morally virtuous as per Nicomachean Ethics<\/em>; however, Poetics\n<\/em>is unique in this exposition of who a person is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[15]<\/a>. Gadsby, Nanette<\/em>,\n00:46:31\u201347:05.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[16]<\/a>. Gadsby, 00:47:36\u201348:00. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[17]<\/a>. Gadsby, 00:51:32\u201342.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[18]<\/a>. Gadsby, 01:04:40\u201347. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[19]<\/a>. Gadsby, 01:05:41\u201357.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[20]<\/a>. Gadsby, 01:07:14\u00ad\u201318.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[21]<\/a>. Gadsby, 00:33:20\u201335:08.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[22]<\/a>. Gadsby, 01:07:40\u201357.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Abbie LeBlanc With a run-time of one hour and ten-minutes, Netflix bills Nanette as one of its original comedy series. Commentators have dubbed it anything but \u201ccomedy;\u201d instead, their … Continue reading “A Conversation Between Hannah Gadsby and Aristotle: On Art and Judgment in “Nanette” and “Poetics””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":333,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2019-issue","category-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.viu.ca\/compassrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.viu.ca\/compassrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.viu.ca\/compassrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.viu.ca\/compassrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/333"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.viu.ca\/compassrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.viu.ca\/compassrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":822,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.viu.ca\/compassrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787\/revisions\/822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.viu.ca\/compassrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.viu.ca\/compassrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.viu.ca\/compassrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}