Hannah Gadsby: Douglas pokes fun at the patriarchy and noms on hate
By Sabrina Reed
Hannah Gadsby: Douglas is funny, topical, and a glimpse into the way Gadsby sees the world as an autistic woman navigating a neurotypical world.
Looking like Louis Tomlinson circa 2011, Hannah Gadsby sets her audience’s expectations to a reasonable level in her hilarious Netflix special, Douglas. Nanette, this show is not. Gadsby’s days of talking about her trauma are not over, but as she says herself, she’d have budgeted it better had she’d known how popular trauma in the context of comedy would be.
Due to lack of seeing her popularity on the horizon, Douglas is not a sequel to her traumedy. Instead, it’s a near 90-minute walk through her thought processes as an autistic woman. She lets the audience know what she’s going to do, how she’s going to do it, and when it’s going to happen.
You’re going to see the joke coming, and you’re going to laugh anyway. That’s the conceit of Gadsby’s show, and a reminder of the intelligence behind her comedy.
Gadsby is confident because she knows her craft, and she knows how to make people laugh without punching down. That, however, does not mean she doesn’t take any shots in Douglas.
If you’re a white, cis man guard your loins. Gadsby pokes fun at the patriarchy, jumping from anecdote to historical observations eviscerating the societal proclivity to let “boys be boys” at the detriment of themselves, women, and enbys.
Some of her comments are sprinkled in as bait for her haters, the men who take the time to tell her they’ve never head of her (contradicting themselves in the process) and who try to mansplain comedy to a comedian. Though if you’re worried about Gadsby baiting her detractors, don’t be.
She says it’s how she inoculates herself to the hate. It’s why she has no problem letting anti-vaxxers know that not only are they wrong about vaccines causing autism, but also that there’s nothing wrong with the way she thinks simply because it’s different.
Gadsby experiences the world through a prism the neurotypical cannot access. Hence, why she calls Douglas a show about autism. The show is purposefully structured to calibrate the audience toward a better understanding of what it’s like for people on the spectrum.
So Gadsby begins her show putting herself in a somewhat unlikable position by starting with jokes about Americans to a largely American audience and ends in a more likable position, which includes an anecdote about a penguin and a box.
As Gadsby says in her show:
"…[P]eople with autism rarely make a good first impression. And most people tend to write us off because of that. So this is a show that rewards people who persevere, who go beyond their discomfort just to see what’s on the other side of the spectrum. For those people this show does work like a romantic comedy, theoretically, ’cause theories are sexy."
With expectations set and material that will leave you crying with mirth, Douglas is more than a laugh and a good time. It’s a fitting non-sequel to Nanette that keeps the art history but leaves its predecessor as the body of work it was for that moment in time for us and Gadsby.
Douglas stands on its own, puns and all, and if there’s anything in the special that makes you puff up, remember Gadsby’s golden rule for the beginning of her show: Don’t invest in those feelings. Feel but don’t invest.
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