Netflix: Certifiably Funny
Thumbing through Netflix’s catalogue of media can be as revealing and rewarding as it is be hypnotically interminable. Now more than ever, the breadth of creative output on Netflix brings various new voices to a vast, diverse digital audience.
This could not be more true in the particular case of Netflix comedy specials. In past years, Netflix specials have both reinforced the prowess of mainstays like Chris Rock and launched industry lackeys like Ali Wong into stardom. Netflix, through its ability to relentlessly push its own produced content to its front page, holds an immense power that can not only transform careers, but shape ideas of what kind of comedy is worth watching — or, in other words, what kind of comedy is funny.
Despite its myriad successes, none quite measure up to the cultural impact of Netflix’s showcase of Tasmanian comic Hannah Gadsby with her show Nanette. Though Gadsby’s hour-long set begins with her jokingly musing on her upbringing as a closeted lesbian in a bastion of social conservativism, jokes about social interactions surrounding her gender-nonconforming presentation quickly go from self-deprecating banter to poignant condemnations of misogyny and homophobia. Gadsby uses the latter half of her set to speak to the power of comedy as one that can enable her to speak, but at the cost of making the pain and trauma accompanying her identity a passive punchline, while straight male comedians get to continue reducing the experience of women and queer people to punchilnes at no cost to themselves. Calling out the behavior of figures like Louis C.K. and Harvey Weinstein, Gadsby ultimately uses the set to announce her renouncement of comedy and self-deprecation as a means of validating her speech.
Seeing this as Netflix’s headlining banner, I knew that some shift in the comedy world was imminent. As a minority comedy enthusiast, it made me ecastatic to see a gay comic standing up to the idea that trauma inherently fuels good comedy, all the while using these callouts to an effective comedic end. Furthermore, the special’s highly visible placement was a reasonable shift from Netflix usually squeezing queer artists into smaller acts within larger series. Gadsby’s forthright reclamation of queer narratives sent ripples through the world of comedy, and I was profoundly excited for the avalanche of queer comedy that was sure to follow this groundbreaking set.
I conveniently forgot, however, that for every ten prodigious minorities, there is a straight man yelling twice as loud and getting thrice the attention.
In August of 2019, Netflix pushed Dave Chappelle to the front page with his special Dave Chappelle: Sticks & Stones. Chappelle, one of comedy’s undeniable “greats,” has never had a particularly good rapport with the queer community. And with Sticks & Stones, Chappelle makes it clear that he cares little for redressing his offenses, taking aim at the #MeToo movement “destroying” men like Louis C.K. and Michael Jackson, as well as an extended riff on the self-victimizing “alphabet soup” attitudes of the LGBTQ+ community.
The special, though not necessarily presenting anything I wouldn’t expect from a masculine straight man clothed in the invulnerable trappings of his own glorified name, brought me back to exactly where I was before Nanette: knowing that any valid opinion I can have on queer or sexual discrimination can be shouted down by a man with money and power. And this special coming off the heels of not only Nanette’s success, but the increased visibility of female comedians like Chelsea Peretti, Jen Kirkman and Ali Wong via Netflix’s infrastructure, made Netflix’s owning of Sticks & Stones even more jarring.
In asking how it could even be possible for Netflix to have monetary stakes in such contrarian outlooks on comedy, one only needs to look at the ratings. Despite the fact that Sticks & Stones has a rather mediocre critical response, audiences largely adulate the special. Though this can be attributed mostly to the weight Chappelle’s name carries, Netflix is not blameless in peddling Chappelle’s inflammatory, unfunny assertions. As one of the streaming industry’s most successful platforms, what Netflix pushes to the front of its lineup informs what consumers see as valuable culture, and right now the value of homophobia for the sake of some brave sense of edginess is being legitimized barely a year after Nannette used the same platform to condemn comedians like this.
Whether they like it or not, Netflix has a duty to the public in what they legitimize through their media. And by sending mixed messages on who they think deserves to be made fun of, they have only showed that they have no message as long as they can push content to an audience that consumes.
(thumbnail image courtesy of Netflix)