Painfully Rich

So we all know - and don't really believe - that being rich doesn't make you happy, unless, that is, we have been stinking, filthy, "painfully rich" as the condition is described by the the author of the book on the Getty family, on which the 2017 film All the Money in the World is partly based. Only then, it would seem, do we know, especially if we are the heirs to such painful riches, as J.Paul Getty's children and grandchildren were.

But now, with the production at last of this painfully real 'truth inspired' film of the 1973 kidnapping of one of Getty's grandchildren, we, the not painfully stinking, can finally see for ourselves just what BIG money can do to a man and his family.

And so I urge all to see this film, as I have just done, for that reason if no other. Although you won't only come away thinking how much better you feel about not being rich. For the story of how the grandfather, at the time the richest man in the world, refused to pay the ransom money for the safe return of his grandson, and as a result the grandson was kept in near squalor and fear for his life for five months and eventually had his right ear cut off, an ordeal that he never recovered from psychologically and died prematurely no doubt partly as a result of, will also shock you to the core, as seeing is believing - almost - to learn just how ruthlessly arrogant and heartless an insanely money-obsessed man can actually be, as if we needed any more evidence of this, which we don't really.

But the film is also illuminating on a gender front, as the mother of the kidnapped boy, who was just 16 at the time, fights such a valiant and tireless battle against this ruthlessness on behalf of her son, having asked Getty for no money to raise her three children when she was divorced from her husband, Paul Getty Jr, that her lack of greed, humanity and strength, which in the end sees her son finally returned to her, albeit scarred for life, provides a salient and reassuring counter to the man's corrupt, callous heart.

I feel reassured at least. And I wonder how many gender stories of this sort remain out there still untold, it took long enough to tell this one, though it is totally made for film.

When Getty senior died he left not one penny in his will for the kidnapped grandson (though he himself had inherited a business worth 10 million from his father). What a fucking arsehole, even if, in theory at least, he might have been doing the boy a favour. Alas, it was too late for that.

Yes, yes, Nanette (Hannah Gadsby)

'Remarkable', though 'not that funny', according to one male reviewer

Just when I thought I knew all the western cultural heroes who were brazen misogynists, now Picasso must be added to the long list, thanks to Hannah Gadsby's insights on the man and art delivered in her devilishly daring, honest and brilliant Netflix stand-up special Nanette.

But this is not what Nanette is about - misogynist men - at least not mainly. Nanette is a comedy, for starters, if a very new and cutting-edge comedy that stretches the boundaries of traditional stand-up to a new and, I believe, distinctly, if also challenging, feminine shape, or shapes. This is no one-size-fits-all reshaping.

But Nanette is mainly a show about WOMEN, and FUNNY WOMEN more specifically, and funny, lesbian and otherwise "different" women who do not fit nor want to fit the man-made mould of what it is to be a human female in this male dominated and distorted world, most specifically.

"Nanette" rejects the mould of female comedy in which women find themselves in a self-deprecating mode in order to get laughs from men, as well as those women who, like Hannah previously, are too ashamed to be themselves and own their anger about the way they are judged and abused simply for being women, and especially for being "different" women. Hannah will carry that shame no more and if that means the end of her comedy career then so be it, as she says on stage in a perfectly timed and balanced performance that pulls no punches and is brutally honest, while knocking its audience over by shouting and repeating its rarely spoken, deeply personal and political feminist rage.

And as a woman, a different and funny if straight woman who has been wrestling with speaking my own feminist truth for decades, and most recently in reaction to an experience on and around the stand-up stage that I believe was seriously sexist and discriminatory towards me as a not-young woman, Nanette feels more than timely and gives me strength to continue fighting that battle.

And so I believe this is our time, hers, mine and yours. Women are not only proving we are funny, as so long denied, but we are showing we are funny (and fierce) fighters in a way that male comedians are not and never have been, indeed never have had to be. Seinfeld, for example, has just told Dave Letterman on his show that he has no interest in speaking about Trump in his act, instead he offers twenty minutes on chocolate raisins. Kathy Griffin, on the other hand, did speak out in anger about Trump in her comedy immediately after his election and was exiled from her country for a year for her troubles. Michele Wolf took a similar risk at the White House Correspondents' dinner this year and was pilloried by many in the press, and Chelsea Handler was similarly outspoken about Trump before and after his election. And unable to stomach his outrageous success and stupidity, or to make light of life through humour in the face of it, Chelsea walked away, after only two seasons, from her own show as the first female evening talk show host in the US.

Indeed Hannah says she has to get out of comedy because she is no longer prepared to hide her history of being abused nor the anger and shame she has felt about being a lesbian and a victim all these years, truths that are generally not funny. But with the incredibly positive reaction to her Netflix special worldwide, it is more than likely that Hannah will have a career in the international public eye speaking her hard and not always funny truth for some time, whether we want to call that comedy or not is up to us.

I would like to think that comedy in 2018 and beyond can and will stretch to this sort of very personal and political truth-telling, warts, wounds and all performance. Because as funny as Seinfeld is, or at least was, twenty minutes on raisins by a straight white male comic in the age of Trump, I think says as much about the limits of his kind of comedy going forward as Griffin's daring decapitated head stunt says about the potential of hers and others who work harder and braver to forge the laughs in light of the most inconvenient truths of our times than traditional comics have ever done, as far as I can see. And watching Letterman last night, I got the feeling that he saw this in Seinfeld too, as close a friend and fan of Seinfeld's as he is.

So thank you Hannah and Kathy and Michele and Chelsea and others; your (our) time has finally come. Paint that, Picasso.