Popular Culture Review 30.1
noting that what we often abjectify in others is a quality we see in ourselves , writing that “ there are no strangers . There are only versions of ourselves , many of which we have not embraced , most of which we wish to protect ourselves from ” ( 38 ).
My name is now an offensive slur like homo , fag , dyke …. Parents are unlikely to name their newborns Nanette and when I introduce myself to a stranger , they may give me that look , you know the one , Hannah , “ when someone looks at you like you ’ re scum of the earth ” ( qtd . Aubrey , par . 6 ). In the 1950 film adaptation of the Broadway musical “ No , No , Nanette ,” Doris Day sings “ No , No , Nanette regales my ears ... Sometime , perhaps , I ’ ll have my way , when I am old and turning grey , but just as yet it ’ s always no , no , no , no ... Nanette !” Wherever Gadsby ’ s Nanette is , she ’ s still that “ older woman ,” getting older every day , singled out as the sacrificial scapegoat for Gadsby ’ s rhetorical and financial purposes . It is as if Gadsby says , “ No , No , Nanette , you shall not speak !” Nanette represents every subjugated person condemned to a life of silent anonymity , excluded from the grand social conversation .
Rather than perpetuating the Aristotelian pattern of patriarchal rhetoric wherein the rhetor ( Gadsby ) works to persuade his audience to his way of thinking and dominate them in the process , I suggest Gadsby and all of us take a different rhetorical tact as we interact with one another : experiment upon the Invitation Rhetoric feminist theorists Sonja K . Foss and Cindy L . Griffin propose . Foss and Griffin espouse a “ new rhetoric ... united by a set of basic principles ” including “ equality , immanent value , and self-determination ” ( 4 ). Aren ’ t these the privileges Gadsby claims and accuses Nanette of withholding ? This isn ’ t really new rhetoric but rather the same claim humans have made since time immemorial . The
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