Comedy

'You Can Definitely Skip Dave Chappelle's New Netflix Special,' says VICE. And if that's not recommendation enough, here's one from me: Sticks & Stones is the most, offensive, foul-mouthed, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic comedy set you're likely to see on TV this year. Chappelle, I must confess, was new to me. Yes, I know, I know, all you American readers: he's a comedy institution, ranked no. 9 in Rolling Stone's '50 Best Stand Up Comics of All Time' with numerous awards and a career going right back to his 1993 movie debut in Mel Brooks's Robin Hood: Men In Tights. But when you're English and you get to a certain age, you find yourself taking a certain perverse pride in not knowing anything whatsoever about icons who are really huge in the US.

There are over 2,000 shows at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, but only one that is really worth seeing. Titania McGrath’s Mxnifesto is a tour de force of political oratory that is unlikely to be surpassed in my lifetime. I have seen every single performance, except for the nights I’ve had off (usually when my self-diagnosed PTSD has flared up), and its cultural significance is indisputable. I’d go so far as to suggest that the Edinburgh Fringe should cease after this current year, given that its purpose has now surely been fulfilled. I was warned against writing this piece. Apparently, it is frowned upon to write a review for your own show. I consider this yet another attempt to silence women’s voices by the forces of heteronormative patriarchy.

Aziz Ansari premiered his hour-long Netflix apology special in a barely audible voice from a crouching position in the corner of a dark stage in Brooklyn. His mostly white audience was rapt and reverential through each moment of silent reflection and public embrace. For past crimes, he forgives himself, he forgives his audience for not forgiving him earlier, and he forgives all those who know not what they did — crying ‘Nazi!' in crowded theaters, promoting fake news, finding good people on both sides.We are chastened. We are redeemed. Our prodigal son has returned to us a prophet and yea, unto us his message is clear: 'Children, we are all assholes in different cultural contexts. Love each other. Now is all we have.

If you find yourself laughing at stand-up comedy, it probably isn’t sufficiently progressive. This is why I’ve been so disturbed lately to hear about Comedy Unleashed, a popular monthly event in London that claims to oppose censorship and promote ‘free-thinking’ comedians. As anyone who cares about social justice knows, concepts such as ‘free thought’ and ‘free speech’ are typical racist dog whistles of the far right. To confirm what I had already decided, I went undercover to infiltrate this den of crypto-fascism with my good friend Yohann Koshy, whose devastating account of the goings-on at the club has since been published by the online magazine VICE.

The trouble with Trumpworld is it’s so often beyond parody. How could a comedian ratchet up the president ordering Big Macs for a visiting championship football team to make the moment funnier than it already is? It’s a problem which has plunged late-night comedy writing into an identity crisis, one that has blighted America’s flagship sketch show Saturday Night Live. The Trump era has seen SNL bag Emmys and reach record audiences. But it’s achieved this through polarization: hitting the same tired Trump tropes each week and playing to their coastal-elite base. Its viewers have noticed: 39 percent of them surveyed by The Hollywood Reporter said the show had become too political.

I bet you didn’t see Showtime’s one-hour special with comedian Lavell Crawford. Which is weird because the media is delirious with racial parity these days and they scarcely mentioned it. Crawford is a unique voice in American comedy and routinely sells out black audiences across the country. So where’s his New Yorker profile or New York Times essay? Why didn’t anyone hear about Crawford calling Trump our ‘first nigger president’ — back in 2017, no less? I discovered Crawford through an NSFW Breitbart comments thread, reading, as I like to, across the divide. The video, ‘Lavell Crawford — Trump Obama’, is an excerpt from Crawford’s Home for the Holidays tour, which Showtime premiered in late 2017.

‘At least we’ll have good comedy,’ liberals and leftists sighed to themselves when Donald Trump was elected. If anything, the opposite has been the case. Topical comedy has spiraled into a drain of irrelevance: soggy, flimsy, colorless, disposable. Hannah Gadsby’s self-consciously serious Netflix special Nanette was embraced by progressives and denounced by conservatives for explicitly spurning jokes in favor of moralism. Frankly, I was grateful that Ms Gadsby was honest. Comedians have long been flattering their audiences into believing they are good, wise people with good, wise opinions and at least Gadsby did not pretend Nanette was funny. Others sprinkle jokes on a big pan of half-baked propaganda.

‘Songs of joy and tears of laughter are all we need, to lift our hearts – Godfrey Elfwick’ I penned the above quote for an article in my university’s weekly student magazine ‘Wotz Woke?’ while trying to combat the negative effects of Trump and Brexit. Since then however, things have changed, and my outlook on ‘tears of laughter’ has altered drastically. When it comes to comedy these days, ‘tears of laughter’ has become merely tears. This week, a ‘stand up comedian’ by the name of Konstantin Kisin was handed a very reasonable contract by the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) in London, organized by university society Unicef on Campus.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest series Who Is America? isn’t funny. But then, nor was his terrible 2016 movie The Brothers Grimsby. Nor was his rubbish 2012 film The Dictator. Nor, let’s be honest, were his classic original characters Borat, Brüno or even Ali G. Obviously, they had their moments: the ‘mankini’ — that bizarre, electric green, giant-thong-like swim wear worn by Borat; the classic late-Nineties catchphrase ‘Is it because I is black?’ And sure it must have taken some nerve — even in character — to explain to a clearly impatient and unimpressed Donald Trump his business plan for some anti-drip ice-cream gloves. But how often, even at his best, does Baron Cohen ever make you laugh?