The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell by W. Kamau Bell

Author:W. Kamau Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-04-13T12:32:48+00:00

Martha: “Why do you say ‘bitch’ there?”

Me: “Because it’s funny.”

Martha: “Maybe it’s funny to you, but it’s not funny to me.”

Me: “Yeah, well, but every joke isn’t funny to everybody.”

Martha: “But I’m your friend. Don’t you want it to be funny to me . . . and people like me?”

Me: “Yeah, but . . .”

Martha: “Then don’t say ‘bitch.’”

Me: “But it’s funny.”

Martha: “Not to me. And every time you say ‘bitch,’ you are linked to every other man and specifically every other Black man who uses that word as a way to refer to all women, no matter who they are and what they do.”

Me: “. . . . . . . . . . . . But it’s funny.”

I STILL thought it was funny if I said “bitch.” So I struggled with it, and the next time I did the show, I changed that line to “That little doctor was racist!” And it got the same laugh. It might even have gotten a bigger laugh because I was pretending she was a real doctor. But it certainly didn’t lose anything. And that became the point through which I would really start to look at things, and I began writing with the question in mind: Am I stepping on the right toes, here?

Because it’s a very easy thing to do in comedy, to make fun of the person you hate—like, blah blah blah, Republicans—but then as a part of making fun of Republicans, suddenly it turns into jokes targeting disabled women at McDonald’s. Suddenly you’re making fun of people who have nothing to do with the original thing you’re talking about, and it both demeans them and diffuses the point you were making. That happens in comedy a lot. It’s the reason why midgets are often used as comedy. It’s a very easy trope to go to. Some jokes are like a shotgun blast, where a bunch of pellets come out and hit whoever’s in the area. That’s the point at which I decided, to use a clumsy analogy, to be very target-focused. When I’m talking about something I don’t like, I can only include other things I don’t like, for the same reasons, in that joke.

—

It’s been a process. I didn’t completely learn that lesson that night. But Martha had placed an inescapable idea in my head. An idea that I later learned from a New Yorker article written about Totally Biased is called “intersectional progressivism.” In other words, only step on the toes of the people who you think need their toes stepped on. And more than that, figure out a way to include other people who are also in need of help. Make the bandwagon to freedom as big as possible. And it is my job specifically to make it as funny as possible for all the people I want on the bandwagon.

And long story shortish . . . that is how Martha became my director. For the next two years, we would meet in her kitchen, sometimes with her daughter there.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.