By Siddarth Puri
Daily Bruin Reporter
[email protected]
Months after the traumatic events of Sept. 11, the tragedy gave
rise to something most unexpected: jokes about the event.
“Osama, yo mama tied your turban too tight!” Jokes
and comments such as this have begun to appear in the world of
comedy as many comedians have started using their talents to ease
people’s anxiety and pain.
With the tragedies in the past, comedians immediately began to
create jokes involving Middle East terrorism and Osama bin Laden,
and have even incorporated present political situations in Israel
and Palestine as well as India and Pakistan.
“It took a while before I could actually talk about Sept.
11 onstage,” said Mike Estime, a Los Angeles comedian who
performs at The Laugh Factory as well as The Ice House. “Not
only because I have family ties to India, which is a country close
enough for people to give my family bad looks, but also because I
was emotionally attached and deeply affected by the
attack.”
Many comedians feel that comedy acts as a cathartic agent,
allowing people to bring their feelings to a conscious level, where
the emotion can be verbalized and worked out.
“Humor and comedy are definitely therapeutic for audience
members,” Estime said. “Comedy gets the conversation
moving in a direction where people can just sit and listen to
another person’s perspective and be completely entertained
and be cracking up by them.”
Comedians have included a variety of terrorist jokes, ranging
from telling the Arabs in the crowd to “go back to their
homeland” to telling the “sand-diggers” to dig
themselves a new cave. Some even poke fun at Afghanistan itself by
asking why the people named their country after a blanket.
Though the comedians are taking a risk by putting political
jokes in their performances, most of them tend to continue because
it helps people take these intense situations a little more
lightly.
“A comedian’s main purpose is to entertain the
public, but to also give the audience a different perspective on a
certain issue,” said Rucha Gadgil, a first-year
communications student. “By incorporating humor into a
serious subject, comedians also help ease people’s anxiety
toward the issue.”
Crowd reactions to the comedians’ incorporation of such
racial jokes have varied. Estime says he has encountered different
kinds of reactions ““ everything from audience members who
couldn’t stop laughing, to ones with no reaction, to others
who left the show.
“Most of the terrorist material the comedians do is more
like a slapstick humor rather than serious conversation and
discourse,” said Bruce Smith, an agent for comedians such as
Christopher Titus. “They usually do something in their
performances that elicits reactions in most crowds.”
Many comedians also incorporate personal issues in their acts.
Estime, for example, uses his wife and children in many shows. When
discussing his wife, who is an Indian woman, he comments that he
has “one of Osama’s women.” Thus by personalizing
the situation, he helps decrease the intensity of the situation for
the crowd.
Other comedians, on the other hand, such as Ben Gleiberman who
hosts Gleib’s Comic Comedy at The Laugh Factory, feel that it
is still too early to be integrating serious terrorist jokes into
their acts.
“I admit that I, too, put terrorist jokes in my acts, but
I try to put a spin on them at the end of the joke that makes the
crowd laugh,” Gleiberman said. “In one of my segments,
I talk about how I met a homeless guy and asked him about the
terrorist situation. He responds by pointing to a billboard that
reads “˜God Bless America’ should read “˜God Bless
the World,’ I say, “˜Wait, I need to wash my hands. I
just touched a homeless guy.'”
Though the comedians add personal observations into their acts,
some people feel that the ways they comment on the situations tend
to be childish.
“Instead of concentrating on the political issues, the
comedians tend to focus on their humor, which can cheapen the whole
process,” Smith said. “By merely imitating a cheap
Middle Eastern accent, it makes the show into a slapstick-style
performance.”
The comedians also usually include comments regarding other
current political and social problems of the world in their
acts.
“I modify my acts all the time,” Estime said.
“I include current events in my acts so they stay fresh. I
used everything from the Catholic Church controversy to racial
profiling of brown people.”
Comedians often reflect the social as well as political
situations in their comedy, according to Gleiberman, in a way that
can either quell the audience’s anxiety towards the topic or
exacerbate it creating an uncomfortable atmosphere.
“When you walk into a comedy club, you have to know that
it’s a place where there are no holds barred,”
Gleiberman said. “Every topic is going to be skewed and you
have to be in the mood to laugh at sensitive issues that normally
wouldn’t be laughing matters.”