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Satire Roundup this week, so here’s some more Trevor Noah for you. This isn’t a standup special but a
documentary about a standup special,
following Noah in the time leading up to his first one-man show in Johannesburg
(The Daywalker, which I previously
reviewed.)
You Laugh But It’s True opens on Noah with
about two years of standup under his belt.
He’s been making a name for himself in the burgeoning South Africa
comedy scene and has gotten a chance to put together a one-man show, which is
virtually unheard-of at all in South Africa, let alone for someone so new to
the game. As he prepares his material –
much of which is based on his life and growing-up experiences – he revisits the
white and Black neighborhoods of his childhood, introduces his family to the
camera, and workshops routines in small comedy dives. All the while, he examines where South Africa
is today and where it’s come from, hoping to use his comedy to say something
true about how race has shaped both his country and his own experiences within
it.
By now,
I’m familiar enough with Noah and his work that I already knew a lot of the
information shared during the documentary.
Still, it’s neat to see people and places that he talks about so much in
his standup (his visit to his grandmother’s house in Soweto is a highlight of
the film for me,) and it’s interesting to see racial dynamics he describes play
out on camera – I had a surprised but resigned “Oh right, of course that would
happen” reaction to Noah explaining that people in South Africa still can’t
quite believe he belongs to his own family, but it’s even more impactful to see
someone on the street quizzing him about how he can be related to his
grandmother when they don’t look alike (ie, he’s light-skinned and she’s not.)
It’s
neat to learn a bit more about South African comedy in general. The documentary shows tiny snippets from
comics of various races and repeats Noah’s previous explanation that standup in
South Africa is only as old as democracy there, that it was something to come
out of the end of apartheid. And yet, it’s
a good demonstration of how the scars of apartheid still affect people across
the country in different ways – the Black comics featured all use their comedy
to talk about racial politics, both as reflections of their lives and because
they feel it’s important to use their platforms to speak about the reality of
race in South Africa, while a number of the white comics have talking heads
wondering why Black comedians are still
harping on about race and apartheid (“it was 15 years ago!”) I also think
it’s really interesting how critical
the white comics are of Noah. He’s
repeatedly called arrogant, too inexperienced/a “queue-jumper,” and his success
is dismissed as a “right place, right time” situation, with one white comic
declaring him “not a comedian” at all.
I
thought it was a fascinating film. Like
much of Noah’s standup, it addresses race and life in South Africa through a
different lens, one that’s too rarely seen in the U.S. – as I heard Noah say in
an interview in which he references the documentary, it’s not a “let me film
your hunger” story about “African suffering,” but a story that offers a more
complex picture of the country.
Warnings
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