Trevor Noah: African American (2013)

I caught this pre-Daily-Show standup special on Netflix.  Not as strong as Lost in Translation, in my opinion, but still fantastically funny.  Trevor Noah’s fish-out-of-water humor about being an African in America is fun and engaging, and he hits some excellent topics (a few joke spoilers.)

The “I just got here, your ways are so weird to me” thing gets a lot of good mileage here.  Noah riffs on American language and accents (I especially love the idea of Shakespeare kicking himself that he didn’t come up “nawmean?”), systems of measurement, driving, foreign relations, and sports, among other things.  As he frequently does on The Daily Show, Noah adopts an affable incredulity toward the goofier and more baffling elements of American daily life that most Americans probably don’t think of as anything unusual.

The newcomer-finding-his-way comedy also touches on more thoughtful topics, like race and U.S. customs.  While the lighter stuff is still plenty funny, I think Noah is at his best when he has a point he wants to make.  My favorite bit in the special is probably his anecdote about an experience with the racial demographics box on a loan application form and his subsequent remarks about how mixed race is perceived.  (It’s worth noting that commentary can find its way into the less serious routines as well.  I love when he recalls how a friend laughed at his story about someone driving on the wrong side of the road, then, upon learning that the driver was Asian, solemnly informed Noah that he couldn’t tell that story because it was racist.)

Since “American” only makes up half of the special’s title, it stands to reason that Noah talks quite a bit about Africa as well.  He discusses growing up biracial during apartheid (longing to go to America because he “wanted to be Black”) and tells an awful-yet-very-funny story about a school Oprah built in South Africa.  He also spends time talking about America’s limited view of Africa – he rips into the “for just $.10 a day, you can help…” commercials with some relish, and he paints a picture of what many Americans expect to see when they hear “African comedian.”

What I don’t like is the discomfort I feel at some of the humor.  This was made a couple years ago, and there are jokes here that are… I hesitate to say racist or sexist, but shall we say, maybe racially/sexually flippant?  Which, especially on the race issue, seems like a strange critique of a biracial South African comic, but every so often, there’s an impression of or remark about Black Americans or Asian people that doesn’t quite sit right with me; the same goes for a few jokes about women.  Now, I get that standup is irreverent, but after getting used to Noah’s more recent humor – which is mostly very smart, very funny, and very thoughtful, particularly with regard to race – it feels off.  (It’s true that South Africa has a much shorter history of being able to talk openly about race, so they’ve not had as much time to get PC about it.  Still bugs me, though.)  This is largely why I prefer Lost in Translation; I think Noah’s comedy has grown up quite a bit, and I imagine that the past few years working in America has helped sharpen his commentary on it, while maintaining his vantage point as someone looking at it from an outside perspective.

Warnings

Language (including the N-word a few times,) some sexual references, and thematic elements, including discussions of racism and references to domestic abuse.