Trevor Noah: Pay Back the Funny (2015)

It was a no Last Week Tonight, no Daily Show week, so have a review of another Trevor Noah standup special (thanks, YouTube.)

Filmed in Johannesburg, this special starts out reallysimilar to Noah’s Lost in Translationshow from Comedy Central.  He opens with the same riff on “woohoo,” touches on the same idea of Black people’s fractious history with the police, and tells the same story about his mother and grandmother’s reactions to him getting the Daily Show gig.  At first, I thought it was going to be the same basic show, albeit in slightly different packaging; I like his comment that white people don’t have the problem of going to jail “by mistake,” and I think it’s interesting that, in the anecdote about his mom, his mentions his younger brother being named “head prefect” at school, while in the American-made Lost in Translation, he says his brother’s made “student council.”

After the first 10-15 minutes, though, it’s entirely different, mostly fantastic material.  He has an amusing riff on smartphones, complete with a dramatic reenactment of a woman taking a “candid” selfie.  He discusses South African president Jacob Zuma’s latest scandal and how he’s rebounded from it – I love Noah’s delight at Zuma making fun of the way someone else talks, and his speculation about how Zuma learned to eyeroll is great.  I pretty much always enjoy Noah’s observations about interactions between different cultures, and he has some nice material on accents here, doing a terrific routine on the origins of the South African Indian accent as well as drawing clear distinctions between someone’s accent and their level of intelligence.

Speaking of accents, it turns out Noah’s chief edict from his countrymen before joining The Daily Show was not to lose his.  My favorite part of the special is an extended sequence about The Daily Show’s effect on his life at home and in the States.  He describes himself as “well-known” rather than “famous” and tells the crowd about his experiences being invited to celebrity events.  From the chaotic nightmare of the red carpet, to “rubbing shoulders with” people who have no idea who he is, to desperately trying not to fanboy in front of everyone he’s ever idolized, it’s an excellent picture of what it’s like to have just gotten his first seat at the table.

The other long routine I love is a story about South Africa’s frequent load-shedding (rolling blackouts.)  Returning to South Africa from New York, Noah can’t get past the electric gate for his own house due to a power out, and he muses on the perils of trying to jump his fence before getting swallowed by the soul-crushing exercise of ringing up a government department.  The references here are South-Africa-specific, but trying to call a bureaucracy isn’t.  Between the automated voice, the endless hold music, and the completely-unhelpful live operator who picks up just when Noah has lost all hope of ever speaking to another human again, the anecdote is both totally South African and absolutely universal.

Overall, I think Lost in Translation is still the best I’ve seen so far, but this special is super funny, really personable, and a lot of fun.

Warnings

Language, alcohol references, and thematic elements.

Trevor Noah: The Daywalker (2009)

Since both Last Week Tonight and The Daily Show were dark this week, I thought I’d review another Trevor Noah standup special in lieu of the usual News Satire Roundup.  IMDb tells me this was Noah’s first televised comedy special, filmed in Johannesburg and broadcast in South Africa.  In other words?  Thank you, YouTube!  Both of the other specials I’ve seen from Noah (as well as all his work on The Daily Show, obviously) were made in the U.S., and while he spends plenty of time talking about Africa in all of his comedy, these other pieces I’ve seen are definitely framed for U.S. audiences.  Other than a handful of shorter clips, this is the first piece I’ve seen made specificially for South Africans, and it’s interesting to see what Noah’s work is like in that setting.

I’ve read that Noah tailors his routines a lot based on where he’s performing, and from what I’ve seen, that seems to bear out.  As a result, much of the comedy here is about people or cultural norms that I know very little about.  The hour-and-20-minute show covers all of South Africa’s presidents (crazy to think that basically every person in that audience was alive for the country’s first democratic election,) including a lamentation that Jacob Zuma, the current (then and now) president, is a disappointment, comedy-wise, and a fantastic bit about Nelson Mandela’s 91^stbirthday party.  There’s also a ton of material on similiarities and differences between various groups in South Africa – white, Black, colored (meaning mixed race,) and Indian – with a number of specific geographic references, snatches of assorted languages, and a wide array of accents.  However, even though certain references alluded me and I’m sure it’d be a lot funnier to someone who’s familiar with those cultures and knows those politicians, I still got plenty out of it.  Funny is funny, and Noah’s comedy doesn’t have to be packaged specifically for me to work for me.  (Note:  his various African accents are a lot thicker here than the one he typically uses in the U.S. now, and there are some jokes that my American ears simply couldn’t decipher.)

Something that I found really interesting is his stories about being colored/mixed.  Now, this is a common theme in Noah’s comedy, and I’d already heard some of these jokes in routines he’s done elsewhere, but while I knew that his experiences as a biracial person born during apartheid was unique, I didn’t realize that they were unique even among mixed South Africans.  As part of his introduction to the topic, he notes a light-skinned woman in the audience, asks if she’s colored, and then verifies that her parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were all colored as well.  Because “colored” was a separate racial group under apartheid and racial groups weren’t supposed to mix, many (most?) biracial people there came from families where everyone is biracial.  Therefore, having one Black parent and one white parent wasn’t the norm even for a mixed person.  Having heard it and knowing what I know about apartheid, it makes sense, but it had never occurred to me before.  This routine offered some interesting tidbits I hadn’t known; I knew that Noah’s father was kept a secret until after apartheid ended, but I didn’t know that secret even extended to his mother’s side of the family, and while I knew that some people mistakenly thought Noah had albinism (rather than being mixed,) I’d never heard him talk about it, and his story of rolling with his “albino crew” was pretty fun.

Warnings

Thematic elements, sexual references, a little swearing, and alcohol references.