Black/"Urban" Standup Comedy: A Performance by Brandon Bowlin (review)

As terrorism, fear, and violence unfold on the world stage, one might question the role of comedy in this tragic milieu. Can we laugh during times like this? What insights might we gain from humor in the wake of September 11 and the war in Iraq? Brandon Bowlin, a comedian from Pasadena, California, provides bold and hopeful answers to such questions in his standup comedy. His twenty-two-minute set at the Ha Ha Café skillfully weds politics and humor in jokes addressing such highly politicized topics as the September 11 terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq. He strategically intersperses political and apolitical material to maximize the comedic potential of his set. In several instances, he also embeds decidedly political humor in jokes that implode the canonical trope of black/white cultural differences in African American standup comedy.

In one quip Bowlin critiques comics that depict white men as innately "weak" and black men as "authentic"—rough, streetwise, and hard. To Bowlin, such descriptive comparisons are trite and insidious not simply because they reify stereotypes set against flawed notions of racialized masculinity, but also because they distract from other sad truths in American history and the nation's ghettos. He argues that the reification of "being hard" in hip hop culture must be recast given the balance of historical events:

Black folks been living off the fumes of the Black Panther movement for far too long. Thinking you [are] the shit just cause you black. . . . Stop looking for rappers to be hard. You ain't hard just because you can snarl and say some dope ass lyrics. . . "Unnhhh I'm hard niggah unnnnh." No. You're not. The . . . lunatics who blew up the World Trade Center took 'hard' to-a-whole-new-level. You try that hard shit [with them], . . . they'll [terrorists] look at you [and say], (stylized Middle Eastern accent) "No you're not hard. No I'm sorry. . . No sir . . . okay yeah okay rap rap okay. (mockingly waves hands in the air) I'm scared motherfucker. Oh you come in here to rap for me? Oh noooo! My heart is beating so ever fast sir."

In the parlance of Black/"urban" standup comedy, this joke "ripped"—in other words, reduced the audience to hysterics. Similarly, a joke debunking the myth of "weak" white men also garnered considerable laughter and applause:

Some comics get up here and talk about how weak white boys are. . . . I'm like, who the fuck are you talking [about]?! Those motherfuckas landed and took a whole continent. They landed in one shore and did not stop until they had everything and reached another ocean. (mimics, in Texan cadence, an early explorer reaching the end of his journey) 'Okay North Pacific? (breathes sigh of relief) Okay, we got it all. It's all ours.—Is that Oregon? Okay, that's ours too. Okay. Alright.'

Bowlin might do well to assume empathy from his predominantly young to middle-aged African American audience. His set accommodates stylistic and thematic conventions for in-group critique and sociopolitical commentary within an established tradition of black comedic performance. Bowlin's jokes are also evocative of a broad spectrum of urban September 11humor. As the nation mourned its reputed "loss of innocence" and America's pundits and humorists contemplated the appropriate time to return to laugher, African American comics and their largely black and brown audiences unearthed humor exploiting the tragic ironies of the terrorist attacks. For example, many African American comics sardonically celebrated the fortuitous emergence of a "new nigger" and joked that while "patriotic" Americans turned suspect gazes upon their fellow citizens of Middle Eastern and Indian descent, black males enjoyed a relative reprieve from racial profiling.

Yet, there are risks to comedic performances that interrogate jingoism and America's fight against terrorism. Anti-war sentiments become dubious when soldiers hit the battlefield...