The Riyadh Comedy Festival is ending Thursday, after setting off a Taylor Swift level of discourse, and the American comics who performed there have been returning home and explaining why they participated.
Bill Burr argued that playing for a festival paid for by the repressive Saudi Arabian government would improve freedom of speech. Louis C.K. said he had mixed feelings but wanted to be part of stand-up’s effort at “opening up” the Middle East. Aziz Ansari told Jimmy Kimmel he thought hard on it and decided performing would mean “pushing things to be more open.”
Call me cynical but I bet money also had something to do with it.
It was refreshing to hear Pete Davidson bluntly copping to taking the gig for the paycheck. Jessica Kirson was the only performer who apologized and donated her fee to charity. Ansari said he gave some of his to groups like Human Rights Watch, which had called on him and the other artists to demand that the Saudi government release detained activists. As far as we know, Ansari and the other comics did not speak out. (None of the performances were televised.)
The comedians’ best arguments are that no matter who is paying their fees, they are performing for the people, not the state, and that bringing American comedy to Saudi Arabia will lead the government to become less repressive. Kirson said she thought that “being the first openly gay comic to talk about it onstage in Saudi Arabia” would help LGBTQ+ Saudis and start a dialogue.
There is merit to these points. Art can be a kind of soft power that spreads American values. And cultural boycotts are often futile. But when these comics talk about their work “opening up” the country, there’s a self-importance and lack of concrete detail that strikes me as willfully naïve.
Louis C.K. got closest to spotting the elephant in the room when he praised David Cross for harshly criticizing comics who took part. “You shouldn’t just pretend it’s something it’s not,” C.K. said of the event.
What is it exactly? More than any other artists, comedians are alert to how language reveals meaning, and what all the explanations have in common is a maddening vagueness. What does this specific festival represent?
If the comics used their sets, or even their interviews back home, to look squarely at the critique of the Saudi government, that would be one thing. But I see zero evidence that they are defending (or even showing respect for) actual dissent.
None of these comics mentioned the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed by Saudi operatives in 2018 after writing Washington Post columns critical of the Saudi government. Atsuko Okatsuka, who said she turned down the festival’s offer (along with other comics including Shane Gillis, Leslie Liao and Mike Birbiglia), posted part of the proposed contract, which forbid making fun of certain topics like the Saudi royal family, and noted: “The money is coming straight from the crown prince, who actively executes journalists.”
On his podcast, Burr made a point of saying the royals “loved the show.” And why wouldn’t they?
Dave Chappelle told members of his audience, “It’s easier to talk here than it is in America.” That talk-show hosts like Jimmy Kimmel were being pressured by the government in this country certainly helped Chappelle’s case.
But even putting aside the vast differences in free speech between the two countries, the Kimmel episode undermines his argument. A cultural boycott here was forceful enough that his bosses changed course. Burr, Louis C.K. and Ansari are making a different case: They’re arguing for the impact of comedians and the power of jokes.
But that’s precisely the opposite lesson to take away from the comedian Tim Dillon’s experience with the festival. When he criticized the Saudi government weeks before the event, he was disinvited. The comics who remained on the bill were paid not just to perform, but also to shut up about certain topics. And they complied.
Imagine if similar conditions were put on comics in this country. What if a stand-up was told they couldn’t mock the president at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner? They wouldn’t perform. Or what if Andrew Schultz, who performed in Saudi Arabia, was told by an American producer that he couldn’t insult the government? He would surely exploit this by presenting himself as the victim of cancel culture. No word from him yet about being muffled by Saudi Arabia. It’s hard to see Chappelle signing a contract to perform at a university only if he agreed to state his pronouns at the start of the set.
It’s fair to wonder if the Riyadh Comedy Festival will result in American values being exported or vice versa. But that doesn’t mean nothing good came from it. If the festival inspires American audiences to treat comedians less as righteous truth-tellers and political gatekeepers and more as flawed artists and businesspeople, that would be a good thing.
Also, if the goal of the festival was to quiet criticism of the Saudi government, it backfired. There has been a huge amount of new coverage not just of the Khashoggi killing, but also of the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia, the country’s record of imprisoning dissidents and the surge of executions there.
In a fascinating essay arguing that Saudi support of the festival was driven by domestic concerns, a Tulane professor, Andrew Leber, pointed out: “There has been far more discussion of freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia in the past two weeks than when the Saudi government executed a journalist on national-security grounds in June.”
It’s a grim point but hard to argue with. And it forces us to think a little harder about where we are directing our attention. Credit where it’s due: We have comedians to thank for that.
Jason Zinoman is a critic at large for the Culture section of The Times and writes a column about comedy.
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