A new breed of male comedians is giving macho swaggering and degrading put-downs the big swerve, at last, writes George Fenwick.
Two weeks before I met a number of comedians to talk about how male comedy is changing, Ricky Gervais' special debuted on Netflix. During the first 20 minutes, Gervais - a wealthy, famous and powerful man - finds great amusement in making fun of trans people, comparing them to humans wishing to be transformed into chimpanzees.
Humour is subjective, but material that denigrates people who have neither the platform nor privilege of the comedian is undeniably offensive and threatening. That one of the world's most popular streaming giants would give a platform to such punching-down humour is a discouraging reminder of what comedy in 2018 still looks like - and it's this kind of macho, aggressive swagger that has shut out other voices in comedy for too long.
"When people say they don't like comedy, that's probably because the idea of comedy in their mind is that kind of joke," says comedian Eli Matthewson. "There's a type of joke that I was talking about with Chris [Parker] recently which is like, straight comics talking about having a prostate exam. Being like, 'And then, the doctor put his hand up my butt!' And I was like, ugh!"
"I've been on a Raw Comedy night where three different people did bits about a doctor check-up," he says.
As a deep dive into the Comedy Festival programme reveals, such low-grade male humour is losing relevance. Rising up through the ranks in New Zealand are men who instead use comedy as a channel for more personal, emotional stories, breaking down stereotypes of Kiwi masculinity in the process and elevating voices that have previously been denied a place on stage.
James Roque.
Comedian James Roque's festival show, Legal Alien, examines his identity as an immigrant in New Zealand after the discovery he'd been pronouncing his Filipino surname wrong for 17 years (the correct way is roh-keh). "My mum and my dad just gave up wanting to explain it to white people here," he says, "which was so sad to me."
Though Roque's story is personal, there's a broader urgency to it - his main goal is to humanise the immigrant experience in New Zealand. And when Roque took the show to Dunedin Fringe earlier this year, he began to understand the gravity of the influence he had on stage.
"It was the first time I'd done a show where the majority of the audience were Filipino students, and it was awesome," he says. "They came up after and were like, 'That was so f***ing relatable. My parents were exactly like that.' It was way more satisfying than any other gig I've ever done."
Chris Parker.
Actor and comedian Chris Parker's show Camp Binch is similarly personal. A window into growing up gay in New Zealand, Parker analyses his own journey of learning to recognise femininity as power in a country that, often violently, does the exact opposite.
"It's not so much an attack at Kiwi masculinity, but more about an empowerment of Kiwi femininity," says Parker. "People think of campiness as like a plague, or an affliction on someone... [It's about] learning to love that softness in myself, and knowing that it is quite strong."
Parker had a similar experience in Dunedin, where a number of audience members reached out to thank him for reflecting their experiences. But responses aren't always this rewarding; so much of what works in comedy lies with the audience and what they bring to the table. So what happens when minority voices perform to predominantly straight, white crowds?
"It becomes tokenistic, and you're the only voice for your entire people," says Roque.
"I find that hard because I ride on that tokenistic value," says Parker. "The joke is always in flipping the rhythm, so it's like, straight joke, straight joke, straight joke, gay joke. And then you're like, well, I got the laugh, but I'm also tokenising myself."
Pax Assadi.
How does a comedian speaking for minority voices ensure the audience is laughing with them, not at them? Comedian Pax Assadi, whose material often looks at his experience growing up Iranian-Pakistani in New Zealand, is still coming to grips with that question.
"There are jokes that I've stopped doing because the joke has a certain point to it, but there are too many occurrences where people are laughing at the wrong thing," says Assadi. "I did a bit at the [Comedy] Gala about pretending to be Tongan, and the bit is about how frustrating and sad it is that I have to pretend to be another race to feel like I'm not going to be attacked, in a time when Middle Eastern people are the enemy, right?
"But there are so many people who don't even register that. All they register is the funny Tongan accent. So how do you find the balance of doing those things that people really enjoy, and also making the point clear enough?"
It's a dilemma that has no clear answer, especially considering such reactions are perhaps born out of the same limited worldview Assadi is trying to challenge. The same worldview that is fed by voices such as Gervais, and reflected by those same men having a crack on Raw Comedy nights, who resort to sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia.
"It would be nice if we got to a place where those guys who are starting out know what a shitty joke is, and know the effect that's going to have on five people in that audience," says Parker. "They're going to walk away feeling real average that night if you're laughing at them."
Eamonn Marra.
Wellington-based comedian Eamonn Marra, who also teaches comedy to high schoolers, agrees. "It's so important that we make sure comedy is a safe place for young people, especially young women," he says.
"If not, then what am I doing bringing in these 16, 17-year-old girls, saying, 'You should do comedy', and putting them in a place which might not be safe?
Marra says men need to be held accountable. "It doesn't matter how woke they're being on stage, if off stage other comedians are not making it safe, that's our collective responsibility."
The hope is that at ground level, a new precedent is being set for masculinity in comedy. One that not only does away with old, attacking and exploitative forms of male humour, but demonstrates to Kiwi men the catharsis that can be found in getting personal.
"A lot of my life, I was very bad at talking about my feelings, and stand-up was a real vehicle for me to even articulate stuff for the first time for myself," says Matthewson.
