Of comedy and borders

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to participate in the Trevor Noah show in Dubai.

Apart from a few small stand-up comedy shows, this was the first time I participated in such an event that included more than  20,000 people who came from all walks of life to watch a one hour 45 minutes of comedy with this very interesting and controversial comedian.

At this point, I have to say I had always admired Trevor Noah on the The Daily  Show and I followed it as much as I could. So since he stopped, he has been making tours around the world, taking his high sense of humour along with him.

After a few introductionary jokes, he started talking about his trip, and he was focusing on his tours in Germany, France, and India, and along the way, there were very sharp criticism mellowed down with his sense of humour.

The type of comments that if made by normal people, it would be harbouring criticism may be racism or even some sort of bullying, but spoken by a comedian like him, he almost got away with everything.

What made the whole scenario acceptable was the fact that he could imitate all the languages, including the accents even if he did not fully speak the language, he would talk like Germans, French, and he even tried to talk Arabic, sending the crowd into a hysterical laughter.

Because of my extensive travels, and having closely worked with Germans, French and Indians, his depiction of the events were so real, and again you would hear the Indian crowd ‘that was actually the majority of the audience’ laugh very hard while their country was put under the microscope and jokes were made about it. Even some political hints were included here and there, but again, it seems comedians almost get away with it all.

When he ended his show by talking about how everything in Dubai was modern and advanced, and that the leaders did not understand the meaning of the word :“No", he said the people here did everything with a swag, cool and relaxed while everything around them was being developed and modernised every single day.

However, from the way he was commenting about his previous shows, we all saw it coming for Dubai once he moved on to his next show. 

I will end by quoting one of his introductory remarks about how we are all attached to our phones, pictures and social media, and that soon we will be all bent down like our  ape ancestors! Well, I wish I could tell him these instruments and all their forums are the reason thousands are here to watch him.