W. Kamau Bell mines awkward situations for comedy
W. Kamau Bell finds comedy in places we might prefer to avoid
It’s a lot of information to pack into one book title, but talking to the author of The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6’4”, African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, LeftLeaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama’s Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian (Dutton, 341 pages, $37), you get the feeling it’s that first adjective that holds the key.
Growing up in various U.S. cities, Bell often struggled to adjust to new environments, and possessed tastes that left him no obvious social outlet. (A blerd, in case you haven’t guessed, is a black nerd — a state that for the teenage Bell involved, among other things, liking Pearl Jam more than Public Enemy.) He found his default emotional setting begin to change only when he moved as a young adult to the Bay Area, where he and his family still make their home.
“Something I’ve learned through my adult life, meeting all kinds of people, is that a lot of times ‘awkward’ is just your brain being asked to stretch,” the ebullient 44-year-old said by phone ahead of his appearances at Just for Laughs next week. “We’re socialized to run away from awkward situations. But lean into it, let your brain get stretched and you’ll come through to some new understanding, and also you won’t feel awkward in that situation ever again. Some of the best decisions and experiences in my life have contained some element of awkwardness. So yeah, let’s have an awkward conversation!”
That fearlessness shows in all areas of Bell’s multi-pronged career, from standup work to podcasts to television, where his CNN documentary series United Shades of America — an ongoing experiment, in Bell’s words, on “a black man wanting to see all kinds of cultures he doesn’t know about” — has just finished its second season and is signed up for a third in 2018. Combining the frankness of his comedy hero Bill Hicks with a willingness — indeed, a compulsion — to stare down and unpack the implications of even the most thorny social currents, Bell’s is a voice every bit as vital and timely in the comedy realm as Kendrick Lamar’s is in music.
“It’s in the eye of the beholder,” Bell said when asked how he knows when he has struck the comedic sweet spot. “It’s not an exact science; it’s a wholly subjective medium. What’s funny to one person not only might not be funny to someone else, it might not even register as a joke. That’s the game we play. But as a rule, if you’re not pushing somebody’s button, the joke’s probably not that good.”
United Shades of America has proved to be an especially fertile forum for Bell’s mix of curiosity and confrontation. But surely there must be times — talking to Ku Klux Klan members and white nationalists, for example — he finds himself bumping up against his own capacity for empathy?
“Actually, I’d say the most difficult moments are when you’re waiting around ahead of time,” he said. “In the case of the Klan episode, there was a person I affectionately refer to as Klanny Smurf (he was dressed in blue) who just wanted to get in my face about Ferguson and how black people can’t police themselves. I said, ‘Look, I’m not going to get into a shouting match, but I will have a conversation. We’re not trying to have a tabloid talk show here.’
“With (white nationalist) Richard Spencer, it was a case of, ‘This person has agreed to sit down and talk, so let’s talk.’ We didn’t agree on much, obviously, but at least you’re seeing something happen that you don’t see every day. That’s what I want to do.”
Has he found there are times when his reputation precedes him to a degree that constrains a candid exchange?
“I don’t have the Sacha Baron Cohen (versus) Borat problem, no. If I were Kevin Hart famous or Russell Peters famous, it might be different. You know: ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m meeting you!’ But I’m not there yet.
“Some people (asked to appear on United Shades) will Google me and say, ‘I don’t want to talk to someone who thinks that.’ But if you have to work to find someone who will talk to you, that’s going to be a better conversation anyway. We did an episode about gun ownership in Season 2 and had to go through a lot of people before a gun shop owner who wanted to represent his side came forward.”
A related point Bell makes in his book, pertaining to standup work — that bombing onstage is preferable to being mediocre — raises a question: Does the attainment of a certain level of stardom, and the pre-won approval that comes with it, make that kind of honest public failure harder to come by?
“Oh, you can always bomb,” he said with a long, loud laugh. “You get (audience members) essentially saying, ‘I would like to like you, but I don’t understand what you’re saying.’ Then there’s, ‘Yeah, I get you. I just don’t find you funny.’
“That’s what it comes down to for an audience: Is this person being funny? You can’t pretend to laugh at someone. I still do shows where there’s a percentage of the crowd that says, ‘I just came because this person brought me. I had no idea who you are.’ You have to win that person over.”
Do the demands of being topical, of staying on top of the 24/7 cycle, ever grow onerous?
“Sometimes the news will give you a homework assignment,” he said. “And sometimes you won’t even have that chance. I was in Chicago for a show when George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon Martin, was acquitted minutes before I stepped onstage. I told myself, ‘I have to talk about this.’ I learned that from Chris Rock: New is better than old. Lately, though, it’s all been coming so fast and furious that I have to remind myself to stick to the bigger and more entrenched issues, the things that are most constant.
“So, yeah, I keep an eye on Trump and I’ll question the leftover slaveholder math that got him elected — why do we have the electoral college still? But I’m like, ‘I’m not gonna cover everything you tweet with your tiny hands, man.’ ”
For a touring comic, topicality involves another responsibility: gauging the right places to deal with the right material.
“In Canada, I can’t always assume you’re going to know some of the more minor players in American politics. In certain
We’re socialized to run away from awkward situations. … Some of the best decisions and experiences in my life have contained some element of awkwardness.
cases I’ll think, ‘I should maybe skip that one.’ Maybe you’re not watching CNN as closely as an American audience.”
You might be surprised, I tell him.
“I guess so,” he said. “You might be more motivated to watch now. As in, ‘Is the world about to end?’ ”
For Bell and his wife, that’s a dynamic that plays out in their mixed-race home where, as he points out, their two daughters — one six years old, the other 21/2 — were born during the Obama administration but are growing up with something very different.
“The six-year-old knows that there’s a president named Trump, and she knows that our family wanted ‘the lady’ to win,” Bell said. “Out of the blue one day recently, while we were watching the news, she said: ‘Are they still trying to figure out why Donald Trump is the president?’ She’s aware that this guy, as she understands it, makes rules that are not supportive of her family and friends.
“My 21/2-year-old isn’t quite there yet. She’s still obsessed with Daniel Tiger.”