W. Kamau Bell tackles politics, prejudices in his stand-up routine
Stand-up comedians are supposed to vocalize what everyone thinks but nobody says, to recognize the absurdities of society and crystallize them into perfectly worded three- to five-minute bits.
W. Kamau Bell does those things, but his material is often a punchline or two away from being a string of sad truths about the injustices and prejudices in American culture. He tackles issues of politics, gender and race with fierce abandon, and sometimes that means making his audience squirm.
“There is a risk when you’re talking about topical things, and when you’re talking about things that are specifically charged around issues that are relevant to peoples’ lives,” Bell said from his home in Berkeley, California.
Bell, who brings his socially conscious brand of comedy to the Bartlett tonight, is best known for hosting “Totally Biased,” a canceled but critically acclaimed FX series that combined Bell’s standup with a “Daily Show”-style riff on current events.
He’s near the end of the longest headlining tour he’s ever done – he jokingly refers to this as the “97th leg” – and he says that current events (most of which involve race relations and which Bell describes as “soul-crushing”) help fuel his new material.
“For me, there’s no better place to do new material than on the road in the middle of a tour,” Bell said. “There’s nothing better than doing jokes that I know work really well and mixing in brand new things, and it’s really great when you know the audience doesn’t know the difference. For me it’s a really creative time.”
Having said that, not all of his material works everywhere he goes: As Bell puts it, “My Bill Cosby jokes work differently in Philadelphia than in, you know, Oklahoma.
“Part of it is knowing that when you go in … doing a little homework before I get there, Googling some things about what’s going on in this city, so I know where to step. I say it onstage as a joke – but it’s true – before I go to a new city, I always Google the name of that city plus ‘racism,’ just to see if there’s anything I should be aware of.”
Nothing is off limits for Bell: Institutional racism is a frequent target, and he’s not afraid to wax comedic about, say, the recent violence in Ferguson, Missouri, or to go after President Barack Obama.
“The only things that I absolutely won’t touch are really personal things, where people I care about would be hurt by the things I’d say,” Bell said. “As much as I might be frustrated by a fight with my wife … I want to be able to go home and look her in the face and not have to explain why my closer is going to embarrass her.”
Bell says he thrives on staying busy. On top of touring, he’s recently launched a weekly podcast with comedian Kevin Avery called “Denzel Washington Is the Greatest Actor of All Time Period.” (The subject matter is self-explanatory.)
“It’s the only way I know how to work,” Bell said. “The one thing about ‘Totally Biased’ that was weird to me is that I was just doing one thing. … I like that smorgasbord; it keeps me interested. I don’t like when things are one-note in entertainment. Some people can dig that I have a podcast about Denzel Washington being the greatest actor of all time, and some people can dig that I talk about police brutality onstage. And there are those rare people that like both.”
And while the content of Bell’s stand-up is meant to provoke, he’s not aiming for easy, knee-jerk responses. He wants to confront the audience with hard truths, but only if it makes them think differently about their own environment.
“It’s easy to shock people, and it’s easy to go onstage and say horrible, horrible things,” he said. “It’s a mistake to go for shock. Shock to me implies that there’s not actually a point of view behind it. If I don’t get a point of view behind it, then I’m not going to say it.”