Each Riyadh Comedy Fest Excuse Is Worse Than the Last

We’ve been in this weird space where a lot of the condemnation of the comedians who performed at the Riyadh Comedy Festival and those same comedians’ response has been pretty racist. Bill Burr, for instance, defended his performance in Saudi Arabia by saying, “If you actually give a fuck about those people and how they’re living over there, there’s gonna have to be these types of things to pull them in. And I will tell you, the Cheesecake Factory in Riyadh, it’s incredible.”

You idiot. The oppressed people of Saudi Arabia don’t need Western capitalist shithole restaurants. They need a government that doesn’t use execution as it’s due process. Burr’s other defense, which has also been echoed by Dave Chappelle, is that the U.S. is heading in a similar direction as Saudi Arabia, and no one is up in arms about that. 

Except that’s not true. People are very much outraged and are organizing against the ICE abductions and deportations, to the extent that Donald Trump has deployed the National Guard to smother protests and sit-ins. And the comedians who performed in Saudi Arabia weren’t just performing for the general public, they were performing for, and at the behest of, the Saudi royal family. 

That would, for these men who now seem so fond of equivocating harms, be like performing for, and at the behest of, Trump. Yes, Trump rules over a nation of oppressed people, but if a super-woke pro-immigrant comic came over from the U.K. and performed for our thick-ankled president, would anyone think it was in the hopes of changing hearts and minds? Or would we presume it was for a fat check?

Not all of the defenses and excuses have been as tirade-driven and out of touch as Burr’s, however. Omid Djalili, a comedian and actor who also performed in Saudi Arabia, wrote that he spent 15 years rejecting offers to perform in the kingdom because of its extensive history of human rights violations. He said he finally accepted because it seemed like there was an observable shift toward a more free society in Saudi Arabia. 

“In certain circles there have been calls to boycott my U.K. tour Namaste, a show in which I try to explore the nuances of the complex geopolitical landscape of the Middle East,” Djalili wrote for The Guardian. “After explaining that the restrictions on performing in Saudi were exactly the same as in Dubai — basically no jokes about the royal family, no disrespecting Islam and no humiliation of the government — a concerned friend texted me, ‘I think you’re at risk of invalidating your right to make jokes about anything important.’”

Djalili doesn’t agree, and made the same argument that other comics who performed at the festival have made: that the comedy festival was a sign of progress, however small. 

“Allowing international performances in Saudi, especially comedy, subtly broadens what’s thinkable and sayable in a society,” Djalili echoed. “Every laugh at a taboo subject shifts norms, albeit slightly. Bear in mind ‘slightly’ is a seismic movement in the Middle East.”

I don’t agree with Djalili — I think comedians are being used in Riyadh in a similar way Trump used Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Andrew Schulz to build legitimacy and popularity with young men in the U.S. It’s a way to build cultural currency, not a clear signal of specific political inclinations.