The Riyadh Comedy Festival has become the most divisive of Saudi Arabia's many forays into the entertainment sphere.
how ridiculous it is that the most trusted voices in media today are late night talk show hosts like Jimmy Kimmel. But KimmelRiyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia. On Tuesday night, Kimmel hosted Aziz Ansari, and questioned his guest for joining the Riyadh lineup.
, are very upset, because the people who paid the comedians to come to this are not good people. It’s a pretty brutal regime. They’ve done a lot of horrible, horrible things,” Kimmel said of the Saudi royal family, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “People are questioning why you would go over there and take their money to perform in front of these people. I’m curious as to why you decided to do that.”: “There’s people over there that don’t agree with the stuff that the government’s doing, and to ascribe like the worst behavior of the government onto those people, that’s not fair. Just like there’s people in America that don’t agree with the things the government is doing.” Kimmel—who has experienced the censorship of the U.S. government firsthand—pushed back, referencing the murder of reporter Jamal Khashoggi that was reportedly ordered by MBS. “I was just there to do a show for the people,” Ansari replied. “Whenever there’s repressive societies like this, they try to keep things out—whether it’s rock and roll music or blue jeans—because it makes people curious about outside ideas, outside values. And this is a very young country, like half the country is under the age of 25, and things can really change. And to me, a comedy festival felt like something that’s pushing things to be more open and to push a dialogue.”Michelle Wolf shares some jokes she would've done at the Riyadh Comedy Festival Reaching the real Saudi people is a reasoning that has been trotted out by many of the Riyadh Comedy Festival participants so far, includingAllowing international performances in Saudi, especially comedy, subtly broadens what’s thinkable and sayable in a society,” Omid Djalili, who also performed, argued in an“the paradox of Mohammed bin Salman’s rule of Saudi Arabia is that you can liberalize up to the exact point that he allows, but no more, and you must never question how much or how little he has liberalized,”Riyadh Comedy Festival was arranged by the government, there’s reasonable doubt that the audience was made up of the “regular” Saudi people who might be inspired by such “revolutionary” comedy. Human Rights Watch has said the whole event “whitewashes abuses” perpetrated by the government, a position reiterated by‘s Vivian Salama, who sees the festival as a way for the country to become known for somethingthat the “driving forces” of the Riyadh Comedy Festival are domestic, rather than international. Leber points out that Mohammed bin Salman previously “noted that ‘good recreational and cultural opportunities’ could compensate for lower per-capita incomes.” The festival does reflect an interest in Western culture from the Saudi people, but it also “reflects an effort by Saudi authorities to shape what Saudi citizensLike Clooney marveling over late night hosts replacing journalists in the cultural consciousness, Lewis returned from the Riyadh Comedy Festival questioning “ why we’ve ceded this much moral authority” to comedians. Though other American entertainers have done Saudi events, none have caused so much community in-fighting as this has within comedy. Those like Ansari profess lofty goals of broadening the cultural horizons of a “repressive society,” yet agreed to a government-approvedfor a government-sanctioned pay check. You get the sense that any stage will do, so long as there’s an audience and the money’s good.music
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