Race + Comedy: Hari Kondabolu Balances His Conscience With His Craft

“[A]t the end of the day what I’m doing is not to create change,” he says. “I do this because I love comedy. If I wanted to create change, I’d do something else … I’m not an activist-comedian as much as people like to call me that; I don’t see myself as that. I think that people say that because they feel connected to the work I’m doing with their own work so I understand that, I appreciate it, but that’s not how I see myself–I’m a comedian. When people call me an “activist comedian” you marginalize me even though that’s not your intent; I’m a mainstream comic. I don’t want to choose one oppression over another but sometimes I have to make a choice; it’s difficult to make a joke even work–one word’s off it stops working. So imagine you’re trying to deal with extremely complex topics that a mainstream audience doesn’t always get while also trying not to [hurt anyone].”

In a nod to the Satrean notion that “you can always make something out of what you’ve been made into,” Kondabolu does play with the fact that he has two different audiences.

“When I know that I have an audience that really is my core audience I’ll add a line [to a certain joke], So that answers the question: ‘Hari Kondabolu can you write a feminist dick joke?’ Yes. ‘But Hari Kondabolu can you write a joke that doesn’t essentialize gender?’ I’m working on it,” he says. When I can use that line in front of a real, true crowd who gets what I’m doing, and at least if they don’t are willing to try and listen, is great, but in a mainstream club setting, that joke is too ‘inside;’ it shouldn’t be but it is. When you push things forward in mainstream settings you need to find ways to slip things in otherwise it goes right over [their heads] so it’s tricky because I try to do both, but when I’m in my setting, with my audience, this is how I push.”

According to Libera, this corresponds to how comedians inhabit a position of privilege in relation to their audiences that exists outside of a professorial role.

“You have to remember that comedians have different levels than ‘real’ people,” she says. “The gift of the job is to be able to say what you want to say about an issue and then let the audience do what they will with that information. It’s very much the job of an audience member to then see if they want to do anything about what the comedian was talking about. What ends up being funny is not that [comedians] are trying to convince anyone of one thing or the other–they’re just highlighting the absurdity of the conversation itself.”

What Kondabolu’s inside-audience demands of him as an educated comedian is essentially what all audiences should be demanded of in-kind: be an educated audience. This isn’t to say that a comedienne should be able to say racist things, sexist things, ableist things, or anti-LGBTQ things, and expect to get a privilege-pass as an “artist.” What it does entail is that an audience who loves someone’s art, no matter what it is, needs to be aware of the universe that the art exists in and the subsequent choices that an artist may be forced to make if they are to remain a viable and productive conduit of the medium.

For his part, Kondabolu acknowledges that he’s put himself into a comedy niche that’s “not always helpful” when it comes to his career.

“Doing this kind of work, this kind of stand-up that takes forever to write because I’m always thinking about, ‘I don’t want to hurt anybody’–it takes a long time to pump out,” he says. “Another thing is: should I even be talking about this stuff? When white dudes talk about race and they do a bad job…It’s one of those things, ‘should they even be talking about race?’ and I’m like, ‘sure–they just have to do the work,’ in the same way that I’m trying to do the work.”

Managing the combined expectations of both his art and his politics, Kondabolu gives his audience a damned loop-the-loop of comedy, one that his fans must remember does not have a sign up stipulating, “must be this Left to ride.”

“There are other art forms where you can go and just think and not respond and just internalize, ‘oh what do I think about…” he says. “But I want you to laugh! I’m a comedian, otherwise I’d do something else.”

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