Aziz Ansari is back, and his roast of overzealous liberalism is just the kind of comedy we need right now.
Four years after his last stand-up special and a year and a half after that Babe.net article, Ansari has returned with a Netflix special appropriately titled, Right Now.
He begins, of course, by addressing the viral article in which an anonymous woman claimed he pressured her sexually during a date. Ansari has been laying pretty low since then, and his apology feels, actually, exactly how an apology should.
If there’s any redemption in the #MeToo movement, which seemed questionable after the Ansari affair got lumped in with Harvey Weinstein, then Ansari is a good example of how it should look.
“Ultimately, I just felt terrible that this person felt this way. And after a year or so, I just hope it was a step forward. It moved things forward for me, it made me think about a lot. I hope I’ve become a better person,” he says. “And I always think about a conversation I had with one of my friends where he was like, ‘You know what, man? That whole thing made me think about every date I’ve ever been on.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, well that’s pretty incredible.’ If this made not just me, but other people, be more thoughtful, then that’s a good thing.”
The serious interlude doesn’t necessarily set the tone for the whole set, but it’s clear that Ansari has grown up a lot since he started stand-up more than a decade ago. Instead of making fun of his fat nephew, for instance, he’s lampooning millennials at eco-friendly start-ups and liberals who try too hard to be “woke.”
“You can’t judge everything by 2019 standards,” he says. “Sure, some things, of course, but not everything, you know? I guess what I’m saying is, look: We’re all shitty people, OK? And we have our blind spots. But we become aware, and we slowly get better. We’re all on a journey. And if you’re one of these people sitting there like, ‘I’m not shitty, I’m aware of all the marginalized groups and everything …’ you’re extra shitty.”
Right Now perfectly captures our moment, maintaining humor and levity even in the face of intense polarization by laughing at people on all sides and joking wryly about what a world it would be if people could actually talk through their differences.
“There was a story I read,” Ansari says. “This girl goes to her high school prom, white girl. She wears an Asian garment, and there’s an Asian kid at the school. He’s offended, and he actually he did something really cool. He actually went up to her, and they had a conversation. He explained his concerns about cultural appropriation, she assured him she was coming from a place of respect and admiration, and they both learned about each other’s perspectives. And it was a really — just kidding! None of that shit happened. Why would that happen? No, he just tweeted out her pictures and wrote, ‘My culture’s not your goddamn prom dress!’”
Ansari is talking about a viral tweet from 2018, in which a white high schooler was criticized for wearing a qipao, a traditional Chinese dress, to prom. Thousands of Twitter users piled on, accusing the girl of cultural appropriation. She defended herself, “To everyone causing so much negativity: I mean no disrespect to the Chinese culture. I’m simply showing my appreciation to their culture.” But that wasn’t enough for some people, who continued to compete to see who was more woke. Sure, it’s a Chinese dress, one person said, but did you know the Chinese stole the dress from Malaysia?
“You just got out-woked,” Ansari quips. “You thought your eyes were open; this other dude doesn’t even have a forehead. His eyeball just keeps going, just so can see all the injustice.”
Ansari’s humor hits the mark because it’s not trying to be correct. He’s not attempting humor by being outrageous, either. He simply laughs at all the ways we fight with each other on the internet, spend time with our families without actually spending time with them, and drum up outrage to make ourselves feel pure. It’s earnest, and not politically motivated, which makes Right Now both refreshing and hilarious.
At a time when political comedy grows dull, Ansari offers something new. We need more comedy like his because, as he says, “newly ‘woke’ white people are exhausting.”
