By: Liora Weissman
It sounds like the setup of a joke: What happens when an Israeli comedy writer and a German TV executive gather political writers from all over the world for a three day conference in New York to talk about how to stop the march of fascism across
The Comedy for Change conference is the brainchild of the Israeli in the “joke” setup, Omri Marcus. Back in 2005, Marcus, who was then one of the writers on “Eretz Nehederet” [“It’s a Wonderful Country”], one of Israel’s most popular comedy programs, noticed that the once hard line between journalism and comedy had started to blur. “The rise of the satire news broadcast made comedians get more and more into ‘serious topics’ like the economy and other issues that used to be STD for comedy, it was only logical for politicians to cross to the other side,” Marcus observed. In particular, Marcus was struck by the popularity and success of “The Daily Show” and reached out to three of the show’s writers, Rob Kutner, Steve Bodow, and Rachel Axler to talk. The four of them had coffee when Marcus visited New York. “It was mind blowing to hear that they were experiencing the same issues that we in the writers’ room in Israel were experiencing. The same dilemmas, the same desire to produce meaningful content, the same attempt to pack the crazy reality into a clear statement of values all while still trying to be funny.”
That informal coffee gathering of political comedy writers in New York City more than a decade ago was the seed for Comedy for Change, an annual gathering of comedians and writers who work for some of the world’s most popular late night comedy shows to discuss how to make this screwed up world a better place while still making audiences laugh.
Marcus found his partner in this effort with Michael Schmidt, a German television executive and frequent collaborator. “Michael and I spent hours talking about how content could come out of the screen–be it a television, computer, or mobile phone–and produce an impact in the real world.”
Schmidt attended and participated in the first Comedy for Change event, which was held in 2014 in Jerusalem. The part about that conference that struck him was the international writers room. “We shared the day with the writers of Eretz Nehederet and a large number of international writers. [We] sat together with them and we made sketches together. That was an awesome experience,” Schmidt said.
The international writers’ room that Schmidt highlighted has become a central feature of every Comedy for Change after the inaugural one in 2014. Sit down and talk to comedians and writers from all over the world and learn about their experiences. It’s not exactly rocket science but its genius is in its simplicity. And it was this feature that the twenty four participants from nine countries found to be the most exciting and transformative.
Alessandra Orofino, a writer for HBO Brasil’s late night show, “Bad News,” attended this year’s conference. She said what drew her to New York for the event was the potential for collaboration with other writers and comics who were doing something similar to what she was doing. As she explained, the political comedy world in Brazil is very small. “We’re the only comedy news show on TV,” she said. While there are certainly other comedians in Brazil, they’re not doing political comedy like Bad News. “Politics is considered a topic that people don’t really discuss in that way. It’s very recent [that] the Brazilian population would even discuss politics, even within the family or amongst friends. We were a dictatorship until less than 30 years [ago].”
Unlike comedians from the U.S. or the United Kingdom where there the political comedy writing scenes are large and rife with opportunities for writers to collaborate with others, writers from places like Brazil or from small markets like Switzerland and Finland spoke of feeling isolated from their comedy peers in other countries.
Juha Lahti, a TV producer from Finland, echoed similar sentiments. “We live in such a small country that we rarely meet writers from other countries,” he said. “We don’t get many visiting writing stars that we could learn from. And our writing culture is so young that we really benefit from meeting writers from other shows and cultures.”
“It was actually quite refreshing, both to connect with other people that are doing similar things to us and learn from them and laugh about their own experiences but also to see that see that there are so many people outside of the U.S. that are doing this,” Orofino said.
“It was kind of enlightening to see that many of the struggles that we had were shared between our peers,” she added.
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The idea that political satire can be a progressive change agent has taken a beating in recent years with the rise of Trump in the United States and other proto-fascists elsewhere. Political comedy has never been sharper or funnier than it is at the moment but the right seized power anyway.
To understand what progressive political comedy and conferences like Comedy for Change can achieve, it’s important to note what political satire cannot do–political satire alone will not get rid of Trump and those like him.
But to view the political outcomes–the rise of the global right wing–and then to say, “Well I guess political satire is only good for catharsis,” is to take a very simplistic, linear view of how political and social change takes place in the world. The writers and participants at Comedy for Change all believed they had a role to play in changing audience viewpoints in a way that can lead to progressive changes.
“Comedy can draw the audience’s attention to issues that might have otherwise gone unnoticed,” Yasir Gaily, a writer from Finland, said. “And while a single joke or even a single comedy show rarely causes politicians to take action, together we can work to affect public opinion on issues that matter to us.”
If how Gaily describes the potential impact of political satire sounds a lot like the way journalists describe the purpose of their work–to educate viewers and draw attention to important issues–well, that is how the comedians see themselves at times. Or at least how they’re starting to view themselves.
Karpiczenko said this issue was something that the participants discussed amongst themselves over the course of the conference. “They all have very similar questions about comedy, like how much are you lecturing? where does journalism end and where does comedy start? Or is the thing merging?” he asked.
Indeed, the blurring of the lines between journalism and TV comedy has only accelerated since Marcus first noted it in 2005, especially with the rise of social media where politicians and “serious” journalists and writers can publicly snark and make jokes on Twitter as though it’s their job–it really isn’t–and comedians like Rob Delaney issue sincere, heartfelt pleas on behalf of universal healthcare and tweet out articles in support of it to their millions of followers.
And at a time when the work budgets of major journalistic publications have been slashed–The New York Times cutting its copy desk is a prime example–it is often the TV political comedy programs that have the requisite resources in order to do the sort of things that newspapers used to be able to do, such as hire researchers who can dive into court filings. Any investigative journalist today would kill to have a full-time, dedicated researcher on staff but so few do. John Oliver, however, has one.
This process is in stark contrast to say, how the Onion approaches its work. While some of their work approaches the “gold standard” in political satire, for that publication, it’s all about the form and pointing to the absurdity–but they make no effort at educating the way The Daily Show or John Oliver do. For example, no one on the Onion’s staff is hopping on the phone to talk to an expert in Argentinian debt for an hour for a possible segment.
And comedy, like the press, draws attention to the limits of free speech. Famously, George Carlin talked about the seven words you can’t say on TV. Journalists often encounter pushback from the government about what they can publish, especially if it relates “sensitive” or embarrassing information. And journalists have faced penalties, sometimes even prison time, for failing to reveal sources. During the Comedy for Change conference, participants heard from Jan Bohmermann, a German late night comedian who faced serious consequences for reciting a lewd poem about Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan. At the headquarters of the Writers Guild of America-East, Bohmermann talked about what happened after he insulted the Turkish head of state on air: protests, death threats, threats of criminal prosecution under an 1871 German statute that forbids Germans from insulting foreign heads of state. His show was taken off the air for several weeks, too. Bohmermann, per the ruling of a civil court, is not allowed to recite 18 of the 24 lines from the poem again on television. Let’s just say that the reaction to Bohermann’s poem was way worse than being heckled at an open mic.
If political comedy and satire is actually starting to take on some of the characteristics and responsibilities traditionally associated with more “serious” journalism, then it makes sense to have at least one conference where political comedy writers can convene, compare notes and learn from each other. After all, there is certainly no shortage of similar gatherings for working journalists and the existence of these conferences is not predicated upon a particular kind of desired outcome.
Perhaps no one was more qualified to speak to the connection between comedy and political change than Orofino. Before she started in TV writing, Orofino worked as an activist full-time. “I started in an activist organization in Brazil seven years ago,” she said. “Activist organizations have organizers that are present. When you say that you are going to get into an issue, you really get into it. Which means that if a year later something changes–a bill passes, some decision is made, an executive order that pertains to that issue–you’re going to have the infrastructure in place to respond to that,” Orofino explained. A TV show, by contrast, doesn’t have the same kind infrastructure and can’t be expected to mobilize the masses in the same way.
“But that doesn’t mean they [comedy writers] should neglect the fact that there’s real events happening in the world and if you have an audience and you’re able to really influence that audience, why not influence them towards real change?” she asked.
But Orofino does see a role that comedy shows like hers can play even if they lack the infrastructure to sustain the kind of long-term actions that lead to significant political and social change. “I do think there’s a role for igniting that first action and then sort of handing it over to an actual activist group that will be able to sustain that energy. That’s what we try to do.”
The Comedy for Change participants did some of what Orofino, the activist-turned-writer, said they should do–namely, make connections with a grassroots organization that is mobilizing for political change. In this instance, it was a group of Dreamers, working on DACA reform. The writers got together with the Dreamers to help them brainstorm video ideas, incorporating humor, to help improve and spread their message. For Gaily, this was one of the highlights of the conference. “Getting to work on the DACA campaign for Make The Road New York was also a privilege,” he said.
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As the organizers look to the future, they hope to increase geographic, racial, ethnic, and gender diversity within the ranks of the attendees. “Yael Rosen, who is in charge of drafting the participants, plowed the internet in an attempt to locate, not just ordinary writers but those who would diversify the room. No more just a group of white privilege males but a group with different approaches, different ages, different ages but with one cooperative, flowing spirit.”
Rosen’s comprehensive internet search was complemented by Schmidt and Marcus activating their vast comedic and entertainment networks to recruit their friends and the friends of their friends to attend the conference.
Despite these sincere attempts at recruiting a diverse group of participants, their efforts were hampered by the same structural barriers that result in a paucity of women and people of color in creative positions in the entertainment industry. “I think we have a major problem that we haven’t tapped into the creative community anywhere in Africa or East Asia,” Rosen commented. She noted that a lot of the recruitment was reliant on word of mouth and personal and professional connections in order to find the comics. “Our social/professional circles are limited there and we have trouble assessing comics when we don’t understand their language.”
An additional barrier to recruitment in other regions was financial since writers have to be able to fund their own travel in order to attend the conference. Schmidt hopes to attract additional sponsorship and funding to Comedy for Change in order to “help people who want to come who perhaps represent a different voice and come from a different background.” Hopefully by removing financial barriers for future attendees, writers from farther away or those whose political comedy scene isn’t well-funded will also be able to join and bring additional viewpoints to the discussion. “I hope it’s going to become easier for people like us to get together in a more diverse room,” Schmidt said.
Yet despite the challenges, recruitment to this year’s conference–from geographic and gender diversity perspective–was a great success over previous years. “Our goals this time were to try to reach countries we hadn’t quite had participants from,” Rosen noted. “I’m happy to say that we had people from nine different countries, including Brazil, Australia and Finland. We had more women than ever though our room was far from balanced, which is also a sad testament as to the the state of the industry that still has a ways to go.”
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“We’re not going to oust Trump,” Schmidt said of the limits of political persuasion and mobilization through comedy. (If Mueller can’t get the job done, then God knows, a bunch of comedy writers aren’t going to be able to either.) “What we would love to see is that this creates a bond between the international community and writers in that space.”
In the months since the writers met in New York, many said they’ve remained in touch with their peers in other countries. Karpiczenko said that he’s already collaborated with some of the Comedy for Change participants. “We even worked together with an Irish producer,” he said.
“Now it is easier to pick up a phone–or keyboard–and get in touch with writers who were there, “ Lahti said. “We need more international collaboration and these kinds of events make the cooperation much easier.”
The kind of international cooperation that led to the “America First” videos that spread throughout Europe after Trump’s–and hopefully only–presidential inauguration last January. In response to Trump’s “America first” comments during his inaugural address, which signaled turn toward xenophobia, late night TV in the Netherlands put together a video response, jokingly conceded the top spot to the U.S. but then making a case for the Netherlands to be ranked right behind America. After “Netherlands Second” debuted, comedy programs in various European countries responded with their own version.
“Ours was crazy successful,” Karpiczenko said of the Swiss version. “Switzerland is so small. We have like seven million inhabitants. And the video got twelve million views on YouTube. So every Swiss person saw it. It’s crazy.”
Orofino sees potential for more collective work like the “America First, [Insert Country Name] Second” videos down the road. “Even though we are all talking about things that are very specific to our home countries, which is just the nature of the work, I think we are increasingly seeing phenomena that are very similar from country to country. There is, I think, potential for coordinated work, for us to explore projects that are more collective in nature,” she said.
Despite the obstacles, Marcus’ ambition for Comedy for Change is quite lofty. “My hope for the project is to create a community of content creators who under the power of their talent and want to use it to make to make a better world.”
Orofino agrees. “We are all here for the change. We are all here because we believe that this can..be transformative,” she said.