Indian parents, right? On his third special, Off With His Head, Hasan Minhaj drops his “powerpoint comedy” shtick in favour of a reliable millennial comedy throwback—finding humour in the contrast between cultures in a multi-cultural America. Minhaj is the on-stage representative—or as he jokingly calls himself, “the brown-whisperer”—of “Beige-istan”, a loose collection of non-white and non-Black minorities that sits in between Black America and the self-explanatory “Caucasia.”
Hasan’s “Beige-istan” is naturally centred on the Indian cultural experience, drawing on his own background as an Indian-American raised by immigrant parents. He talks about the anxiety of potentially passing on the baggage he inherited to his children, and how he wants to pass on the “heirlooms” of his culture, and jettison all the bad stuff. There’s a telling bit about boundaries—their absence in the relationship between Indian parents and offspring, and the inabilities of white people (including a therapist that he has now ditched) to fully grasp that inclination.
This is the central focus of Off With His Head—the collision between the collectivist nature of Indian culture (and Minhaj’s own mixed feelings about that identity) and the individualist, clearly demarcated boundary-setting so ingrained in American society. There are no homeless Indians in America, he reminds the crowd, because they always have a home to go to. What if 40 years from today, Minhaj wonders, his son refuses to take him and his wife in when they’re both old and infirm? What if his son decides to set his boundaries at that exact moment? He’s going to get a gun and shoot down his son’s door, that’s what.
It sounds similar—in theme and premise—to arguably the finest moment in Russell Peters’ and Indian diaspora comedy’s career: “Somebody gonna get hurt real bad.” That clash between Indian culture and western society, expressed in caricature over 20 years ago, catapulted Peters into the big leagues and showed that the “brown immigrant experience” could be a comedy goldmine. It is perhaps the pinnacle of ABCD (American Born Confused Desi) comedy, even if Peters himself isn’t American.
Comics in the years since have built and expanded on that subject, making new observations and discoveries, including Minhaj himself. He’s never just been ‘silly’ in his navigation of identity, often grounding his observations in sharp cultural critique of American society at large. That’s his whole thing really: being goofy and manic and in an instant jumping—often literally—into something potentially deeper and more meaningful.
Here though, there’s no new insight as such, with a focus instead on levity. In that sense, Off With His Head lacks ambition, with little desire to move the needle this way or that. What we get is a hangout special where Minhaj and the crowd are having fun just being in the moment and relating to these sketches on culture, race, class, and such. To drive home the point, he even finds an Indian teenager in the crowd who isn’t allowed to lock his room at home.
The thing with Minhaj—depending on where one’s threshold for his frantic, Energizer Bunny delivery lies—is that he’s a very incisive comic. He times his jokes impeccably, does the voice modulations, switches between foolish and ultra-serious at will with only a whispered note of emphasis, writes effective, razor-sharp punchlines. He’s got the craft stuff down, so even if he’s recycling ideas that have been covered at length before, he can still create an enjoyable set.
That’s what we get here. He addresses the “dorky controversy” around him—The New Yorker accused him of embellishing his standup material with fictions, or “emotional truths”, which caused an entertaining back-and-forth last year—with a glib and rather funny dismissal. He’s a heterosexual guy, and heterosexual guys lie; that’s what they do.
Talking about the polarising discourse in American politics—where everything is a binary with an equal for and against—Minhaj finds a clever, if not particularly inventive, framing of the divide. The “insane people” facing off against the “insufferable people”. The sanctimonious know-it-alls, like Minhaj himself, correcting everyone and smacking people in the face with a “no, but actually…”, versus the freaks holding guns in their Facebook photos.
A lot of this set is by-the-numbers material that’s funny in the moment and forgotten soon after. The political commentary, especially, is best left ignored. It’s not his fault. Minhaj has, in a past life, been a reasonably effective and vocal comedian discussing uncomfortable events around the world. But, for me, there’s a fatigue that has set in when it comes to liberal American political comedy and its lack of bite or purpose. It’s toothless, ineffective and often self-serving. And while Minhaj may be better at it than many of his peers, here his heart isn’t quite in it.
He’s most concerned, on Off With His Head, with the cultural peculiarities of the Indian experience in American society. This conflict around identity will continue to be confronted by all manner of comedians, and Minhaj, in acknowledging his anxieties around passing on that generational trauma—as he calls it—provides a smart hook to this evergreen theme. But, contrary to type, he employs a blunt-force approach rather than his usual instruments of incision. Thus we get a special that, while often hilarious, is unable to really grapple with this richly rewarding subject of community, identity, and belonging.
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