‘Trevor Noah: Joy In The Trenches’ Netflix Review: Anti-Wokeness Is Definitely Killing Comedy
Trevor Noah: Joy in the Trenches is funny enough but not woke enough. Ever since the late 2010s, conservatives have gone hoarse screaming and crying about how wokeness is killing comedy. They have constantly said that the overemphasis on political correctness is not allowing them to say the things that they want to say. If they aren’t allowed to say the things they want to say, they can’t be funny. And if they can’t be funny, comedy is gonna die. This line of thought was repeated so many times that it got ingrained into the general public’s head, and everyone was seemingly convinced that if right-wingers and conservatives took control of the narrative, then “free speech” would become truly free. Has that happened? I can confidently say that it hasn’t. On social media, your account can be deleted if you make memes about corrupt politicians, cretinous capitalists, or people who fall into both of those categories. Your name and address can be doxxed so that the police can show up at your doorstep and drag you away for questioning (which might last hours or even days). You may think that the amount of comics who are facing the ire of the establishment is low, but I feel that it’s enough to scare everyone so that even the thought of joking about those in power sends a chill down their spine. I didn’t expect Noah to be affected by this mind-virus, but here we are. On that note, allow me to talk about Joy in the Trenches.
Directed by David Paul Meyer, Trevor Noah: Joy in the Trenches is largely divided into 4 sections: Donald Trump, Black history, gallows humor (hence the name of the Netflix special), and Noah’s inability to filter his thoughts. The segment about Trump is pretty basic. It stretches with “he is evil” to “if the aliens come, we’ll use him to ward them off.” And when he transitioned to the stuff about Black history, I had to go “Is that it?” Because how are we still doing “Trump is bad because he is racist and his name is in the Epstein files”? Everything around that man and his best friend (no, not Epstein; it’s the other guy who shall remain unnamed) is so catastrophically cruel that you can’t just keep him in that old box, throw a few punches at him, and call it a day. I know, I shouldn’t dictate what a comic should or shouldn’t say, but that’s what I was saying earlier: even someone who seems outspoken keeps their critique limited to not attract the administration’s ire. With the downfall of leftism and liberalism, we should have been saying everything that we want to say like we want to say it, without any inhibition whatsoever. However, the opposite has happened. We only get tepid nonsense in the name of political commentary, and since our minds have been oppressed to such a dizzying extent, we consider vague insinuations about Trump’s actual devilry as something pathbreaking. I think Noah is aware of the fact that he is unable to go full throttle because of the current socio-political climate, and he is lowkey ashamed of that. He compares the times that people like Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr. had to live through with the times that he is living in. He basically says that the situation was bad back then, and yet the victims of racism found the courage to stand tall and take the fight to the doorstep of their oppressors until those racist douchebags backed off (at least for the time being). And he feels that he isn’t doing enough despite being more privileged than Tubman or MLK Jr., which is true if you think about it.
If you just talk about America, we have so many Black artists, athletes, influencers, and even politicians. But will you ever find them unifying to take on the country’s oppressive regime? No, all of them play it safe, because their brand deals are more important than fighting for their community. Their justification is that the fact that they are in a position of power and influence is a statement itself, which is why they don’t need to jeopardize the stability of their empire to help Black people, or anyone from any of the other minority communities. Will these celebs benefit from the anti-establishment protests and demands put forth by the ordinary folk? Definitely, yes. However, this fear that being too political will put a dent in their perfectly-crafted image keeps these influential people from joining the working classes in their fight against oppression.
Fear is the basis for gallows humor, and every comedian that’s working right now is doing exactly that. But there’s that thing again: most of it is unrelatable because, regardless of which “wing” of politics these comedians lean towards, they are pretty detached from reality. I mean, right-wing comedians are on a planet of their own. They still talk about “owning the libs” and “cancel culture” as if all that stuff is relevant anymore. I mean, you guys have won, what now? Oh right! The destruction of free speech by slapping some arbitrary label on the person who is critiquing your masters and then putting them out of business or sending them to jail for being “too edgy.” Then there are those on the left who are so afraid of these “anti-woke” warriors that they have dulled their knives to such a dizzying extent that it doesn’t even seem like they want to be in the business of comedy anymore. There’s a moment in Joy in the Trenches where Noah jokes about a White liberal criticizing Black people for laughing in the National Museum of African American History and Culture and feeling “woke enough.” The same theory can be applied to Noah, who is parroting those same old “Trump is evil” jokes that were all the rage in 2016 and thinking he is being “woke enough.” Trump and dictators like him have gone beyond the realm of “evil”; we need new words to define the havoc they are wreaking on this planet, and if comics like Noah can’t do that, they can’t laugh with us as we die in the trenches.
Noah’s last joke about his ex-girlfriend is quite funny, and it’s an extension of his theory that just because the world is crumbling doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t enjoy small victories or crack self-deprecating jokes. It’s our nature to do that to get through times like these. But the main issue with American gallows humor and gallows humor originating from any part of the world (which is being harmed by the American Empire) is that American comics (or non-American comics residing in America) are observing the world while safe in the arms of the Empire. And this was the case before Trump assumed office. Now that Trump is the president, he has become a shield for people like Noah to prioritize self-preservation more than they used to before. Which is why I keep saying, anti-wokeness is the comedy-killer. Given how dire things are, this is the time to let loose. This is the time to go wild. This is the time to swing for the fences. I mean, that guy is talking about nuking the world every other day and you want to mock his accent and pat yourself on the back for being “brave”? Come on! Anyway, if it’s not clear already, I didn’t entirely enjoy Joy in the Trenches but I’ll recommend giving it a watch. And then check out Taylor Tomlinson’s Prodigal Daughter because that’s the best comedy special on Netflix so far.
