Last week, Riyadh hosted a comedy festival. I did not attend—let’s call it limited funds. After all, this is the same nation that murdered a journalist for doing his job. But scheduling the comedy festival on the 7th anniversary of the Jamal Khashoggi…incident…aside, I’m sure Saudi Arabia has no human rights issues lurking in its past.
Yes, I hear you tutting already—and you should. Because when an American talks about human rights, it often sounds ironic at best and hypocritical at worst. Our own house is far from spotless. Still, that does not make the strangeness of the Saudi comedy scene any less remarkable.
This festival is part of Vision 2030, the kingdom’s ongoing attempt to open itself to the world. But as Greg Norman learned with LIV Golf, global outreach backed by limitless oil money leaves a black mark. According to Newsweek, performers at this festival pocketed fees ranging from $375,000 to $1.6 million. The lineup included Aziz Ansari, Bill Burr, Tom Segura, Dave Chappelle, and Louis C.K.—names both celebrated and controversial.
Louis C.K. still carries the baggage of sexual assault allegations. Dave Chappelle—once the cutting edge of comedy with Chappelle’s Show—has spent years provoking backlash for his material on trans people. That leaves Tom Segura and Bill Burr as performers in the group who’s spotlight against power comes into question now.
Here lies the irony: Chappelle even joked that he had to fly all the way to the Middle East just so he would not have to watch what he said. The line lands because there’s a bitter truth buried in it. In a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, comedians are paid lavishly to say what they want—something they increasingly complain they cannot do in the United States.
The deeper problem, though, is comedy’s complexity. After Charlie Kirk’s assassination, some who made light of his death found themselves in harsher public scrutiny and professional consequences—no small irony. (By contrast, the tragic murders of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in 2015 sparked global debates about satire, blasphemy, and the limits of free expression.)
And perhaps it is not without irony that, as I write this, the most recent episode description of The Charlie Kirk Show, now hosted by his widow, reads: “The Anti-Defamation League is finally ending its defamation of Charlie, with its new announcement that it is getting rid of the page listing TPUSA as a hate group.”
Comedy can sting, but it can also curdle into irony.
So, what are we left with? Riyadh is not a bastion of liberalism or free thought. American comedians who cash Saudi checks are free to do so and audiences are free not to listen. For some names, that is easy enough to avoid. For others, harder.
Not all the jokes landed, either. The Times reported that American riffs on sex and libertine culture fell flat with Saudi audiences. Still, 60,000 people attended. That matters. It recalls the days when The Simpsons highly pirated and blamed for the Arab Spring, or when Cars somehow turned up on Osama bin Laden’s computer, or the corners of Africa that recognized the men of Top Gear. Western comedy has always leaked into places where it is forbidden, serving as both rebellion and cultural imperialism.
Perhaps Mel Brooks said it best in his documentary History of the World Part 1, after standing in the unemployment line for after failing to succeed as a stand-up comedian, he refers to himself as a stand-up philosopher, to which Bea Arthur responds, “Oh, a Bullshit artist.” The complicated morass of trying to navigate between humor, the repressive or regressive elements of our culture, and the universal access to all media means we consume more, while engaging less. Marc Maron can call out the people who performed, Mike Birbiglia and others can talk about rejecting the offers, but how then does the message get out?
Which brings us to the question: what does this festival really represent? Is it proof that American comedy still has global power? Or is it just that a dump truck of dollars and pounds is impossible to refuse? Maybe Riyadh’s scene is simply 10–15 years behind, where Louis C.K. and Dave Chappelle are still kings. Comedy thrives on contradictions, but in Riyadh, the punchline is muddled. For now, it seems less like progress and more like spectacle—a reminder that laughter, too, can be bought.
Also Read:
The New York Times
At Saudi Comedy Festival, American Free Speech Becomes the Punchline
Newsweek