Let’s face it – sometimes the state of the world and current affairs can be exhausting, overwhelming, and kind of depressing. A little laughter would be nice, right?
Bay Area comedian Nato Green would like to think so, as long as that laughter gets people to think a little bit, too. With fellow comics W. Kamau Bell and Janine Brito, Nato recently completed a cross-country tour of the country as Laughter Against the Machine. The trio visited many of America’s hotbeds of social and political unrest, including several Occupy encampments, New Orleans, and towns along the Mexican/American border. On Thursday, February 2nd, Laughter Against the Machine will perform at the Eureka Theatre as part of San Francisco’s Sketchfest, where they will be showing clips from the soon-to-be released documentary about their journey across the country. Known for pushing boundaries and airing all of America’s dirty laundry, Nato and Laughter Against the Machine prove that even issues like race relations and political upheaval can be very very funny .
MYOO recently sat down with Nato to talk about his trip from sea to shining sea, getting arrested, and what it’s like to tell jokes for the revolution.
MYOO: Occupy Oakland is back in the news. As someone who has visited several Occupy encampments across the country, do you have any thoughts on what happened this past weekend? Were you there?
NATO GREEN: No, I wasn’t there, but I’ve been going through a lot of reports from people I’ve worked with who were there. Everything I’ve heard indicates that the Oakland police were out of control. I’m hearing again and again that the OPD penned protesters in, told them to disperse, and then didn’t allow them to leave. It seems like the OPD showed up and was intent on escalating the conflict and wanting to make an example of the people who were there.
“We are sacred clowns and our job is to smash idols so people can see truth.”
MYOO: What do you think are the biggest successes of the Occupy movement?
NATO: There’s so many. It’s shifted the entire national debate from debt to inequality. I’m not sure there’s ever been a social movement that has reached Presidential debate rhetoric in such a short period of time. But for me, the big lesson is that the most radical position you can take is “everybody.” 99% is a lot of people! Defining a movement in this incredibly inclusive and expansive way has tons of problems and challenges, but it also opens doors in a pretty remarkable way. It’s led to this incredible cross-pollination of social movements. For example, on January 20th I got arrested for an act of civil disobedience that involved blockading the Wells Fargo corporate headquarters in San Francisco. We barricaded all the entrances and the group of people I was with included union activists, queer activists, immigration activists, people facing foreclosure, and climate justice people. That’s pretty incredible – the fact that you get people from different social movements not just sort of talking vaguely about solidarity, but actually having the experience of holding hands and facing the police. Whatever happens policy wise, those experiences and those relationships will have long-term ramifications.
MYOO: Where do you see the Occupy Movement heading? Do you see it having a lasting impact?
NATO: I have learned not to underestimate the boundless capacity of our system to absorb descent, but I think where it’s heading is up to us and the people participating. To me, some of the most exciting stuff is happening not far from my house in the African American neighborhoods of San Francisco. There’s been direct action to defend people facing foreclosures and there have been at least four houses that I know of where people have been kept in their homes because of mobilizations directly related to the Occupy movement. And I might get in a lot of trouble for this, but I think Occupy can’t let the most militant tactics drive the movement even if the majority agrees with the principle. If you have a million people who are ready to set fire to cop cars, then by all means set fire to cop cars. But if you have 20 people who want to set fire to cop cars and a million who want to march through the street peacefully, then try not to let those 20 people define the movement.
MYOO: You and the other members of Laughter Against the Machine just returned from a cross-country tour. Considering that you’re known for pushing boundaries, was there anywhere in particular where your audience might have been pushed too far?
NATO: That’s a question we get asked a lot and the answer will surprise you. Now, I don’t think card carrying Republicans are coming to our shows, but the places where the audience gets pushed too far are sometimes peculiar. Often we can have trouble in more white, liberal, suburban areas – people who are not especially cosmopolitan and who don’t want to be indicted in the world’s problems and inequalities. It’s interesting and tricky to be the only white guy in the show and to talk about race. I think you often see white comics talking about race and racism, but you don’t often see white comics necessarily talking about whiteness and white privilege. I spend as much of my act digging myself into holes as I do getting out of those holes with the audience – what I call the dismount of my joke ends up being longer than my joke!
MYOO: Along those lines, what’s it like to be up on stage and knowing that a good chunk of your audience is squirming uncomfortably?
NATO: I remember we did a show a few years ago during the Israeli bombing of Gaza. I was talking about how uncomfortable I was with that as a Jew and I felt people about to walk out. But that’s just part of the deal and eventually I managed to pull them back from that cliff. I never say things, though, just to be edgy. All of my jokes are based on a perspective that I actually believe and care about and have thought about. And if someone wants to pull my sleeve after the show and have an argument about a point of view in one of my jokes, that’s an argument I’m willing to have. Sometimes I’ll argue Jet Li, kung fu style and sometimes I argue like Columbo, but I’m always good for an argument.
MYOO: I read that Laughter Against the Machine is “political comedy for people who don’t like political comedy.” What makes you different from the Jon Stewarts and Bill Mahers of the mainstream, political comedy world?
NATO: I don’t want to talk bad about any of those other comedians, but I think it has to do with audience expectations. Before Laughter Against the Machine, we were doing shows labeled as the “Liberal Comedy Show” or the “Progressive Comedy Show” and we quickly discovered that the audience that showed up only wanted to hear things that they agreed with. This was a while ago, so people loved hearing jokes about George W. Bush being stupid, but then if you made a joke about how liberals have some responsibility for failing to mount an effective opposition to Bush’s policies, people would get mad at you! So I’d say the whole point of our tour is not to be cheerleaders, but to take issue with people from all sides. If we want to make fun of the left, we’ll make fun of the left.
“I think the lesson that I really took from our travels is that it’s worse than you could imagine and better than you think at the same time. Everywhere we went there were people catching hell, tearing themselves apart, and sacrificing enormous amounts under impossible circumstances, but still there were signs of hope and people were refusing to give up.”
MYOO: What role do you think comedy plays in protest and revolution? Do we need more comedy in our protests?
NATO: That really segues into the show that we’re doing this week for Sketchfest where we’ll be screening clips from our tour documentary. Basically, the film’s about us touring around the country and going to places that represented key political issues. We tried to meet people in the trenches and learn about what they’re doing, but we also asked them about the role of comedy and the answers were pretty fascinating. Everywhere we went, activists and liberal intellectuals all said that comedy brings people together and can convey information in a way that bypasses people’s defenses. It can really get to the heart of the matter.
My favorite response, though, was when we were in Zuccotti Park in New York and we met these guys from Occupy Judaism. They said to us, just as Abraham had to smash the false idols so people could see the one true God, we are sacred clowns and our job is to smash idols so people can see truth. And we were like, “Okay, now we have our marching orders straight from the Book of Genesis!”
MYOO: There’s a lot of talk in the news about how divisive this country has become – cops vs. protesters, Democrats vs. Republicans, the heartland vs. the coasts, etc. After your tour around the country, do you think we’re as divided as the media portrays us?
NATO: No. I think the lesson that I really took from our travels is that it’s worse than you could imagine and better than you think at the same time. Everywhere we went there were people catching hell, tearing themselves apart, and sacrificing enormous amounts under impossible circumstances, but still there were signs of hope and people were refusing to give up.
What got us thinking about doing the tour in the first place was the Gabrielle Giffords shooting in Arizona. We were thinking, damn, whenever Arizona’s in the news people are doing something stupid. But there’s got to be cool people in Arizona who are trying to hold the line against extremism and they could use a laugh. Let’s go down there and entertain them!
So we went down there and the first person we met, this guy in Phoenix, tells us that the police stop every brown person in the state. He says it’s terrible, but in some ways it’s been a beautiful thing for his community because they’ve really come together and started helping each other out because the government isn’t going to take care of them. So they were organizing these Barrio Defense Committees where if someone got picked up, there would be networks that would spring into action to make sure that they and their families were taken care of. We saw this kind of thing over and over again across the country.
So we didn’t see or hear of any place in America that is completely scorched earth, where the forces of greed and stupidity are absolutely triumphant. And our job was just to travel around, hear these stories, and tell the campfire jokes to the revolution.
MYOO: Newt, Romney, or Santorum – who’s going to win?
NATO: All signs point to Romney, but I really feel that the Republican primary may be exactly what the Mayans predicted the end of the world to look like.
MYOO: What should people expect at Thursday’s show? Any surprises or insider information that you can give us?
NATO: At Thursdays show we’re going to show 20 to 30 minutes of video from the film, including segments from our time at Occupy Wall Street in New York and our visit to the border in Arizona. They’ll also be some standup and a Q&A about the tour.
MYOO: Thanks for your time and have a great show!
—Mike Irvine is a researcher at MYOO.
