How Chris Rocked

If there were two speeches from the 88th Academy Awards on Sunday night (telecast here on Monday morning) that got viewers talking, they were Leonardo DiCaprio’s acceptance speech for his Best Actor win for The Revenant and host Chris Rock’s opening monologue for the event.

Comedian Chris used humour to highlight the racism controversy that rocked this year’s Oscars; in an edition where there was not a single Black nominee in any of the categories, although performers like Idris Elba, Michael B. Jordan and Samuel L. Jackson.

Right from his opening note — Rock referred to the Oscars as “the White People’s Choice Awards” — to addressing the kind of racism actors/filmmakers of colour face in Hollywood (he called it “sorority racism”), Chris seemed unafraid of addressing the hot-button issue.

“We want opportunity. We want the black actors to get the same opportunities as white actors. That’s it. Not just once, you know Leo (Leonardo DiCaprio) gets a great part every year,” he said.

Then, in a hilarious montage, he showed the parts actors of colour could have played in some of the nominated films: Tracy Morgan as The Danish Girl, Leslie Jones as the “bear” that attacked DiCaprio in The Revenant and a special video featuring Angela Bassett narrating a Black History Month tribute to white actor Jack Black.

While Rock’s act has got kudos from across the board, it got a thumbs up from our desi funnymen too. Anuvab Pal is among them, and although he clarifies that he doesn’t think the Academy Awards are racist necessarily, what Chris Rock did was important. “It was hard hitting, and no one could have done that better than Chris Rock. You couldn’t have had Louis C.K. do that,” says Anuvab, pointing out that the Academy roped in Rock precisely to counter claims of racism. “There was so much criticism that they tried to get different presenters of colour — which is problematic, because it is also tokenism.”

Anuvab says that while Indian comedians do speak their mind when it comes to their stage/YouTube shows, the same cannot be said for a platform like a Bollywood award show. “Suppose some year, a particular award show is accused of corruption, and they hire Kapil Sharma to take it head on — I doubt whether we will ever have that. We just have to accept that we live in a different country,” Anuvab says.

Karan Talwar — better known as Bollywood Gandu — also professed to be a fan of Rock’s routine. “I saw the ceremony, and Chris’ act was really good,” he says. When Karan was quizzed about the issues he would like to draw attention to, through his comic routines, he said the concepts of “secularism” and “democracy” would be interesting to explore. “The thing with India is there are not many takers for jokes here; when we open our mouth we know what happens,” he rues. “Even if people support a cause, they are deemed to be ‘anti-establishment’ and the trolling becomes difficult to handle. All we are left with at the end of the day is impersonations of Shah Rukh Khan and voicing our angst against cruelty to animals.”

Comedian Sorabh Pant says that pulling out the comic angle in a serious issue is difficult, but in-depth research and investigation helps in identifying where the joke lies. “While the blacks and the transgender community have boycotted the Oscars for the lack of representation, in India we are still raving about Sooraj Pancholi winning the Best Debutante award,” he quips. “The Oscars have always been a platform for people to voice their concerns — Marlon Brando did not accept his award way back in the ’70s due to the lack of representation of the Native Americans in the industry. Bollywood needs to talk about issues that really matter without being superficial.”

Incidentally, Sorabh’s comedy collective, the East India Company, has regularly tackled sensitive issues (like the beef ban to sexism in engineering colleges) through their “Outrage” series.

Stand up comedian Kunal Rao says that Chris Rock’s routines are usually “extraordinary”, so the fact that he was such a hit at the Oscars comes as no surprise. On the subject of the issues he would like to highlight through comedy, Rao said, “India has the ability to spark a stand up routine out of anything — hunger, poverty, racism, corruption, and I am just started. However, I am a social commentator rather than a political one, so I do a lot of routines about the new generation — I think they are a distracted bunch. If there was a topic that I had to talk about on a platform, it would be about being responsible and making a difference.”

Inputs by Julie Sam