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Bill Burr Defends Performing at Controversial Riyadh Comedy Festival: “They’re Just Like Us” (www.hollywoodreporter.com)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by Five@slrpnk.net to c/standupcomedy@lemmy.world

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Pete Davidson is also doing damage control.

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[+] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social -13 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Honestly, I 100% agree with Bill Burr and Sting.

Cultural exchange, especially comedy, is always destructive to authoritarian structures. It's like water leaking into a building. This isn't shipping them a bunch of weapons, or building a World Cup stadium there, or whatever the fuck. This is smuggling in an influence that will over time start to eat away at their power. It's the same reason I don't block lemmy.ml, it's the same reason Trump is going after comedians so hard now. Having people talking to each other and see new perspectives (both the Western comedians like Bill is talking about here and the people watching the shows), even in a restricted format at first, is a good thing.

[–] Five@slrpnk.net 17 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

When he flew into Saudi Arabia, Burr’s nervousness crept back, but he was struck by the amount of local Western influence. “You think everybody’s going to be screaming ‘death to America’ and they’re going to have like fucking machetes and want to like chop my head off, right?” Burr said. “Because this is what I’ve been fed about that part of the world. I thought this place was going to be really tense. And I’m thinking like: ‘Is that a Starbucks next to a Pizza Hut next to a Burger King next to McDonald’s …? They got a fucking Chili’s over here!”

Saudis already consume American comedy without the endorsement of the government, and that is subversive. Traveling to the middle east to learn that they also have American fast food chains is not 'cultural exchange.' Culture is only flowing in one direction. Bill Burr demonstrates that for some people the values that make good comedy possible have a price tag, and that is the opposite of subversive. Cultural flow does not require American comedians to collaborate with tyrants in an Entartete Kunst of comedy.