Since medieval court jesters tweaked royal courts, we’ve used comedy to explore difficult conversations. In the documentary Travel Ban: Making America Laugh Again, comedians confront the misunderstanding, bigotry and hatred faced by Americans who are Muslim and by Americans whose families come from the Middle East.
One unfortunate aspect of our culture is the impatience with and resistance to accepting nuance and complication. Many Americans are content to accept a world in which “the Middle East” is a nation – one entity that is ever-hostile to the United States and ever evil-intentioned to all Americans.
Muslims and Middle Easterners have always endured negative stereotypes, made worse by 9/11. But, this has worsened in the Trump Era because Trump empowers and licenses the open spewing of hate speech into our national discourse.
In response, Comics Aron Kader, Raz Jobrani and Ahmed Ahmed, who performed on the Arabian Knights and Axis of Evil comedy tours, mobilized even more stand-up comics for the Travel Ban tour.
Travel Ban includes the on-stage and off-stage banter of over a dozen American comics of Middle Eastern heritage or Muslim religion. As one would expect, some are far funnier than others. My favorite is Feraz Ozel, who also has the movie’s funniest line in response to “Why don’t the good Muslims get together and fight the bad Muslims?” (You’ll have to watch the movie for to get the devastating punchline.
Travel Ban is NOT purely a concert film; we do see performances, but the comics also discuss their experiences off-stage. For context, there are some bracing videos of actual hate crimes and hateful rants by ignorant “real Americans”. And Travel Ban brings in some key factual tidbits; for example, zero Americans have been killed by anyone from any of the countries targeted by Trump’s travel ban.
This is a serious film with some hilarious comedy. As one of the comics says off-stage, “a good comedian makes people laugh, a great comedian makes them think”.
Cinequest hosts the world premiere of Travel Ban: Making America Laugh Again.