Hasan Minhaj’s “Emotional Truths” Are a Slap in the Face
Truth hurts
I’ve never been a fan of comedy. Not in my younger days, and certainly not now. I was unamused by the likes of Bo Burnham and John Oliver. I was unamused by just about everyone except for my little sister. Willingly watching comedy shows was generally out of the question for me.
Hasan Minhaj changed that.
The first time I watched “The King’s Jester,” my sister and I were still reeling from our first experience of homelessness. It was, as it always is during Rochester winters, bitter cold. We were sleeping on air mattresses, which was a welcome change from the way that we spent our first nights in this particular apartment: on makeshift mattresses made of blankets layered atop dirty clothes.
Most of my memories from this season of life are a caffeinated, traumatic blur, but I remember the emotions I felt while watching this comedy special. I remember laughter; I remember tears.
Hasan Minhaj mattered to me because he was the only South Asian-American comedian I’d heard of — and since he was the only one, he represented all of us. Every quote, every anecdote, every carefully crafted concoction of a story mattered.
From what I could gather, even in my sleep-deprived fog, Hasan had done it. He had dared to deviate from the prescribed path of South Asian acceptability, and he had made himself a success. I was impressed. I was proud.
To South Asians, Hasan was relatable. Who hadn’t been labeled a terrorist at least once, post 9–11? Whose first-generation father wasn’t embarrassingly cheap? Who hadn’t been taught by their family members that racism is a part of the cost of taking up residence in another country?
Hasan’s recollection of snippets of his own life made me feel seen in a country that increasingly seems to have less and less room for the forever-foreigners; the present, if sometimes invisible, mass of people who fall somewhere in between America’s Black-White binary. Tolerated, perhaps, but not accepted. Certainly, not loved.
Of course, I knew that Hasan Minhaj was a comedian; a businessperson; a celebrity, all things considered, with no obligation to prove that everything he shared was true. I don’t know that comedians have ever been known, as a whole, for their honesty.
To me, that wasn’t the problem.
When dishonesty is the expectation, fabrication is perfectly acceptable. As Jason Zinoman wrote in his article about Minhaj and dishonesty in comedy, there was never an expectation of transparency, for example, from Jerry Seinfeld. Minhaj, however, was believable. I believed him. It’s safe to say that a hefty proportion of his South Asian fans did, too.
In response to allegations that his stories were fabricated, Minhaj responded that each contained an “emotional truth.” As a part of a group already stereotyped and relatively poorly understood, the knowledge that Minhaj’s stories were more fiction than fact is a tough pill to swallow.
America knows so little about us. Now, it seems, they know that some of us can lie with a straight face.