Saudi comedy fest exposes free speech schism in stand-up

The debate over limits on free speech in comedy has taken an urgent, international flavor this week. Some of the biggest names in stand-up are vigorously defending their participation in the first-ever Riyadh Comedy Festival — held in and sponsored by the censorious kingdom of Saudi Arabia. While superstars like Dave Chappelle and Pete Davidson offer various justifications for their attendance, other comics and critics have harshly criticized participants for lending their celebrity to a nation accused of multiple human rights violations, particularly around issues of censorship and repression.

‘Definition’ of ‘blood money’

Created as part of Saudi Arabia’s “push to attract more visitors,” the Riyadh Comedy Festival has garnered deep criticism from human-rights advocates who claim the “star-studded event helps gloss over the kingdom’s ongoing human rights abuses,” CNN said. The festival also falls on the anniversary of the 2018 assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a killing believed to have been carried out on the orders of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The timing “hasn’t been lost on the festival’s critics.” Participants are being paid by the “same guy that paid that guy to bone saw Jamal Khashoggi and put him in a f*cking suitcase,” said comedian and podcast host Marc Maron at a recent performance. “But don’t let that stop the yuks!”

Comics at the festival have been accused of “artwashing,” The New York Times said, by “allowing their performances to draw attention away from the Saudi government’s troubling human rights record.” Some comedians invited to the festival “declined to perform on principle,” alleging “there was censorship embedded in the contracts” they’d been required to sign. Stand-ups who build their careers complaining about free speech limits and cancel culture “don’t get to talk about it ever again” because “we’ve all seen the contract you had to sign,” comic David Cross said in an essay that called out headliners like Bill Burr, Dave Chappelle, and Louis C.K. by name for accepting the “definition of ‘blood money.’”

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The comedy festival is “only one front” of the Saudi effort to “whitewash its national image on the world stage,” said The Nation. The “real agenda” behind events like this, as well as Saudi efforts to expand into sports, gaming and cinema, is the use of “autocratic power and enormous wealth to buy respectability in the West.”

Something that could ‘lead to a lot of positive things’

Despite the heat from his peers, playing the festival was a “mind-blowing experience,” said comic Bill Burr, who described the authorities as reasonable and his audiences as overwhelmingly enthusiastic. “Definitely top three experiences I’ve had. I think it’s going to lead to a lot of positive things.”

“I’ve heard there’s subreddits of, ‘I think all these people are in bed’” with the Saudi Royal family, said participant and former “Saturday Night Live” star Pete Davidson during a podcast taping last week. “I just, you know, I get the (flight) routing and then I see the number and I go, ‘I’ll go.’”

Critics of those performing at the festival should “get over it,” said comic Tim Dillon last month on his podcast. Then, last week, Dillon announced he’d been dropped by the festival for jokes about Saudi slavery. “I addressed it in a funny way and they fired me,” Dillon said. “I certainly wasn’t gonna show up in your country and insult the people that are paying me the money.”