CHANGING MINDS, ONE LAUGH AT A TIME

by Sanielle Handal

How long have you have you been doing stand up?

Dean: About nine or ten years. The first few years were once in a while, once a month, maybe a show here or there. I wasn’t trying to be a stand-up comic. The last 4 or 5 years have been very dedicated.

Maysoon:  I’ve been doing stand-up for four years now.

How did you get started?

M:  I’m a classically trained actress and I was working as an extra on “As The World Turns” for 2 and half years without getting any lines. I got so sick of it and I was like, how am I gonna get a break? I’m so non-traditional because I’m ethnic, I have a disability, and I’m just not what people hire for TV. So I started thinking of other non-traditional actresses like Whoopi Goldberg, Roseanne, and Rosie O’Donnell. They all started doing comedy. So I decided to try and get discovered that way.

Have you always integrated your culture in your act?

D:  Yes, I guess I have even if it’s not intentionally…you’re born and raised with certain cultural ideas and it affects the way you think. So, no matter what, it’s always been there. Talking about my mother being Italian and my father being Arabic, at different times I always talked about it. But it’s become the more focal point of my act over the last three years.

M: I’ve always integrated it from day one. I start off my act by saying I’m Palestinian, I’m Muslim, immediately. Its just as important, I think, as saying I have Cerebral Palsy because it’s so much a part of who I am and what my stories are that you have to further know that to get it.

What’s the reaction of a regular night crowd when you say you’re not only an Arab or a Palestinian?

D: They’re just curious. I mean, they don’t applaud. It’s really a sense of curiosity for most people in the audience because I would say, with very few exceptions, people who don’t live in the New York area, such as tourists who come from other parts of the country or other parts of the world, haven’t met too many Palestinians. They only see them on TV and if they see them on TV, I can assure you it’s not in the best light. It’s always portrayed as, “gunmen”. I always think the media portrays us as either “gunmen” or “terrorists” or if they’re being nice, it’s “suspected gunmen” or “suspected terrorists”. It’s interesting for Americans to look at a Palestinian; they want to hear what I have to say. It’s the same thing when I say I’m Arab. They want to hear what’s next.

M:  It’s amazing. I’ve had incredibly positive, good responses. All of my crowds love me. I get applause, I get standing ovations but I have had people just get up and leave as soon as I say I’m Palestinian. Before I even start my jokes, before I get political, I’ve had people just stand up and leave just because I say I’m Palestinian.

What’s the most disturbing remark, or event that has happened to you or you have experienced?

D: I’ve heard someone say things like, you know, “we should kill all the Arabs” type of thing, or, “they’re all terrorists anyway”. To me the most irritating thing is the lumping together of everybody. The most common thing I hear a lot, and it’s disturbing, is like “Oh come on, all the Palestinians support terrorism, all the Palestinians are really like in their own way terrorists”.

And they don’t mean it in a kind of “they should all be killed” type of thing, but it sort of discounts the suffering of the people. That probably bothers me more, because that’s more a thinking person. A person who is just a racist and hates all Arabs, it’s easy to discount them. They’re so outside of the norm of the real world, people discount them. But it’s the thinking, normal people who get the idea from television that “they’re all Palestinians, they all support terrorism…look how the kids are dressed up” [they show pictures of kids holding a gun, dressed up like they want to be suicide bombers when they’re six]. That’s the most troubling.

Sometimes I don’t blame the people for saying it as much as that’s the only way it’s portrayed in the media. And the goal of those pictures being presented in our media is simply the support of Israel, so that people think that even if a kid dies, it doesn’t matter because that kid’s going to grow up to be a suicide bomber anyway. So that’s more disturbing than the truly blanket-racist comments that someone might say.

M: I’ve had a woman stand up in the middle of my show and start screaming that I better watch what I say because there were a lot of Jews in that neighborhood. I responded to her and she started crying and left the club. The club never let me work there again.

How do you feel when fellow comedians base their act on Arab bashing or racial bashing?

D: To me, if they want to make fun of Arabs, if they want to make fun of the terrorists, that’s fine. The problem for me is when they incite hatred of Arabs with their act. The jokes that further the stereotype are the ones that bother me. It’s troubling. You do what you can. Hopefully I can only, through my comedy, and with the other comics who are Arab-American, try to dispel the stereotypes.

M: Dean and I can’t stand it. It’s the least amount of creativity you could have. I feel like with us, we have the voice. We have the voice that, say, actors don’t have. Because we have the freedom, we work without anyone telling us what to say, what to do. Nobody tells Dean or I what our content is. The only thing they can tell us is you can curse or not curse. But no one will ever tell you you could say this but you can’t say that, they won’t, and if they do we don’t work there.

I find it to be irresponsible. You’re not even trying to do comedy if you’re relying on the obvious and on the stereotypes. You have the voice and when you have the voice you need to use that voice for positive change and not to reinforce negative stereotypes.

I mean, I make fun of my dad all the time. I’m not saying that you can’t make fun of the reality. I’m saying don’t rely on the stereotypes that other people create for you.

What is it that you try to convey to your audience or what is it you hope they walk away with after seeing one of your shows?

D: I view the comedy as almost like a grassroots campaign, almost like a little campaign, to change people’s opinions. It’s gonna take a long time because some shows only have 5 or 6 people in the audience, some shows are more crowded.  But I try to make people aware that the Arabs on TV who are the terrorists are not just all the Arabs in the world and that certainly Arab-Americans do not agree with 9/11 and the terrorists attacks.

In a way, I’m trying to humanize Arab-Americans the best I can with what little I can do, and I really can’t do more.  If I had a TV show I would do more. If I could reach more people, I would reach more people. So that’s the ONE big thing.

Second, specifically with the Palestinians who I think have been demonized by the media, it’s the same exact thing: trying to humanize them and put a face on what it means to be Palestinian. So that people realize that Palestinians are here in America, we’re part of the fabric of America and we’re not all what you see on television, they’re human beings.  When people read about a missile killing a suspected militant, (and they killed 10 other people), maybe they should care about the other 10 people that they killed, and the 30 other women and children who were injured.

M: I hope they walk away with two things. One, I hope they think, “wow, she’s pretty funny” and that they want to see me again. That’s the main thing. And the second thing is I hope that they get that this is the face of Palestine, this is what we really look like. This is who’s being attacked, and swallowed and cornered.

What was your initial reaction to the backlash after 9/11?

D: It was very upsetting for me to see. I knew that I wouldn't suffer personally because I don't really look like what a traditional Arab looks like. I was really concerned for the Arab American community and how they were going to suffer the repercussions and backlash.

I knew the immediate anger would subside, and that did. It really was a tough time, but now, the real fear for me is more the long-term effect: discrimination against Arab Americans in the workplace. It’s going to happen very subtly, and that's the more difficult thing to deal with. The government's policy, speaking out of both sides of the mouth, (the Bush administration) is saying "don't persecute Arabs, don't do anything against them", but yet they're singling them out, so everyone's thinking of course there's something to worry about these people.

M: I didn’t experience any backlash after 9/11, I experienced it after the second Iraqi war. People were more positive towards me and wanted me to work more after 9/11 because there was curiosity and it was attractive. It was after Iraq that people started really coming down on me: “you shouldn’t be making fun of the president, you’re anti-American, and you’re anti-troops”. But I didn’t feel a backlash from 9/11, just from the Iraqi invasion.

Do you feel your outlook on American society or government has changed over the past two years?

D: I'm still supportive of the country, I think you can make changes by being here that you cannot make any other place.  I'm angered, more probably now, by some of those policies, but I still believe in our system. There’s so much more opportunity here.  This country allows us great freedoms.

It's amazing that the whole world, in all the public opinion polls, right before we went to war with Iraq, were so anti-American. In fact, all countries through Europe are more sympathetic to the Palestinians over the Israelis. It's only the United States, and unfortunately for the Palestinians, only the United States matters in foreign politics.

So, it's troubling in that, but I think hopefully we can change things here.

M: No, my outlook on government and American society has changed in the past three years. My outlook started changing when the second Intifada broke out and it completely, 100% changed during the Bethlehem incursion and the Jenin and Nablus invasions, or massacres (whatever you want to call them). When the United States turned a completely blind eye to what was happening in the Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, knowing that Bethlehem was under siege, knowing that the people were starving, knowing that the water supply had been cut, knowing what was happening and the fact that they turned a complete blind eye to that. That’s what made me completely change my perspective and say, “ this has got to change and we really need to go out there and become more active”. That’s what made me start going to live in Palestine 10 months each year because I was like, “I got to get out of here”.

DEAN

As an Arab American, how have the events of the past 2 years affected you personally?

It's ironic that it's made me more in touch with my Arab roots, because feeling the need to help a lot of people who can't help themselves, I mean, I don't have an accent, I don't look Arab American per say, I don't have barriers that they might have if they want to speak out on an issue.  So it's made me feel like I could help a little bit, which as a comic I try to do. 

Talk a little about your experience working with Jewish comedians in raising money for the Seeds Of Peace organization and the organization itself.

We had three or four Jewish comics and three or four Arab comics in the show.  We did three of them and they went really well.  We did one in March, it was sold out and all the money raised went to Seeds of Peace.  Those shows were different, the people that were there who were Jewish were certainly very Liberal Jewish and the audience was very good.  It was a lot of fun, a good mix of comics. We had some really top Jewish comics in the city that were in it: Judy Gold, and Scott Blakeman, who helped organize it with me.  

Seeds of Peace is a great organization. Maybe it's overly optimistic that it can solve the Middle East peace crisis through having a summer camp, but at least it's taking steps in the right direction-trying to foster understanding. They bring Israeli and Palestinian teenagers together; they've been doing it since 1993. They teach co-existence by unity. They're teaching them that they're both human beings. Some people criticize us for being unrealistic, but you can't just curse the darkness and not light a candle, you've got to take some steps.  They raise so much money, Seeds of Peace, that us raising $1,000 in one night might not really mean that much, but it's more symbolic.

MAYSOON

Talk a little about the program you run in Palestine.

I go four months out of the year. I run an Arts program for disabled, wounded and ‘at-risk’ refugee children. It’s a tactile arts program. I work with the blind, mute, deaf amputees and then I do theater with children to ages 12-17. That’s the ‘at-risk’ age for male children in Palestine. Most of the kids I do theater with are boys and most of them have friends who have been killed. It’s an effort to get them off the streets and get them out of the line of fire and make sure that they don’t get involved in things they shouldn’t be.

What’s your long-term goal through your activism?

My long-term goal through my activism is two things: to get on Oprah and have lots and lots of money siphoned into the refugee cause, and two, to get involved in Congress and work internally. Comedy and acting are my talent; it’s my way of being out there and raising money and awareness. And by getting publicity through acting or through comedy, I’ll be much more likely to be an elected official, to get inside. I’d love to work in Congress.

Maysoon Zayid, Dean Obeidallah, Sanielle Handal. 2003.