When HIV/AIDS is really funny

"...54% of all Indians shit outside... And we can't afford that shit - it's not like with Japan... where there's a tsunami that cleans all that shit - we don't have that facility in India.... And this number's being going up since 1947. In the 40s it was 34% and then 50s 44%, and it's being going up. Basically the British left and we started shitting outside - I think this is the best defence strategy any country can adopt... People have defence budgets, we have lunch."

Nothing like taking a joke out of context to kill the humour. It's all in Tanmay Bhat's delivery, as you can see here. But the main point of this post is the fact that that previous link doesn't go to a blog, or to a news article, not even a caustic comment from the Twitterati, but to a stand-up comedy set. 'Development' issues, like sanitation or HIV/AIDS can be funny, as the Stand Up Planet project shows.

According to its mission statement, "Stand Up Planet is a documentary TV show, transmedia series and digital campaign that showcases life in some of the toughest places on Earth – in parts of India and South Africa – through the lens and experiences of stand-up comics." I experienced this primarily through the TV show, and it's a breath of fresh air. It takes the often-used media model (I'm looking at you, Guardian 'poverty matters' blog or El Pais 'Planeta Futuro') of look-at-this-awful-situation-you-should-really-know-about-this-because-it's-really-bad and turns it on its head, and whilst recognising the seriousness of the fact, for example, that 4000 children die every day from diarrhoea, it hands the agency back to Indians or South Africans to highlight the issues through humour. A release from the slightly grave and slightly defensive campaigning mindset that often characterises media reporting on development. It turns "problems to punchlines," and returns the colour to the limited picture of the developing world we get in countries like the UK. How Matters provides an elegant summary.

"Stand Up Planet reminds us that people have to be at the center of any solutions. It moves viewers from despair to hope in a genuine and elegant way, creating a balanced and constructive story about some of the world’s biggest and most deeply-entrenched social issues – a new narrative so needed in our sector."

Stand Up Comedy director Hasan Minhaj. credit: MTV

The show itself is really entertaining - go ahead and watch away - as this Los Angeles-based comic, Hasan Minhaj, travels first to Mumbai then to Johannesburg to explore the comedy scenes and perform there before inviting Aditi Mittal and Mpho Popps back to perform in LA. Generally it gets the balance right between funny and serious, and leaves you with a hopeful smile. Having said that, there is something slightly disappointing in the 'Take Action' section of the website linking everything back to lobbying US Congress to spend more on aid. An exciting project foregrounding comedy artists from India and South Africa ends up handing the agency back to the USA, though this isn't the main focus and the organisations it proposes for donations are almost all national or local initiatives from India and South Africa.

Anyway, before I descend further into the type of 'serious' development media tone that this sort of comedy provides an antidote for, I will shut up and splatter you with links to funny people talking about important issues.

The documentary itself here
Aditi Mittal here
Mpho Popps here
Tanmay Bhat here
Loyiso Gola here