brendan halpin

I’ve been reading about some of the controversy around the Riyadh Comedy Festival, at which wealthy American and British comics performed. Some other comics have said that these folks shouldn’t have played the festival because they’re providing good publicity for a repressive regime that, lest we forget, literally carved up an American journalist. Queer sex is a death penalty offense in Saudi Arabia. Women have been legally allowed to drive a car in Saudi Arabia for only 7 years, and some of the women who fought hardest for that right are still in prison.

Given the fact that the Saudi regime is horrible even in comparison to most other horrible regimes, I’m gonna side with the critics on this one. But let’s look at some of the comics’ justifications, shall we?

Bill Burr: I, a cishet suburban white man, learned something about another culture, so this was a great event! (No, actually.)

Pete Davidson: The check cleared.

Dave Chapelle: I have more freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia than I do in the US. (Yes, your anti-trans bigotry will probably play very well there! Here’s an idea: Maybe stay there!)

Louis C.K.: He said something, but who the hell cares what it was.

Let’s just be clear that nobody who played this festival needs the money. Though careers in the arts are inherently unstable and it’s probably tough to say no to a high six-figure payday when you don’t know if you’re even going to have a career next year. Especially if you’re Dave Chappelle and don’t even really try to be funny anymore or Pete Davidson and you were never really that funny. Or Louis C.K. who shouldn’t have a career at all at this point. But still. Nobody needed the money.

I want to credit Little Steven Van Zandt with helping to shape my thinking about this. For those of you who weren’t born yet, in 1985, Little Steven assembled an incredibly impressive group of musicians to put together “Sun City,” in which they all asserted they weren’t going to play Sun City, a lavish resort in apartheid South Africa that was in a phony homeland (Not totally up on the homeland policy, but it seems at a cursory glance to be apartheid South Africa’s attempt to do to Black South Africans what the US government did to indigenous people, ie. force them into land nobody else wanted and away from white people) where Black South Africans were not allowed to be guests.

Apartheid South Africa tried to legitimize both itself and its despicable “homeland” policy by getting big name artists to play Sun City. And they got a lot of big names. Frank Sinatra. Queen. Dolly Parton. Elton John. Ray Charles. Rod Stewart. Cher.

This was the third big benefit song of the 80’s, and GenX is a cynical bunch, so there was a lot of, “oh, I bet not being able to book Hall & Oates really has the Apartheid Regime quaking in their boots,” or “Stiv Bators just wishes he was famous enough to get asked to play Sun City.”

And yes, “Sun City” did not bring down the apartheid regime, and while there were some big names (and future big names) on this track, Sun City was never going to have trouble finding entertainers to sell out South Africa’s oppressed Black population for a buck. Indeed, after the song came out, a version of Black Sabbath with Tommy Iommi the only original member and Terry Chimes of the Clash (!) (!!) on drums did, in fact, play Sun City.

So what’s the point?

The point is simply this: moral clarity that is terribly threatening to the established order. Not just in South Africa. Everywhere. First of all, the idea that there are principles more important that money was positively heretical in 1985.

And then there’s this: Something terrible is going on. I do not have the power to stop it. But I will do what is in my power, which is not to actively participate in and benefit from it.

That’s what “Sun City” is really about, and that’s the message that’s so radical that people are still threatened by it. Seriously—tell people that you’re not participating in something for moral or ethical reasons and they will either try to write you off as a tiresome killjoy, or they will immediately try to prove that you are not perfect in every respect, and therefore that trying to follow your conscience at all is pointless.

Well, here’s another thing that “Sun City” shows—that following your conscience can be an occasion for joy. You can tell by the way the artists spend the last third of the video smiling and dancing. You want community? You want joy? Watch Bono plant a kiss on the cheek of Darren “Buff Love” Robinson from the Fat Boys at 6:38!

Mass movements are great, but so are individual ones. And sure, we can’t all boycott everything horrible unless we go completely off the grid, and probably not even then, but you can make a stand. And, just as importantly, you can dance.

Here’s the video. Play it loud. All other considerations aside, it’s actually a great song.