Stand-up comedy and the performance of race and identity in Trevor Noah’s It Makes No Sense and Learning Accents

Abstract

Stand-up comedy has thrived as a popular form of entertainment in Africa, and it has been used as a tool to question the postcolonial relationship between the West and the Other, which promotes racialized assumptions. Similarly, African stand-up comedians like Trevor Noah, a migrant from South Africa to the United States, who was born in South Africa to a Swiss father and a South African mother, have become global entertainment icons and demonstrate how migrants can use humour to confront prejudice and institutional racism. Drawing from Noah’s mixed racial backgrounds, this study examines how Noah’s identity shapes his artistry using two of his performances It Makes No Sense (2020) and Learning Accents (2021). The study engaged the Superiority, Relief and Incongruity theories of comedy, and observed that intersectional identities and marginalization are the main themes explored in the two comic acts, and Noah presents humour as a site of resistance used to subvert assumptions of stable racial and identity categories that promote the marginalization of Blacks and people of colour.