Comedy vs. Cancel Culture: Where’s the Line?

Anand Mahalingam is an actor, comedian, and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. With credits in For All Mankind, MasterCard commercials, and How I Met Your Father, he has also performed stand-up nationwide, including all three rooms of The Comedy Store in LA. Anand is the lead in Ronnie California, The King of Artesia, a short film exploring the Indian immigrant experience through comedy, which he hopes to expand into a feature film.

 In this episode of The Humanity of Fame, host Kali and guest Anand Mahalingam dive into the controversial landscape of comedy in today’s politically charged world. With debates raging about censorship, cancel culture, and free speech, they discuss whether comedians are pushing boundaries or crossing the line. Anand shares his perspective on punching up vs. punching down, the evolution of comedy, and how humor can be a powerful tool for social commentary.

Key Topics:

• Has Political Correctness Gone Too Far? Exploring whether audiences are becoming too sensitive or if certain jokes should no longer be acceptable.
• Good Jokes vs. Bad Jokes: Why "It's just a joke" isn't always a valid excuse and how great comedy requires thought and originality.
• Who Gets to Decide What’s Offensive? The subjectivity of humor and how comedians must adapt to changing social norms.
• Comedy and Cultural Identity: How Anand’s film Ronnie California blends immigrant experiences, humor, and societal expectations.
• The Social Power of Comedy: How stand-up can challenge authority, spark conversation, and break down barriers between cultures.

Potential Listener Questions:

1. Has political correctness made it harder for comedians to do their job?
2. What makes a joke "good" vs. "offensive"?
3. Should comedians be given more leeway than regular people when making controversial statements?
4. How does comedy help break down cultural barriers and challenge societal norms?

References and Links:

• Follow Anand Mahalingam on Social Media: @YAINANDBHAI
• Message Anand for a private screening of Ronnie California, The King of Artesia

Final Thoughts:

Anand reminds us that great comedy isn’t just about making people laugh—it’s about making them think. While humor evolves, it remains one of the most powerful tools for storytelling, cultural critique, and connection.

Find out more about Kali and the show HERE: https://humanityoffame.com/

Transcript

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(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) There's so many comments out there that just want to go out there and offend people and just want to go out there and make people mad. And I don't think that's weird. Welcome to Humanity and Fame. I'm your girl, Callie. Thank you for joining me. Okay, today we're going to talk about comedians and this whole thing about political correctness. Should the audience laugh? Should they not? Things like that. Okay, so we're going to get into it. All right. So some comedians feel like today's audiences are a little hesitant to laugh. Okay, they're influenced by political correctness. They argue that people are overly cautious, sort of monitoring jokes for offense. All right, they're second guessing their own laughter. Should all comedy be accepted as it's just jokes? Or isn't there just a level of truth in every joke? All right. So before we get into this, I want to introduce my guest. He's an actor and comedian living in Los Angeles, a college dropout. He spent the first 11 months of his time in LA living on couches and futons while working two jobs. However, since then he has gotten credits in films, television, and commercials, including For All Mankind, MasterCard, and How I Met Your Father. Okay, he has also done stand-up comedy nationwide, including performing in all three rooms of the Comedy Store in LA. You can catch him as the lead in Ronnie California, The King of Artesia, a proof of concept short that he aims to turn into a feature film in the next year. All right, so let me bring him on. Anand Mahalingam, how you doing? I'm doing all right. How are you doing? I'm doing good. I'm doing good. All right, so let's get into these questions. All right. So again, some believe that comedians cross the line, whether it's a joke that touches on gender, sexual orientation, or religious beliefs. Okay, so should all comedy be accepted as it's just jokes, or isn't there a level of truth in every joke? I would say not all comedy should be accepted. I feel like only good comedy should be accepted. That's how I feel. There's a lot of people that are like, it's just a joke. Just treat it like a joke. It's just a joke. It's not meant to offend. And it's like, that was a bad joke. Most of the time when people are saying, don't get offended. It's just a joke. It's mostly just, it was a bad joke. If it was a better joke, people would not get offended. I don't think it's an all comedy thing. I don't think we should treat every joke as sacrosanct, I think, because that's the only way society improves, really, is if we just collectively say, no, that wasn't that good. So there's sometimes when people will make jokes at the expense of others where it's great, and a great joke, and everybody can't help them out. But then there are also other times where people make these kinds of jokes where it's everybody in the room is groaning. And it's like, okay, yeah, we do recognize that you're trying to make a joke, but it wasn't a good joke. It just wasn't a good joke. Okay. So we're going to get into the differences in between good and bad jokes. Let me keep going with another question. So has political correctness gone too far in shaping how people respond to humor, or is it necessary to prevent harmful jokes? I think in certain cases, it has gone too far, where you are in the audience for a comedy show, and one comic is up there talking about something that a risque topic or a taboo thing, and all they need to say is one buzzword. They just need to say one word, where you just recoil at that word, and then you really don't pay attention to the rest of the bit, and you don't give the comedian the respect that they deserve for the rest of their bit. I think in that way, it has gone too far, where we're just not even listening. We hear the one word, and we cut it off, and we don't even pay attention. And we're not even willing to see the intelligence in the joke. We're not even willing to see the artwork in the joke. We hear the word. We hear something about some stereotype, and we hear the word, and we check out. I think in that way, it has gone too far. But I think in other ways, I don't think it's gone far enough, because I think there's some people who are just allowed to make certain jokes that really aren't helping anybody. I feel like with comedy, you're not supposed to just go out there and offend people. You're supposed to challenge yourself. You're supposed to challenge the art form. You're supposed to try and make jokes that nobody has ever heard of before. There are so many comics out there that just want to go out there and offend people, and just want to go out there and make people mad. I don't think that's real comedy. I think comedy is made to punch up. It's made to make fun of people that are in power. That's the whole reason why it exists in the first place. You go back to court jesters and stuff like that. Those are the only people in the king's court that were allowed to make jokes. They often made them at the expense of the king, or whoever was in charge at the time. So would that be considered a roast? Yeah, kind of. I think in a way, it's kind of like a roast. Roasts can also be targeted at people punching down. But yeah, I think it's mostly at people who are in power. It's supposed to be comedy. I think comedy in its most natural form is comedy is made towards people that are in power and deserve ridicule and stuff like that. So I think in a way, it's gone too far in some respects. I don't think it's gone far enough in some respects, because there are people right now in the world that think Elon Musk is funny. Those people just don't get comedy. Okay, okay. So that leads me to my next question, because there are jokes that are edgy, and then there's the offensive comment, but it's like, who gets to define that line? It's pretty much subjective, don't you think? Yeah. I think when a comic makes a joke that can be deemed offensive, or it can be deemed risky in some way, and they know this, they should know this at this point with the way that social media is. It's not really up to them. It's not up to us anymore. When you say them, you mean the comedians? Yeah. When one of us makes a joke, it's not really up to us. It's like, you make a joke, and then it's your responsibility, I think, as a comedian to make as good of a joke as you possibly can make, so that they have no... Unless they're really grasping at straws, which I think happens, but unless they're really grasping at straws, they really can't be offended by what you say. If it's a good enough joke, they should understand where you're coming from and all that stuff. But I think especially in this day and age with social media being what it is, and the fact that the only thing that works on social media nowadays is like 15 to 30 second clips, so a lot of stuff is taken out of context. I've seen it happen before where a comic is doing a whole bit that's two minutes long, or five minutes long, or 10 minutes long, and it's crushing, and the only thing that gets posted is something that is 30 seconds long, and it's only a small part of the and they really have no control in that case over what the audience can infer from that. There's a lot of... Comics are saying that they can't do anything, but you cannot. I think the people that are getting in trouble over stuff like that are just not making... They're making jokes that would have crushed in the 90s. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. Okay. All right. So, is it fair to argue that comedians are performing and should get a pass while regular people expressing similar views face backlash? I think comics definitely get a pass over regular people because comics do this for a living, and it is our job to see where the line is and go right up to the line without going over it. That's our job. We get paid, and some of us get paid very handsomely to do that, but if you are a sales guy, if you're working in if you're working in accounting or whatever, that's not your job. So, if you make a joke that is really, really offensive and really, really bad, and people say, oh, it was... And you try and defend it with, oh, it was just a joke. Right. Your job is not to make jokes. That is not your job. Our literal job... Because if you made an accounting mistake or something like that, then you could be like, okay, I never make mistakes like this. I'm a professional and things like this. Okay. That's fine. But it is not your job to be funny. And so, if you try to be funny and you weren't funny, I'm sorry. That's just... If you tried to be funny and you weren't funny, leave it to the professionals. Don't try and be funny anymore. I just had a couple of thoughts. Okay. Okay. So, comedians, they should get a pass with the idea that they're doing their job. Right? Right. And then I had a second thought of there are comedians who start off in jobs that don't involve the stage. And a lot of people say, wow, you should do standup. Right? Right. So, a lot of people discover the comedic side of people in these type of jobs that don't involve standup at all. 100%. But there's a difference because the people... I always say that there's a difference between comedians and funny people where people who are just funny... I've had this happen so many times where people will just be like, oh, I should do standup. Or somebody will make a joke or something. And in my presence, because I'm a standup comedian, somebody will be like, oh, my God, you should be on stage just like Anan. And it's like, no. Okay. Let them go. Let them try. What will happen if they try? In all likelihood, they will bomb. And then they will never do it again. But in the off chance that they do it well, they're not going to do it again. The difference between a comedian and somebody who's funny is a comic gets up on stage and bombs. And then regular funny person gets up on stage and bombs. The regular funny person will never do standup again if they bomb. Because they are so comfortable on being in work situations or social situations where they make jokes and people can't help but laugh. But when you're on stage, people don't have to laugh at you. That's the one place where they don't have to laugh at you. They'll bomb up there and be like, oh, I don't like this. This isn't like happy hour. So they really can't do it. There's so many people that just don't have the muscle to keep throwing themselves, throwing shit at the wall and stuff like that. Don't try and believe that you're a regular, that you're a normal comedian if all you're doing is making jokes on the company Slack channel and stuff like that. That's not the same. Yeah. And I've heard comedians say that too. There's a difference between a comedian and someone that's just funny. There's a skill when it comes to comedy. And when you go to an open mic, that's the other thing where the people that are like, oh, you can't make jokes about anything anymore. I think if you go to an open mic, that is where you realize that you can't survive on making jokes that people have heard before. Because if you go to an open mic, there'll be 15 other people on the lineup. 10 other people are guaranteed doing the same jokes that you're doing. Everyone has the same idea for jokes. That is how going to open mics is how you realize that you're not as special as you think you are. So for people that are tweeting things or saying things in conversation that are taken out of context or whatever, guaranteed there are hundreds of other comedians all over the country that are making that same joke. It's not that great of a joke, the people that are- So one of the focuses should definitely be originality, right? A hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In your storytelling, right? Make it authentic and original to you. Specific and authentic and unique. That's what comedy needs to be right now. Okay. All right. Let's talk a little bit about your film, okay? Your film, Ronnie California, The King of Artesia. To me, it hilariously shows what it's like to be an Indian immigrant in America juggling comedy and culture, right? It's a funny short, okay? The comedy is there, but it also hits on the real pressures of, I guess you could say, fitting in or falling into American standards while still trying to maintain your roots, stay true to your root, okay? So I want to ask, what inspired you to use comedy as a way to explore the immigrant experience? I just feel like with a lot of immigrant stories, specifically Indian immigrant stories, I just feel like I've seen so many of the same kind of thing where trying to come at you with a very dramatic thing to kind of like a dramatic point of view or dramatic perspective, that you're expecting the audience to kind of relate to that. And I don't think if you come into it, drama is not something that everybody can get, I think. I think it's not a universal, it's not as universal, even if it's like a dramatic situation about a universal thing, there's still a point of view that needs to be taken with drama that not everybody will understand, not everybody will get. So I was just kind of like, me and my buddy that wrote and directed the movie, from the beginning, we were kind of just like, we just didn't love the way that the immigrant experience was kind of shown in media before Ronnie, where it was just like, oh, like, put yourself in the shoes of this person that is coming from India that has all these things. But like, you have to put yourself in their specific shoes. That's one case where I think specificity kind of works against what you're trying to go for, where we'll put on these really dramatic experiences of like, immigrant experiences, and expect the audience to kind of go along with it, where for us, it's like comedy, I think is a universal language, people laugh in every language. So it's like, what we kind of tried to do with the movie is, even if you had it on mute, you would kind of understand the comedy of it. And like, the guy that I play is very Indian. He's like, got the accent, the look and the mustache. But he's not like, he like, every culture that came to America has someone like him, you know? And it's like, that it's a little bit more broad in the way like comedy, I think, comedy is the lowest common denominator with everything like, like, people, like, if you travel cross country, if you travel internationally and stuff, there are some things that can be looked at. And without saying a word, you can laugh at it. True. So like, that's, I think, like, comedy is the entry point for anybody that's trying to understand a bigger, a more dense subject, a subject that's a little bit bigger than them. I think comedy is the way to get into that. Because that's where everybody can laugh at something. Like, if you can get everybody to laugh at something, you can get everybody to talk about something. But you can't get everybody to cry about something or think very, you know, seriously about something. You can't, I don't think it's possible. I don't think it's as easy to do that. And I, yeah, I think comedy is the way into so, so many things. If you can, if you can just like establish that you can laugh at something. Yeah. I think that's the way into so many things. You know, that's interesting that you say that, because that leads to my next question. But rather than asking the question, I'll just make a statement about it. When I watched the film, when you say, you know, basically, if you start with comedy, that's kind of like you're in to, because I'll say this, because for me, while there was comedy, looking at my next question, it did hit for me on the deeper things of cultural identity and adaption. I felt different emotions where I was laughing. But then there were times where I was like, Oh, man, or I was like, Whoa, you know, I was like, Yep, that's American, right. You know, I was able to relate in it to so many in it, and relate to it, excuse me, in so many ways. But right off the top, it was the, it was the comedy, right, that drawed me in. Right, exactly. And then once you Yeah, and then once the once the footing was set with the comedy, then all of the emotions, you know, started to hit as the storyline continued to play out. So it's interesting that you say that, you know, comedy is kind of like the end, because it's universal. 100%. That's like, that's kind of the whole gambit of the movie is like, it's 16 and a half odd minutes. And so many emotions for me in those 16 minutes were felt. I love that. But it's like, 16 minutes. And the first I would say, probably the first 10 minutes, you're you're thinking you're watching a comedy. You're thinking like, it is a comedy. It is funny. jokes are landing jokes are hitting. And so you think it's all it's going to be is just an out and out comedy. And then we kind of like five minutes left in the movie, we kind of pull the rug out from underneath you. Yeah. And we reveal like this emotional core to it. Yeah. But like, I don't think the emotional core, and this goes to my buddy that wrote and directed it, shout out Adi Kalabindi. But this goes to him where it's like, the whole reason why the movie works is the comedy. Like, we have you set up to believe that it like everybody's going into this, having a good time, all the marketing around the movie is that it's a great time. It's funny movie. It's it's a lot of fun. And then those last five minutes of that movie, really kind of pull the rug pull the rug out and really just kind of leave you out naked in front of like all of your emotions kind of thing. That's the whole game. But like, the only way we can get to that point is through the comedy of the situation. Yeah, yeah. I like that. I like that. It makes sense to thank you so much for joining me on and let everybody know where they can find your film Ronnie, California, the King of Artesia, where can they find it? So right now, Ronnie, California, we are still in the festival film festival process. And film festivals have a big rule that none of the films that you submit can be public. You can't find them online. But I like if you want to watch the movie, just message me on social media and I will send you a link for it. Yeah, yeah. If other people want to watch it, just follow follow me on social media message me and I will absolutely send you the link. You can find him under the same handle on all of the social media links if you guys are watching. You guys see it at the bottom of the screen. For those of you who are listening through podcast, you can find him on all social media platforms at I'm going to spell it out. Okay. Yeah. Why a in a in D as in David B as in boy, h a. I Yes. All right. You can find him and support him. I'm telling you guys the film is really funny and it is going to tap on all of your emotions but it's going to grip you with the comedy first. All right. Thank you so much again for joining me. Thank you. You are so welcome. Best wishes to you and your film and your journey. I'm so glad to hear that you have been influencing others to kind of follow in your footsteps, but also create their own lane. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you all for joining me and watching you all have a good rest of your day. Thank you. Peace and blessings guys.