Russell Peters: Bringing the World Together through Comedy

In a stadium in London, Russell Peters comes on stage with a velvet jacket, jeans and sneakers. His Attention Deficit does him well as he scopes the audience for material as it comes at him. In the crowds he finds people from nearly every background imaginable: Irish, Saudi, Iraqi, Chinese, Spanish, Senegalese, Indian, and countless more from all regions of the globe. He may be the only comedian who can bring people together to laugh at and laugh with one another from all ethnic possibilities.

No topic and no background can avoid Russell Peters ability to reflect on our cultural differences, our flaws, and our idiosyncrasies in the contemporary world. His style of humor reflects the third important task that Cornel West describes in his book Democracy Matters, which along with the ideal of Socratic questioning and prophetic witness, the tragicomic hope. His fearless speech to discuss all politically incorrect topics brings to the front the “ability to laugh and retain a sense of life’s joy” (West). Humor, like jazz, can free the stress against inhumane injustice.

Russell Peters is the epitome of what Cornel West would call “the profound tradition to inform and embolden the struggle against the callous indifference of elite and empirical injustice.” However, Russell Peters uses humor as his bold tool to entertain the diverse masses. He feeds off of the reactions and language anomalies of those he comes across throughout his continual world tour.

At one time in his performance on the London stage, he discusses how in London the use of the word cunt is commonly used and not at all used in the same context as it's most commonly used in North America. His analysis on how certain words in a cultural context when pulled from one context to another can easily change the way an audience perceives a word. In a parallel of juxtaposition, like Eve Ensler, Inga Muscio, in her book, Cunt, reclaims the word, which was once a term used for the Indian goddess Kali, who was independent and powerful. In her manifesto, she strives to transform the context of the word to re-instate its initial power rather than insult. Her emphasis is to know one self, love one self, and express one self.

Russell Peters makes us all take a long look in the mirror and in a far connected way with different approaches than Inga Muscio, he pulls us to appreciate and laugh at our differences that make us all significantly unique and yet quite similar.