{"id":40987,"date":"2015-04-27T22:17:12","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T22:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=40987"},"modified":"2015-05-13T22:20:10","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T22:20:10","slug":"trevor-noahs-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=40987","title":{"rendered":"Trevor Noah’s World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trevor Noah’s World<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Atlantic<\/a>
\n2015-04-05<\/p>\n

Douglas Foster<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor of Journalism
\nMedill School of Journalism
\nNorthwestern University, Evanston, Illinois<\/em><\/p>\n

What makes The Daily Show’s<\/em> new host unique\u2014according to South African comics<\/p>\n

CAPE TOWN, South Africa<\/a>\u2014When word circulated on Monday that standup comic Trevor Noah<\/a> had been chosen<\/a> to succeed Jon Stewart<\/a> as host of The Daily Show<\/em><\/a>, South Africans hailed Noah in hyper-caffeinated terms as the country\u2019s \u201cnext great export<\/a>\u201d after Nelson Mandela<\/a>, Desmond Tutu<\/a>, and Charlize Theron<\/a>. On that day, I happened to be in Johannesburg<\/a> shepherding students through the newsroom of The Star<\/em>, where the lineup of stories at the morning editorial conference included a series of firefights between gangsters and police on public highways, allegations of corruption at every level of government, and the teetering condition of the state-run utility company, which regularly plunges the country into rolling blackouts<\/a>. It was no wonder that news of a major U.S. television show hiring a 31-year-old mixed-race South African phenom as anchor had proven so welcome.<\/p>\n

By now, the basics about Trevor Noah are well-known. He\u2019s the young, super-cool comedian with the cherubic face and itchy Twitter finger <\/a>who, beginning in 2012, achieved global recognition by way of Jay Leno<\/a>, David Letterman<\/a>, and Jon Stewart<\/a>. In a series of solo performances around the world over the last three years, he has blown up in ways that cultural figures from South Africa haven\u2019t since the 1960s and 1970s, when musicians like Hugh Masekela<\/a> and Miriam Makeba<\/a> packed music halls during the height of racial oppression back home…<\/p>\n

…What makes Noah\u2019s comedy unique? \u201cHe\u2019s slick as fuck!\u201d Evans replied. \u201cBut also super charming<\/em>,\u201d added the young comic sitting next to him. He was a slight, Afrikaans-speaking man named Schalk Bezuidenhout<\/a>, who sometimes opens for Noah when he\u2019s performing in town. Only 22 years old\u2014the same age as Noah when he jump-started his career as a comedian\u2014Bezuidenhout had just come off stage after a set about the hazards of dating a flight attendant (\u201ca non-smoking fuck\u201d) and the unintended consequences of imposing a non-racial ideal on young people from South Africa\u2019s 11 different language groups (\u201cThere\u2019s nothing more messed up than a bunch of Afrikaans kids singing an African song\u201d).<\/p>\n

Both men said Noah distinguished himself from other comics by resisting labels and \u201cgenre-based comedy.\u201d Bezuidenhout noted that Noah always identified himself as a mixed-race South African raised in straitened circumstances in Soweto<\/a> without \u201cusing it as a crutch.\u201d Contemporaries who have shared the stage with him say he’s unusually attuned to the audience, shifting direction based on the feel in the room, and Bezuidenhout has seen Noah drop chunks of material based on the city he’s performing in. This was a quality that a number of immigrants in South Africa had already mentioned to me. Omega Chembhere, a waiter, told me that when he had arrived from Zimbabwe<\/a> 10 years earlier, much of South African pop culture had seemed inaccessible. \u201cTrevor\u2019s different, so good at it,\u201d he said. \u201cHis strength is that everything springs from his experience in life, but you understand his reality because he makes an effort to explain<\/em>.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trevor Noah’s World The Atlantic 2015-04-05 Douglas Foster, Associate Professor of Journalism Medill School of Journalism Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois What makes The Daily Show’s new host unique\u2014according to South African comics CAPE TOWN, South Africa\u2014When word circulated on Monday that standup comic Trevor Noah had been chosen to succeed Jon Stewart as host of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1295,12,24,1245,8,520],"tags":[19983,6001,19769,15219],"class_list":["post-40987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-articles","category-arts","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-south-africa","tag-douglas-foster","tag-the-atlantic","tag-the-daily-show","tag-trevor-noah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}