The weight of telling stories

I loved this conversation between Dave Chappelle and Mo Amer, the comedian and creator of the wonderful Netflix series Mo.

The first thing that came to mind as I was watching was the responsibility of artists. It seems to me that what most good artists really want to do is make people laugh, cry, think, connect, and ultimately feel something.

Mo is a show that centers around Mohammed “Mo” Najjar and his refugee family from Palestine as they try to navigate the citizenship process in the US and all their travails. The show tackles themes like displacement, identity, immigration, generational trauma, religious hatred, cultural tensions, and ultimately—to me—the meaning of home. The idea of “home” is a deeply emotional subject for me, and that made the show all the more powerful.

Mo apparently started writing the show on October 1st, and Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th. Watching Mo explain how he navigated that situation as one of the very few Palestinians in show business with family there gave me a newfound appreciation for how hard good artists work—especially when dealing with issues that are front and center.

A few things from the conversation that stood out to me:

Mo Amer: But no, if there is a scenario, if there’s a world that would take place, then sure, we would explore that, considering that the show ends on October 6th. Like I very deliberately ended it that way at Tel Aviv airport when the camera pans over, whether people catch it or not. It ends in that way. But I do feel like it’s important to, you know, be a part of the solution rather than be a part of the problem. I think it’s really very important and necessary to have real conversations with people, with each other, our community, artist community, outside of that, and build out from there to try to like come to some really clear understanding, you know. So I did go to D.C. I did speak at a JVP rally. I did, which I didn’t intend to, like that always is scary to me like, “Do you do that or not?” But anyway, it was a wonderful gathering where people were really trying to come to some resolution and some idea of unification, and that was a beautiful thing to be a part of. And I had support from everyone around me, honestly, from the writing staff.

And this:

Dave Chappelle: How do you know a joke is worth telling, for instance?

Mo Amer: ‘Cause it makes you laugh. Or it makes you think. Or you’re just inspired to say something or communicate something. Like, how did you know that your show would sound like today’s paper when you filmed those scenes in a detention camp? You didn’t know El Salvador was going to happen. You just were doing what felt urgent to you. And it turns out that the world stage caught up to your writer’s room, right? And these things will focus into the spotlight. You never know. We’re always kind of guessing. We don’t drive as much as people think we do. We’re riding like everybody. We just call the fight. We call it like we see it. It’s exciting because it is so dangerous to say anything and everyone gets upset about everything. Like we used to watch TV growing up. We had no venue to talk back to television. And now, you know, people can get mad at, they can hem and holler about jokes, but you can’t let that ruin the experience for you. When I’m writing, I consider my critics, but that’s never really the point. You know, the cruelest thing that the critic does is they make you think about it. But the best thing that a critic does is they make you think about it. So what are you gonna do?

https://youtu.be/oz2KfE18FYQ?si=v4cKnddIpDSGifcJ