Travel Ban is a bit of a headscratcher for its inclusion in the CineJoy film festival, a full two years after it’s first premiere. The footage and conversation about renewed Islamophobia under the current Administration feel dated, especially after a summer that was consumed by the uprisings for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The documentary dusts off some old social media footage of white folks saying outrageous things to regular Arabs and Muslims on the street but doesn’t situate it with data, which makes it feel anecdotal. The anecdotes of heckling by comedians would be more impactful if we could watch the moments play out on camera.
Women comics Travina Springer and Jennifer Jajeh have some unique takes on being Muslim and Black or Persian in America, but are given a lot less time. Instead, Aron Kader, who appears to have been placed at the center of the film for reasons that are not entirely clear (since Maz Jobrani seems like the focal point of a lot of the press and pop culture appearances) philosophizes from Griffith Observatory in two extended sequences.
Most of the observational jokes featured in the documentary are surface level humor–being randomly selected for additional screening at airports, being perceived as especially dangerous for their multi-racial backgrounds, or reflections on stereotypes. There are gems in the rough and part of the challenge of profiling so many different comedians is that we’re not given the advantage of following one train of thought for very long. The eight comedian round table at the Laugh Factory feels like a conversation that would’ve been more productive with four or two guests comics answering a series of questions rather than everyone performing one liner biographies for one another.
There are moments when the documentary reaches: the way that we are shown footage from Japanese internment without context or direct questions to the interview subjects, or the social media accounts of KKK rallies. The connection to BLM feels strained, especially since there isn’t the explicit connection drawn in either the acts or interviews. Looking back at 2018 through the barrel of everything that has and hasn’t happened in 2020 really ages the film. I read once about a theory of humor (I wish I could remember where!) that suggested that part of what makes something funny is its politics are slightly pushing the bounds of where the popular culture is comfortable. Comedy leads popular thinking. It cited the comic Doonesbury as being an example of jokes that lag behind popular culture (presumably taking pot shots at a non-existent cowboy-hat-wearing President long after George Bush had left the White House).
Travel Ban lags behind the popular understanding of racial justice and equality mostly because of the lag behind its source material and its showing at CineJoy.
