Kapil Sharma's debut Netflix stand-up special only exposes the inherent flaws of his TV show

When you search insult comedy in India, the first few entries that pop up are Abhishek Upamanyu, Arnav Rao, and of course Vir Das “insulting India” with his I Come From Two Indias monologue. But you never see any mention of Kapil Sharma’s comedy show on TV. Sharma is the heckler that became a comic.  He has repeatedly punched down on lower classes, women, and his co-stars as well as accepted insults coming from A-list celebrities like Akshay Kumar, who jokingly told Sharma on his own show, “Mujhe baar baar aake teri beizzati karni hai" [I want to keep visiting the show to insult you]. Sharma has a Netflix special just like the English-speaking comedians of India – Kenny Sebastian, Kanan Gill, and Vir Das. And just like them, in his special, Sharma is vulnerable, self deprecating in moments, and confessional. He shares childhood photographs and personal anecdotes. He talks about mental health and alcoholism instead of berating the public. He addresses his TV background in a joke: “We’ll not be doing that here,” he tells the musical accompaniment behind him when they interject with staccato riffs at the end of his jokes. Instead, Sharma brings his own cheerleaders to punctuate his jokes with nodding approvals and claps where laughs are missing. Television – an insecure medium – is rife with this sort of manipulation, where live audiences are asked to react on cue. Family members or personal struggles are trotted out to squeeze out Big Emotions, not unlike Sharma’s wife Ginni Chatrath in the special, who was interviewed as if she was the supporting a contestant on a game show. Sharma’s Netflix special inadvertently exposes the power dynamics of the television industry in India. The subjects of roasts are star celebrities in the West, the roasters are often their family and friends. The subjects of roasts in India are the lower classes, and family and friends are called to pander to the star.     Only certain classes of people become the butt of Sharma’s jokes. It is telling that on his TV show, Sharma never roasted his celebrity guests but would roast his audience members. In fact, the jokes that were written and performed for the guests were most often backhanded compliments. What masquerades as content “for the masses” is actually content that the elite can tolerate. It is the upper and middle classes who might condemn TV entertainment to performing the status quo. Television is where Sharma and countless other vernacular artists of The Great Indian Laughter Challenge made their name. It has also been a delivery system for morality, according to  Pulitzer-prize-winning TV critic Emily Nussbaum. This is somewhat true in the Indian context, where shows like Balika Vadhu, Uttaran, and Anupama proliferate. But these shows are also an exercise in condescension. And while comedy is a heavier lift than drama in the West, TV comedy in India serves to heighten condescension. Those who disliked Sharma’s comedy are usually dismissed as elitists, and disconnected from the ‘mainstream’ Indian society even though the same could be said of the celebrity judges on these Indian TV comedy shows. The same could even be said of Sharma, who complains in his set about having to pay Rs 15 crore in taxes.   He narrates an incident where he bombed in front of Nita Ambani and a few cricketers who played for the national team. “All my jokes were about poor people. About how in Amritsar, we eat puris and chhole and stuff. Nita Ambani was looking at me, thinking, ‘Which country is he from? What is poor?’ I’m telling joke after joke, nothing was landing. The rich have their own world. They wear stones on their fingers, we have them in our kidneys. You laugh, she did not,” Sharma said. Later the host of the soiree, Harbhajan Singh told Sharma, “You know, I’ve seen you on TV. You do amazing there. But when it’s live, it’s a bit… You know?”

There is an upper ceiling in Indian television that is hardly invisible. Only certain classes of people become the butt of jokes.

  Perhaps this rich-people joke might have been less toothless had his Netflix-special audience not been full of them.    Even when Kapil Sharma, a TV face moves from its high censorship framework to a relatively unregulated OTT space, he cannot enjoy the right to be irreverent – he enacts the take backs of his controversial tweets and blames it on his intoxication. He speaks magnanimously about the people he believes to be his superiors like “global star Shah Rukh Khan.” Even when given the chance to direct the focus of his comedy to public figures, having been in the TV showbiz since 2007, Sharma’s otherwise acerbic wit is largely forgiving. His insults are now saved for his past self, a poor youth who was not good enough for his upper-class wife, and not good enough for a city of stars. Sharma is constantly aware of the status of being on Netflix, an international platform, a step up from national TV, he thinks. In the end, he sings in English for a new imagined audience. The roast is removed because Sharma believes he is performing for a new socio-economic class. Kapil Sharma: I’m Not Done Yet is streaming on Netflix India. Eisha Nair is an independent writer-illustrator based in Mumbai. She has written on history, art, culture, education, and film for various publications. When not pursuing call to cultural critique, she is busy drawing comics.