Why Maz Jobrani is so famous

In high school one of my closest friends lent me one of his CDs and told me that it would be one of the most amazing stand up comedy shows that I will ever watch. He was right. The “Axis Of Evil comedy tour” was probably one of the funniest shows I have ever watched. I love stand up comedy, but I had never watched Arab Americans talk about their experiences in America and the concept of being both American and Arab the way these comedians had.

And that is how Maz Jobrani was introduced to me.

The bald headed Iranian man was all over the stage, limbs flailing in the air, being goofy, talking about the stereotypes of Arabs, the American government, Bush and his own experiences with co-workers.

The crowd went wild. The sub-culture of Arab-Americans from all over the country were finally able to laugh about the things that they had experienced after 9/11. The experiences that had brought them less business and more social persecution was the thing that tied them together. And now they could laugh about it.

I think Maz is famous because of how many people can relate to the things he talks about, not only in America but among people in Arab countries who can relate or understand what it is like to be Arab in a world where they are nothing but belly dancers, bombers and billionaires in the media.

The media has been so successful in making Arabs seem dangerous, primitive, evil or stupid that people rarely find stories about normal Arab families and people who are not belly dancers, bombers and billionaires. Maz joked in one of his comedies that news channels would not show an Arab man doing something normal like baking a cookie unless a “cookie bomb” exploded somewhere.
It is because of the negative image of the Arab community in media that Maz Jobrani and his colleagues decided to begin the tour. “I want people to understand that middle-easterners are normal people too. I want them to say “Hey, I heard this Arab guy the other day and he was funny, and he dint try to hijack the place or anything,”” Jobrani said in a video.

Maz was hilarious in the 12 minutes he spent on stage. Being an actor and a comedian, he was spectacular in his performance. My family and I spent hours and hours laughing and talking about the things he said during the 12 minutes he spent on stage. He made us talk about the negative image of the middle east and Arab men.



We hope that someday this will change when my friends and I become journalists and filmmakers. And make films like “Amreeka.”