23rd April 2023, Salem
A comedy show that doesn’t stop at the run of the mill school and family comedies, but makes an effort to broaden its horizon in addressing, ‘Feminism’, ‘Article 377’, ‘LGBTQ’, statutory waring of alcohol and smoking. A welcoming deed, for its audience are young adults and adolescents in spite of the show’s18+ insistence.
The mandatory ‘crowd work’ did warm the audience up, for Vikram to start his narration. His initial ‘my dad’, ‘my mom’ jokes made me think if it’s an order of the day, to pull the parents and humiliate them in the name of comedy. But Vikram, caught my attention with his Christian School narration and touching boldly on the publicly taboo topic- ‘conversion’, citing Warner Bros’s ‘Polar Express‘. He further surprised me when he illustrated the ‘Non-Vegetarianism Vs Vegetarianism Vs new age Veganism’ satire, which I thought laid the basic foundation for all kinds of discriminations big and small. And, I was convinced that the show was designed to be the ‘food for thought’ kind.
Vikram then moved on to the ‘Pub Culture’ narration and again his comedy seemed to spark the audience’s thoughts on how ‘not to’ judge women. By the way, Vikram may not be the first Tamil comedian to shout out ‘sexism’ in our movies, the ones that we took pride of, decades ago and later cringed to have made them biggest box office collectors then. By that time, Vikram had established himself genuinely in a hour or so on-stage. His remark seemed a natural concern and his mention did make me dwell on the thought- ‘how did our stars even acknowledge those scripts in the first place’. At this point I started respecting the show and Vikram.
Vikram has explicitly exposed his socially responsible side by then. And when he moved on to ‘Love Marriages’ and Article 377, I was in awe of the comedian’s scope of engaging and transferring his ‘inferred responsibilities’ to the younger and older audience. And he did it all by not getting one bit preachy. Vikram just ‘educated’ the audience by, ‘sugar coating’ the mundane ‘My family comparison’ narrative saga, which truly was welcoming.
I might have given away many of his strengths and trade secrets, to his peers. But would be glad if his contemporaries were duly hinted on how to channelize the teens and young adults through their comedy acts. It in fact is a social responsibility of these influencers, to give back some goodness to the society.
‘Vikkals of Vikram’ made sure that the audience didn’t just laugh their way out but also would ‘think twice’ before being judgemental.