In the 2010, Jay-Z released a book entitled Decoded. The book was to serve as a listener’s guide to the lyrics of some of his songs. Jay-Z broke down what he meant in the songs, surgically dissecting what each line meant at times. Decoded is somewhat similar to the Coles Notes or Cliff Notes you used in high school to help you understand what Shakespeare's plays meant – but better. Essentially, Decoded is Jay-Z explaining exactly what he meant with each song in the book and the inspiration behind it.
From time to time, I will write a “Decoded” for certain jokes to show people that for me, the process of writing a joke is more than just coming across something and replicating it on stage. For me, the process of writing jokes has always been a long one where an idea will marinate for months before seeing the light of stage. The jokes can take many different forms and shapes, before settling into the finished product.
My first Decoded is focused on my Kamikaze which quickly became my opener back in 2007. There are countless “bad Asian driver” jokes to the point it has become a hack premise and at a glance, Kamikaze is simply one of those jokes. However, it is much more.
Kamikaze opens expressing my preference for documentary films. Although half a truth, "my preference for docs" becomes the segue that leads into the premise. With the segue, the piece is conversational. Without it, the joke can’t stand on its own and comes off sounding like a street joke –
Q. Why are Kamikaze pilots not as honorable as initially thought?
A. Because they were crashing their planes because of bad driving.
After the punchline, I follow with the tag “So, you guys are into racism.” Originally, I riffed this line after an exceptionally loud reception to the joke took me by surprise. Since then, I’ve consistently added it because the line does get a secondary laugh, but the line also acknowledges the seemingly unspoken agreement between performer and audience that racism is an accepted part of the comedy interaction. Even though I blatantly call the audience racist for laughing, I must also take responsibility for presenting the idea in the first place.
Now, here’s the mindbender – this is a political joke. As a Filipino man who had family killed in the Bataan Death March, this is my “Fuck you!” to the Japanese atrocities of World War 2. By taking the idea that Kamikaze pilots were these brave men that sacrificed their lives for their country and making a mockery out them, I made a political statement. Essentially, I’m planting a seed with the audience in the hope that one day they will see footage of Kamikaze pilots in action and telling whoever they’re with that these pilots weren’t brave, they were just bad pilots.
I have always regarded Mel Brooks as a patron saint of using comedy to undermine the powers of an oppressor. In an interview he did with www.Spiegel.de, Brooks described the power that laughter can have, "By using the medium of comedy, we can try to rob Hitler of his posthumous power and myth.” Replace Hitler with Kamikaze, and that was my aim for the joke.
Kamikaze is my attempt to rob these pilots of their bravery, patriotism, and glory.
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