hot takes with hasan minhaj: being lighthearted in dark times. (blog #5)
In reading Vanity Fair’s article on comedy sensation Hasan Minhaj, “Hasan Minhaj Goes Into the Lion’s Den,” I was happily surprised to find that such a deep profile was done on one of my favorite public figures. Moreover, I was even more surprised to find that such a profile was rich with elements of literary journalism that perfectly suited the story.
The article’s lede is a soft one, opening the story with a bit that Minhaj has been using for years as a comedian: his SAT score. The article literally starts with “Hasan Minhaj got a 1310 on his SATs,” and goes on to explain how he often jokes about such a score and how it wasn’t good for “a brown kid.” The lede then segues into the core of the article: Minhaj’s idea of how not every story has to be tragic to be taken seriously. The article’s nut graf/thesis seems to be captured in a quote from Minhaj himself: “Why does the collateral damage always have to be death in order for the story to be valid? Why does our story have to be steeped in poverty porn in order for it to matter?”
The piece’s literary nature comes through in the body’s descriptive elements. Early in the article, the writer describes Minhaj’s facial expressions and features: “He continues on what’s clearly a familiar path, widening his eyes, which are already fairly puppy-dog, even when he’s not being sarcastic.” A similar example comes later in the article when relaying how Minhaj described Davis, his hometown, with more colloquial language than journalistic: “This is also the artistic terrain of Joan Didion and Greta Gerwig, so — white.”
The writer is very clearly involved as a character, shown in the beginning when describing the setting that they and Minhaj are in while doing the interview. “We are standing in front of a 10-foot inflatable red lota (“This is the O.G. bidet,” Minhaj explains. “We’ve been on butt hygiene for a minute”) that reads “SHIT HAPPENS!” It’s a fleeting moment of narration and one of the only times you really see the writer in the story, but it’s for the purpose of giving Minhaj more personality as a subject.
The only time the writer resurfaces as a character is in the kicker. There’s a brief exchange between Minhaj and the writer circles back to the subject of its opener: test scores. At the end of the interview, the writer asks Minhaj if he remembers what his AP exam scores were after a brooding conversation about art’s misconceptions. The writer describes how Minhaj’s face lights up and says he doesn’t remember. A perfect full-circle moment to relate back to the piece’s main theme: not everything needs to be so serious.
