united-shades-of-america-with-w-kamau-bell-season-1-episode-1
Bell attends a cross-burning. Image courtesy of CNN.

United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell: Season 1, Episode 1

W. Kamau Bell travels as an outsider in his native America.

Then they for sudden joy did weep,

And I for sorrow sung,

That such a king should play bo-peep,

And go the fools among.

Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach

thy fool to lie: I would fain learn to lie.

Fool, King Lear, William Shakespeare

One of the functions of comedians is to speak truth to power. Perhaps one of the most unappreciated American literary traditions has been the people who have done just that. This includes Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Woody Allen, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert. All mocked power and pretentiousness.

Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell premiered in 2012, featuring comedian W. Kamau Bell. Over the course of 74 episodes, there were moments of near-perfect comic subversion. Dropping lines like — “He went from Baby Bruno Mars to Black Chucky” and “Hey Chris Brown, here’s a list of things you should stay away from…” — Bell targeted the famous and the infamous with his sharp and brutal commentary.

Bell’s United Shades of America, an eight-part documentary series, starts Sunday, April 24, with “The New KKK”. The theme of the series is Bell exploring parts of Americana with which he’s had little or no interaction. If you’re looking for Totally Biased part 2, you’ll likely be disappointed. Spliced between the taped footage, Bell does do stand-up, but the series is far more a documentary than a topical show.

The best parts of the first episode echoed another multipart documentary on contemporary Americana: the BBC’s Stephen Fry in America. That documentary was based on a single failed gimmick: Stephen Fry driving around the country in a London Cab. After the first episode, the producers gave up on the “look how whimsical we’re being” and gave Fry free reign. That was a good move; Fry made the show by casting himself as an outsider. It was far more than just a “look at these idiotic bumpkins” laugh fest. Fry was enthralled with America and American-isms. Even with something completely foreign to his experience — a Southeastern Conference football game, for example — he engaged with equal parts astonishment and admiration.

The theme of the United Shades of America seems to be Bell looking at institutions that exist within but separate from most of the country. So, in a way he’s casting himself very much as Fry did. In the first episode, Bell documents four encounters he has with the contemporary KKK.

Bell’s strength is his ability to remain civil, even cordial, while interviewing people whose beliefs he finds deeply repellent. In one scene, he goes out with a Klan member who’s preparing the cross to be “lit” (the term the Klan uses instead of burning). Bell and the hooded man talk about how the cross is made. There’s a surreal element where it sounds like two guys talking shop, while Bell quips, “I love that you have all that sensitivity around Home Depot.”

This exchange is part of the pattern of the episode. The Klan spokesman tries to stay on his talking points, namely, that the new Klan is about white pride and not black hatred. Bell does a great job of constantly bringing them back to it being about hate.

A good deal of the episode deals with Bell interviewing Thomas Robb and his daughter Rachel Pendergraft. They have a compound outside of Harrison, Arkansas, the town featured on national news for a billboard that states, “Anti-Racist is a Code Word for Anti-White”. Robb and Pendergraft are working with Billy Roper, who refers to himself as “a non-white extinguishist”. These were the only three people who agreed to be associated with the Klan and showed their faces.

Bell’s aware that part of the reason that Robb, Pendergraft, and Roper signed on to be in the show was it offered them an audience to which they wouldn’t readily have access. Bell describes it as a “re-branding”. He has to balance being friendly enough to have access, while at the same time stripping away the rebranding and making sure that his audience knows the Klan is always going to be about hate.

He does this in three ways. First, he shows some of their own media where they say offensive things. He also just lays back and allow them to fully articulate their opinions in all their self-evident stupidity. Finally, he pushes back and challenges them in a friendly manner. At one point, he asks Robb if he would come to his house for dinner, or asks Roper if his daughter could play on the equipment at the Klan’s playground. To Roper’s answer Bell narrates, “Not just a racist, also kind of a jerk.”

The premiere episode of United Shades of America had some flaws, the most important of which was a scarcity of funny jokes. There were just a few monologues where Bell showed off his comedic chops, and there was a little bit too much of “how crazy am I” signposting. Bell has a long way to go to be in the class of Twain, Pryor, or Carlin, but United Shades of America offers moments when he’s able to express an insightful truth in a way in which would rival all three.

RATING 7 / 10