The ABCD of Comedy: Aziz Ansari

As he writes new material, Ansari seems to be digging deeper and engaging with stickier matters of the heart. He is delving into topics such as the absurdity of the institution of marriage, the dysfunctional nature of technology-enabled romantic interactions and his own commitment phobia.

On his latest tour, Buried Alive, the 30-year-old comedi­an considers topics such as set­tling down and online dating in a world where 25 is the new 16. “I am at that age at which people are supposed to have kids and all that stuff. It kind of came from that place of, like, what the hell’s going on? I am not supposed to have a kid. I couldn’t imagine having a kid right now. I couldn’t imagine getting married right now. Where would you meet that person?” he says.

Although Ansari is a first generation American (born and raised in South Carolina), his family is originally from a small town in Tamil Nadu, or, as he describes it in his stand-up, “a poor part of India; not where the study-abroad programmes are based.” In his act, he talks about how his parents had only in­teracted for about 30 minutes before getting married, and how if he were to go the arranged-marriage route he might confront a situation three weeks in, in which his wife’s love of Celebri­ty Ghost Stories over Game of Thrones would be a prospective deal breaker. But, as he tells me, he is not pointedly averse to the arranged setup. “I don’t necessarily say it’s like the worst idea, but I think it’s interesting how when I say my parents had an arranged marriage, people have this look of concern like, ”˜Oh My God, is everything okay?’ But you could have that same look of concern about any marriage; every marriage is a very crazy biblical thing.”

Over the past year or so, An­sari has gradually increased his interaction with audience mem­bers during his act. It’s almost like an anthropological exer­cise; he conducts live surveys and analyses the changing re­sponses by age group. And he only seems to be getting better at feeding off unpredictable re­sponses. “Eventually, you just get really good at these inter­view scenarios, so it doesn’t real­ly matter what you say; you know how to make it work, how to il­lustrate your points.” In the Bur­ied Alive show, Ansari asks people about their marriage pro­posals, and also susses out this trend of guys sending dick photos to girls. He asks all the women in the audience to clap; then asks all the women who have received a dick photo to clap. “When I first started the tour, it was like 65-70 percent in every city. When I’ve been doing it this time, the percentage has gone up. It’s really crazy. It’s gone up to about 90 percent,” he says.

Ansari is also working on the script for a movie inspired by the theme of Buried Alive. The movie will be a narrative version of the ideas he talked about in the special that he just filmed. “Everyone’s working on the drafts now, but maybe I’ll film it in the next break I have from Parks (Parks and Recreation).” Judging by the new material he talks about, Ansari’s next, yet untitled, tour seems like a prequel to Buried Alive. An­sari seems to be taming a feral beast spawned by the marriage of dating anxieties with the ster­ile intimacy of modern modes of communication (such as text mes­saging). He describes the premise while excusing his articulation of it, “To say it in the most an­noying, pretentious way, it would be like how technology has af­fected the initial phases of modern courtship.”