The Jester’s Privilege ~ Joel Kim Booster: Psychosexual
Psychosexual (adj.): of or relating to the mental, emotional, and behavioral aspects of sexual development. I know, I thought it referred to a person so obsessed with sex it bordered on insanity, which made for a good self-aware joke on Joel Kim Booster’s part, but the real definition offers enough to dissect as it stands.
Booster offers little public work of which he is in front of the camera. He has had a few televised sets on Conan and Comedy Central Presents, while also playing supporting roles of various TV shows and film, but Booster made most of his career writing for said television and movies. In fact, there aren’t a lot of credits of him in front of the camera where he wasn’t putting in work behind it as well. This is his first televised hour of stand-up, and going into it, with only four minutes of material in my brain, I was interested to see what type of comedian Booster would be.
The answer, however, came in several different parts. The first part was the part everyone expected, I suppose. He started his set with bits about his identity, life as an adopted Asian gay man to white parents. Fully aware of his minority status, yet feeling detached from any specific ethnicity, Booster starts the show with what I thought was his best asset: his crowd work. He was masterful of creating tension in unsuspecting audience members, yet being able to bring them to fully engage with the bit. It created some of the funniest parts of the show (Ben knows what I’m talking about).
Then, as the show transitioned into the next part, Booster began to open his material up to a wider audience. By his figures, 98 percent of the jokes told in this section could have been told by anybody. Now in order to get there he needed to have told at least 50 jokes so I don’t know how he got that figure. Nevertheless, the crux of the statement was true, as well as the implication that yes, I’m way too much of a dork to be writing about Joel Kim Booster. His content became more about being a cat person, relationship dynamics, drug abuse (I couldn’t relate, because again, dork alert), and all things more ubiquitous to the human experience, while keeping his snarky, off-beat tone to maintain his own voice.
However, the beauty of the show didn’t show itself until the third act, when Booster once again starting riffing with the crowd. When asked a simple question, which act did they like better, the representative of the straight, white majority (Ben) said act one, the part that included Booster describing how hard it is for him to send quality pictures of his asshole for men on dating apps. Not the most inclusive comedy for the straights, I must say, but I would have to agree with Ben. Booster’s brand of highly sexualized observations and deeply personal (albeit, sometimes humiliating) anecdotes is what makes his comedy unique. That type of unique perspective informing stand-up is something you cannot overvalue, and frankly, something one is not getting enough in Netflix specials recently.
Joel Kim Booster is a lot of things, or to put a finer point on it all, he is a lot. But even those who aren’t into the highly sexual content and his rather crude manner of speech can see the thorough and artisan-like craftmanship at work. It was clear that a more general tone was considered for this set, and Booster recognized that it’s not what the people came to see, not even the people who he supposedly doesn’t appeal to. This was the documentation of the development of a mentally thoughtful, emotionally encapsulating, and behaviorally unhinged set. A psychosexual masterpiece. Well done, Joel Kim Booster.
9/10
