“I have been overwhelmed with how good the responses have been. I knew my female fans had it in them,” he tells Beat from Adelaide. “If you were a curry I’d shove you in my mouth and let you burn up my asshole,” is another example he gives of what he considers to be one of the best.
With almost 100,000 followers on Instagram and Twitter combined, and with some of his YouTube clips having had millions of views (other clips of his have to settle for only being seen hundreds of thousands of times), there’s plenty of people out there happy to play along with his hashtag.
Kolhatkar is also touring this provocative idea in his latest stand-up show, #ObjectifyNeel, which he’s bringing to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. So why does he think brown men need to be sexually objectified more?
“It stems from the racial stereotype of brown men being nerdy, not masculine, reserved and small,” he says. “I challenge the idea with my jokes and exploration of the topic. I try to make others see it in the same light I do and offer hyperbolic far-fetched solutions to evoke some degree of thought and reconsideration about the topic.”
The 22-year-old Sydneysider is also tackling other topics in the stand-up show. “I talk about race in a modernsense, racial privilege, offensiveness – those kind of things,” says Kolhatkar. “My discussion of youth is based upon my experiences as a young person; what we go through, our trials and tribulations in today’s world. I talk a lot about our current political and cultural climate; how it’s so vicious and divisive. My big aim in comedy is to not let my personal views get in the way of being able to make fun of all sides of the debate.”
Inspired by Russell Peters and Chris Rock, Kolhatkar started doing comedy when he was 15 as part of Class Clowns and he says he’s been lucky enough to be doing this full time for the past four years now. His success on social media has played a big part.
“My social media really took off a couple of years ago when I made some scathing and frantic videos about similar topics I explore in this show,” he says. “They had a large element of shock value. It’s your direct line of communication with your fans and followers. You can be yourself, create exactly what you want to create without any advertiser or outside influence. That’s a powerful thing in comedy. And you can also ask people to objectify you.”
By Joanne Brookfield
Venues: Taxi Riverside, Federation Square & Melbourne Town Hall – Cloak Room
Dates: Thursday March 30 – Sunday April 23
Duration: 60 minutes
Tickets: $23.50 – $29
