Are Atheists Better Comedians for Their Irreverence? | Jim Gaffigan
- 6 years ago
Why does Jim Gaffigan tell clean jokes? Jesus Christ told him to, obviously. The real reason, which Gaffigan explains here, takes him through the history of comedy and satire in American.
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Transcript - Most of my friends are atheists I would say. And so being a self-identified Christian is so loaded in my field of standup comedy which has such a contrarian spirit. Look the Catholic Church has done horrible things. Horrible things. You know sexism bigotry, just monstrous things. But so has the United States of America. I mean genocide, enslaving people. But I’m still American and I feel a sense of pride in that. I’m not apologetic. Like when I travel internationally and if people are negative towards Americans I get angry. I get annoyed. So for me it’s not about the participants in this belief system that I share. It’s what the belief system provides me. The concept of mercy is very appealing to me. The concept that there is something greater than me that is forgiving is very important to me. But being a comedian – it’s such a strange path being a comedian because I’m also a clean comedian. I’m considered a clean comedian. Which is a very backhanded compliment. Comedians don’t want any adjective. They don’t want to be a female comedian. They don’t want to be a black comedian. They don’t want to be a gay comedian. They want to be a comedian. The only adjective that a comedian wants is funny. Like if you’re attractive you don’t want to be like, a funny good looking comedian. They just want funny. And so being a clean comedian is, it’s weird because it’s almost kind of like an asterisk. It’s like Yeah, yeah, you can be a funny clean comedian. Comedy has such a rich kind of irreverent fighting censorship mentality. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/FvSk4U.
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/jim-gaffigan-on-atheism-clean-comedy-and-catholicism
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
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Transcript - Most of my friends are atheists I would say. And so being a self-identified Christian is so loaded in my field of standup comedy which has such a contrarian spirit. Look the Catholic Church has done horrible things. Horrible things. You know sexism bigotry, just monstrous things. But so has the United States of America. I mean genocide, enslaving people. But I’m still American and I feel a sense of pride in that. I’m not apologetic. Like when I travel internationally and if people are negative towards Americans I get angry. I get annoyed. So for me it’s not about the participants in this belief system that I share. It’s what the belief system provides me. The concept of mercy is very appealing to me. The concept that there is something greater than me that is forgiving is very important to me. But being a comedian – it’s such a strange path being a comedian because I’m also a clean comedian. I’m considered a clean comedian. Which is a very backhanded compliment. Comedians don’t want any adjective. They don’t want to be a female comedian. They don’t want to be a black comedian. They don’t want to be a gay comedian. They want to be a comedian. The only adjective that a comedian wants is funny. Like if you’re attractive you don’t want to be like, a funny good looking comedian. They just want funny. And so being a clean comedian is, it’s weird because it’s almost kind of like an asterisk. It’s like Yeah, yeah, you can be a funny clean comedian. Comedy has such a rich kind of irreverent fighting censorship mentality. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/FvSk4U.