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John Mulaney is the most talented and hardest working standup comedian working today. Imagine how great he’d be if he wasn’t so infected by nihilism.
Once had a long conversation backstage with a famous comedian who said that comedy is inherently nihilistic. We’re just jesters getting people to reject order and embrace chaos. You can see this philosophy play out in many (maybe most) comics.
I disagreed for two reasons:
1. The impulse of deconstruction comes from a hope that we will find a deeper meaning/order once we move past human conceit. We deconstruct social rules, for example, because we hope to find true communion.
1. The impulse of deconstruction comes from a hope that we will find a deeper meaning/order once we move past human conceit. We deconstruct social rules, for example, because we hope to find true communion.
2. Every comedian has a worldview and aims their comedy at threats to that worldview. No one defends their idea of the sacred more zealously than those who say nothing is sacred, and no one is more religious than those who refuse to name their religion.
Of course there’s nothing more unfunny than analyzing or fact-checking jokes. But I do wonder how this bit would have played out if Mulaney thought Catholicism was true and knew who Edith Stein was.
