Ricky Gervais Tells Stephen Colbert That Smart People Don’t Get Offended by Jokes

May 20, 2022 – In a recent appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, comedian Ricky Gervais pontificated on the nature and understanding of “offensive” humor:

“I deal with taboo subjects because I want to take the audience to a place it hasn’t been before. There is a tension.”

As examples, he cited, “famine, AIDS, cancer, Hitler,” and suggested that the success of these kind of jokes has to do with the intelligence of the crowd. “I think people get offended when they mistake the subject of a joke with the actual target,” he said, “and smart people know you can deal with anything. Particularly when you’re dealing with something like irony.”

”You laugh at the ‘wrong’ thing because you know what the ‘right’ thing is.”

“Humor gets us over bad stuff. That’s why I laugh about terrifying bad things. You know, that’s why comedians are obsessed with death because, you know, it gets us through . . . it’s an inoculation to the real things that are going to happen.”