Mindy Kaling: “Catharsis isn’t art.” (Word!)
“Sarah [Silverman] is really shrewd, and really smart, and an excellent joke-writer. She won’t just say something incendiary or gross about rape or abortion, and leave it at that, and hope people will laugh because of shock. She actually writes and creates a great, old-fashioned, awesome joke with a payoff. This is my thing: Catharsis isn’t art. You can’t rely on catharsis to get a laugh. Because guess what? People do laugh when something’s shocking, but that is, to me, the absolute fakest of laughs. That’s not something that sustains a television series, or a movie, or even 45 minutes of a stand-up set at Caroline’s. That’s why what Sarah does is so hard to do, and so rare, and that’s why I would never try to do it.”
-Mindy Kaling
(Source: The A.V. Club)
