Negin Farsad Quotes
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There's something about political comedy that sometimes closes people off, and my general goal is to open people right up.
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I one hundred percent recognize that comedy is a more narcissistic profession and that I cannot directly improve people's lives the way I could if I had stayed in the policy world. But the trade-off is that I'm happier doing jokes.
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What makes comedy so effective is that if you’re making them laugh along the way, they’re going to listen to the deeper cut stuff.
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We twist ourselves into knots convincing people that Islam is peaceful and varied before we realize that, wait a second, you can be a Muslim while also recognizing that Islam doesn't even explain half of your behaviors!
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The fundamental truth guiding social justice comedy is that people are not shitty. That sounds cheesy, but that's how I have to approach it. Everybody has the capacity for change.
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If you’re trying to take on the dominant culture, your job is to really address white people.
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We're always going to be cherry-picking to make religion make sense. Especially in the modern context.
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The outlines of a responsibility began to take hold: I have to talk about them like they’re people, not news stories.
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Culture creates awareness around issues, it entertains and saddens, it can encourage commitment to a social contract or strengthen personal hygiene in public. Culture is that powerful. Culture creates the icons we follow, that we see ourselves in, that we orient ourselves toward. It's culture that tells us to love or hate, accept or tolerate, embrace or reject.
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The biggest challenge in making movies, boring but true answer is money - you never have enough, so everything gets bootstrapped to death! I learned not only how to be better filmmakers because of it but better janitors, better drivers and better negotiators with cops who wanted to shut me down. You have to get creative.
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I mostly want to highlight things that feel like an injustice, and that's not really political. No one is going to - or should - say that bigotry toward Muslims is partisan. It's a matter of being just or not being just. So that's why I started calling myself a social justice comedian.