"I don't consider myself a comic but a performer. A comic tells bad jokes"
About this Quote
Sandra Bernhard’s line is a defensive jab dressed up as a mission statement: she’s not rejecting comedy so much as rejecting the box comedy tries to put her in. “Performer” signals control over the whole room - voice, body, mood, provocation, music, persona. “Comic” is the narrower job description, the one that comes with expectations of setups, punchlines, likability, and the unspoken contract to make you comfortable while you laugh.
The sting is in the second sentence. “A comic tells bad jokes” isn’t a literal claim; it’s a status play. Bernhard frames “jokes” as cheap machinery - disposable one-liners, club-ready bits, a craft that can start to resemble customer service. By calling them “bad,” she’s doing two things at once: insulting a certain kind of hackiness, and preemptively distancing herself from any moment when her act doesn’t “land” in a traditional laugh-per-minute way. If you didn’t laugh, maybe it wasn’t meant as a joke. Maybe it was meant as performance, friction, theater.
Context matters: Bernhard came up in an era when women in comedy were routinely treated as novelties or asked to soften their edge, and when alternative comedy was pushing against the tyranny of the punchline. Her persona has always been confrontational, glam, deliberately messy - less “tell jokes” than “dare you to watch.” The quote is a gatekeeping maneuver, but also a survival tactic: rebrand the work so the audience can’t grade it with the wrong rubric.
The sting is in the second sentence. “A comic tells bad jokes” isn’t a literal claim; it’s a status play. Bernhard frames “jokes” as cheap machinery - disposable one-liners, club-ready bits, a craft that can start to resemble customer service. By calling them “bad,” she’s doing two things at once: insulting a certain kind of hackiness, and preemptively distancing herself from any moment when her act doesn’t “land” in a traditional laugh-per-minute way. If you didn’t laugh, maybe it wasn’t meant as a joke. Maybe it was meant as performance, friction, theater.
Context matters: Bernhard came up in an era when women in comedy were routinely treated as novelties or asked to soften their edge, and when alternative comedy was pushing against the tyranny of the punchline. Her persona has always been confrontational, glam, deliberately messy - less “tell jokes” than “dare you to watch.” The quote is a gatekeeping maneuver, but also a survival tactic: rebrand the work so the audience can’t grade it with the wrong rubric.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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