Politics & Power Quote by Judy Davis

A slap of deadpan that lands because it punctures the fantasy that power should be pleasant. Judy Davis, an actress famous for weaponized precision, delivers “This is government. There is no entertainment” like a scolding to an audience that keeps wandering into politics expecting plot twists, satisfying arcs, and someone to root for. The line works as a cold shower: it refuses the dopamine economy that modern public life increasingly depends on.

The intent is disciplinary. It draws a bright border between civic machinery and performance, insisting that bureaucracy is not obliged to charm you into paying attention. Subtext: if you need to be entertained to stay engaged, you’re already primed to be manipulated. It’s also a jab at the way politics has absorbed show business grammar - the viral clip, the comeback, the “moment.” Davis’s phrasing strips out romance and replaces it with duty: government is slow, procedural, compromised, and often boring because it’s designed to be constrained.

Context matters because coming from an actress, the line reads like insider testimony. She knows what entertainment is: engineered emotion, legible conflict, clean catharsis. Government, by contrast, is the opposite of a well-made scene; it’s meetings, tradeoffs, and consequences that don’t resolve by the next episode. The humor sits in the austerity of “no entertainment,” an almost parental refusal. It’s funny because it’s true, and bracing because it implies something harsher: when government starts trying to entertain, it’s usually no longer governing.