Justin Simien Quotes

I get most of my news from the Jon Stewart Daily Show. It's the most level commentary you can find. You have to laugh, because it's all so true. It's the closest thing to a counterculture.

Is there a sharper commentary on American culture and the world than The Simpsons?

Racism is over in the 'Star Trek' future, but they found a way to comment on sexism and racism in the present day in such a subversive and smart way, you know?

Science fiction has a way of letting you talk about where we are in the world and letting you be a bit of a pop philosopher without being didactic.

If you go back to 'Pretty Fly,' it was a very popish song, but there was a satirical side to it, and I think that's cool. I like the idea that it's making people think just a little bit.

It can take the uninitiated a minute to realize that 'Gangnam Style' is satire.

I've often used the extremes in my work to comment on the mainstream. I think that sometimes a subject that I'm working on, like popular culture, is so present all around us that they're hard to see. It's like: How do you see the air you breathe? How do you see how it affects you?

Sociological critics are waste makers.

We're hip to the fact that Superman never saved no black people.

I think 'Dear White People,' the show, is a tremendous artistic achievement. It's always hinting that there is something beyond the pleading and wokeness, something that the show's more militant characters can't see.

There's something missing in all this new new media craziness, and that is something that uses celebrity news as a way to get into a really serious analysis of our culture.

All comedy is really talking about social issues and things that are affecting our lives.

I've always thought that 'Dear White People' should live on as a TV show, so I'll leave it at that.

What sitcom's brilliant at is identifying a social movement or type and skewering it.

The bipartisan approach filtered up through my typewriter. I used to say, "Mad takes on both sides." We even used to rake the hippies over the coals. They were protesting the Vietnam War, but we took aspects of their culture and had fun with it. Mad was wide open. Bill loved it, and he was a capitalist Republican. I loved it, and I was a liberal Democrat. That went for the writers, too; they all had their own political leanings, and everybody had a voice. But the voices were mostly critical. It was social commentary, after all.

While designed to visually seduce, Dune is not primarily a formal exercise but a social, ecological, cultural one.

The first show I worked on was 'In Living Color.' I think 'The Daily Show' was the culmination of having that point of view - being able to look at this third rail in our society.

If I'm watching 'The Real Housewives of Atlanta,' there's a part of that that's just escapism. I'm not watching it with a political lens, but there is a part of me that certain things trigger and pull up, where I'm like, 'Oh, that was really problematic.'

I believe comedy is a really good lens to filter serious issues through. If people are laughing, they don't necessarily realize until they stop laughing that they just took something in that's going to start a conversation.

The 'Superman vs. Muhammad Ali' book was printed in every free country in the world, OK? Now, it's so good in its way that we can go in and make fun of it and feel good about it.

White people loved 'The Cosby Show,' especially liberal white people. They loved it because it was a great, funny, well - written, and beautifully performed television show.

'The Daily Show' is a cultural phenomenon.

I'm a chronicler of Negroland, a participant-observer, an elegist, dissenter, and admirer; sometime expatriate, ongoing interlocutor.

I've always said that musicians are the comics of my generations and comedians are the politicians of my generation.

If you've never seen me perform live, I'm a must-see. I'm very funny. I have a different perspective sometimes on a lot of what I do and the world itself, especially America.