Religion and Identity in Stand-up Comedy

The Irish comedian Dara O'Briain has, in the past, performed many routines about religion. In his latest show, "This is the show", he makes a point of not making any jokes about religion. Partly, he says, because he has done a lot of those jokes before but also because he had received criticism for making jokes about Christianity but not about Islam. His point is that he doesn't know anything about Islam, and neither do most of his audience members. This raises two points, first the issue of cultural ownership in joke-telling; and second, the idea of using cultural stereotypes to make jokes.

 In his previous shows Dara has mainly told religious jokes about Catholics or the difference between Catholics and Protestants. Because he was raised a Catholic he belongs to that community and so is able to send it up in a way that another comedian could not. It also allows the audience to laugh at the jokes without feeling guilty. If a comedian who was not part of the community made jokes about them it might lead the audience to think the jokes were not good-natured.

In the third video Dara does make a joke about two communities that he does not belong to: Judaism and Chinese. However, his exaggerated use of cultural stereotypes shows that even though he may not know anything about those cultures outside of their media stereotypes he does not mean them any harm. The audience is able to laugh because they share in the consumption of the stereotypes in the media and recognise that he is making fun of the image of the culture, not the reality.