The Always Disappointing, Never Surprising Awfulness of Ricky Gervais as a Person
I can pinpoint more or less the exact moment I went from being a big Ricky Gervais fan who adored The Office and Extras and considered its co-creator a comic genius to being someone who kind of fucking hates him, to the extent that I can’t see myself ever choosing to watch anything he’s in.
Through the A.V Club some time back I had gotten on the list for a Gervais stand-up show that, in what in hindsight was a much more ominous sign than it appeared at the time, began with an introductory video from the hottest comic mind of the time (other than the great Gervais, of course) in Louis CK.
Through only willpower and all the money and resources of the world, Gervais had lost a fair amount of weight and gotten fit, shredded even, and opened his set with a solid block of jokes mocking the overweight from someone visibly and palpably overjoyed to no longer be among their ranks and filled with a sour sense of judgment and barely concealed contempt for people who struggle with obesity.
I hoped that this unfortunate and deeply unfunny tangent would end quickly. It did not. It seemed to go on and on and on. By the end, I’d lost a lot of respect for Gervais as a performer and as a man. The only thing I remember from that awful night was the incredible sense of disappointment I felt and how self-satisfied the whole affair was.
And I am someone who enjoyed The Invention of Lying BOTH times I saw it. I even liked Ghost Town. I was provisionally onboard with Gervais as a movie star before his toxic personality made it impossible to enjoy him, really on any level, to the point where I would have a prohibitively hard time ever revisiting The Office and Extras.
Since that night those feelings of disillusionment and frustration with Gervais have only hardened and solidified as he has embarked on an ongoing public crusade to make people who like him feel like idiots with a loud-mouthed parade of self-righteousness, self-aggrandizements and dazzlingly idiotic and misguided moves, like aggressively co-signing J.K Rowling’s descent into full-on TERFdom in a way that epitomizes what makes him such an insufferable and infuriating figure.
On Twitter, Gervais delights in playing the troll. He tries to cultivate the image of someone who is laughing at the haters and scolds and ignorant people of faith from a giant mansion with a vault full of gold coins that he sometimes swims in, Scrooge McDuck style.
Social media enables Gervais to be his worst, truest self. As has his very public and very insufferable atheism, which reached a bleary, humiliating nadir when he infamously did a shirtless photo shoot with the word “Atheist” written across his chest, a crown of thorns adorning his head, a microphone behind his back to form the shape of a cross to illustrate, subtly, that he was being crucified like Jesus dying for humanity on the cross, because people sometimes find his strident, mocking, confrontational brand of atheism annoying.
If Bill Maher and Ricky Gervais want to make being atheists their whole thing, then God bless their little hearts. Let them non-believe all they like. What I do have a problem with is them shoving their strident atheism down everyone’s throats.
If you want to travel around the world with a camera telling people of faith that they’re dumb for believing in things, that is your inalienable right, just as it is my equally inalienable right to tell you you’re a fucking asshole, your movie is mean-spirited and worthless and you are doing your cause substantially more harm than good.
On a similar note, go on ahead and have that photoshoot where you pretend you’re being crucified for being a rich, white, straight man willing to drop truth bombs about how religion is dumb, you’re similarly entitled to make a fool of yourself, and I am similarly entitled to point out what an obnoxious, self-dramatizing little prat you are being.
What makes Gervais’ mean-spirited brand of punching down so unbearable is the self-satisfied smirk that is his default expression these days, even on Twitter, that “Ain’t a stinker?” grin that implicitly conveys, “Can you even BELIEVE what I just said? Aren’t I a naughty boy? Looks like Silly Ricky won’t be getting any presents under the tree this Christmas!”
It’s amazing that Gervais is able to simultaneously punch down viciously while patting himself on the back for his bravery and political incorrectness. You would seemingly need at least three arms for such an endeavor.
Self-deprecation made Gervais a comedy hero. Self-aggrandizement wedded to self-righteousness and a tragic unwillingness to take a long, hard look in the mirror and come to terms with what an obnoxious, bigoted blowhard he’s become has made him a villain.
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