Jerry Seinfeld is taking a stand.
Shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that one of the greatest stand-up comics is standing up against the current state of comedy, but these quotes have made a lot of noise online.
Seinfeld, one of the great minds behind his self-titled 90’s hit sitcom, was a guest on the New Yorker Radio Hour podcast recently and took a moment to get his genuine thoughts out about the state of comedy:
“Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly and they don’t get it. Used to be you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, “Oh, ‘Cheers’ is on. Oh, ‘M.A.S.H.’ Is on. Oh, ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ is on. Oh, ‘All in the Family’ is on. You just expected there’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight. Well, guess what? Where is it?”
Seinfeld, who at 70-years-old is making his directorial debut with next month’s fictitious PopTart origin story Unfrosted, is certainly upset that comedy can’t exist like it once did. In his mind, and the perspectives of many other comedians and comedy fans, there are too many guidelines in the modern age now to truly craft something funny.
And he said that were a couple of different groups that were mainly to blame for that:
“This is the result of the extreme left and PC crap and people worrying so much about offending other people. When you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups (say), ‘Here’s our thought about this joke.’
Well, that’s the end of your comedy. They move the gates, like in skiing. Culture, the gates are moving. Your job is to be agile and clever enough that wherever they put the gates, I’m gonna make the gate.”
Claiming “the end of comedy” is quite the statement, though think about it for a second. When is the last time you rushed to a movie theatre to see a blockbuster comedy? When is the last time you made sure you were seated for a TV show that was meant to make you laugh out loud?
It’s hard to pinpoint an exact moment when the art and acceptance of comedy dissipated, but it’s sometime in the last 10 to 15 years, right? And nowadays, since there is nothing that really stands out above the rest when it comes to being funny. Think about movies like Superbad, 40 Year Old Virgin, This Is The End, Tropic Thunder, Step Brothers… none of those movies would get made today.
Seinfeld suggests that many of the true fans of comedy are focusing in on stand-ups instead:
“Now they’re going to see stand-up comics because they are not policed by anyone. The audience polices us. We know when we’re off track. We know instantly. And we adjust to it instantly.”
That’s a great point, and it went along with a lot of the other valid points that Seinfeld pointed out in the interview below:
