Seinfeld Can Have Opinions on Comedy - J-L Cauvin
In 2019 I remember seeing quotes from writer-director Todd Phillips on why he had pivoted to more serious films, like his then forthcoming Joker. Phillips was the man behind two of the best comedies of the last quarter century – Old School and The Hangover. He also, along with Judd Apatow, may have represented the last comedy film giants, which says a lot about our culture. We went from Mel Brooks to Zucker & Abrams to Harold Ramis to the Farrelly Brothers and Ben Stiller to Phillips and Apatow. I am probably missing some big people in there, but the point is for close to 50 years there were writers and directors who defined their respective decade(s) for comedy movies. So it is fair for someone to ask why this stopped in the last decade.
One reason, in my opinion, is the increasing reliance on superhero and big tent movies for both revenue and comic relief, which has rendered the big comedy movie a less attractive investment. Another reason is the comedy sensibilities of younger people appear underdeveloped at best and completely lacking at worst (Thor and Tik Tok cannot be the main sources of comedy for humor to grow and survive – sorry to young people, including my nephew, but “that’s facts”). And then there is the reliable, and heavy over-reliance, on blanketly blaming “wokeness.” Wokeness has become this magical complaint that seems impervious to the most common complaint about overdone comedy from comedians – that it is HACK. It seems on this one topic and term, there is no exhausting the bro comedians, the elder curmudgeons like Bill Maher and every other simplistic troll who just wants an easy answer to why things are not the same as they were 10 or 50 years ago in with comedy. There is such little nuance and creativity, even in the complaining that a reasonable person could ask – this is neither funny, nor original – is the only reason your keep using valuable stage or screen time to lament this is because there is a sizeable portion of the audience who just like simple complaints repeated? I don’t know, let’s ask a Trump rally hearing Trump share the same 4 phrases and 5 complaints for the 7th straight year of his Hateful Moron gatherings.
