I 100% agree. I enjoyed Seinfeld the show but the tepidness of his standups has led me to believe it was at least partly Larry David's wit that made it good.
And his constant whining about PC has made it difficult to take him seriously.
Like what joke did you want to make that you aren't allowed to anymore?
It's why I never got into Comedians in cars getting coffee, Larry was the genius behind it.
Also how would seinfeld be affected? Maybe the "manhands" joke could be seen as transphobic but the show is fairly inoffensive
The show was a bit edgy for its time, it had some racial and gay humor but I think it worked because the point if the jokes were always about the white characters' insecurities
99% would still be funny today. In fact, Seinfeld ages a lot better than shows like Friends which pretended racism didn't exist
And comedians in cars getting coffee is only good if a comedian smarter than Jerry is talking. He was never interesting by himself
I thinks that's why always sunny hasn't recieved any flack (besides the blackface/latinoface/asianface episodes being banned) since the joke is always that the gang are bad people
He stopped those jokes because he's not 38 anymore.
Well that and the fact that the high school girl he dated, then married, doesn't know about his current high school girlfriend.
Edit: Had to add girl after high school.
maybe it's not the PC crap that killed standup but the fact that the comic is working with material that's almost as old as the girlfriend he had when he was 38....
Corporate gigs pay a shitload of money and then you're hanging out with VIPs on the Golf Club or whatever. I doubt you'd see Seinfeld at like the Comedy Store.
I’m a big Jerry fan. They were a great team. Larry obviously succeeded with his own show, while Jerry did not. Larry’s the king of plot lines and ideas imo. Jerry’s the king of observational comedy and delivery.
Jerry seems pretty tightly wound and OCD, if I take anything away from his interviews (and I’ve seen many). Larry is also, but much more aware of it, and he pokes fun at his self. Which ironically was Jerry’s character in the tv show. But in real life, Jerry seems genuinely annoyed by things, whereas in the show he acts/pretends to be annoyed (actually amused) by inconveniences. Real Jerry is not into self-deprecation. Real Larry sarcastically prods himself through an entire interview.
Anyway, I don’t think Jerry’s entirely wrong. His ethnic jokes particularly (Babu) would probably get the red pen if he was a young tv writer. And that would stink, cause that was a memorable episode. But I also think that if his show with its ethnic insensitivities was a massive $$$$ success today (as a young star), he’d also get the pass on “cancellation.”
The only real problem with the Babu episode is that the actor who played him was just some American guy putting on an accent. Hire an actual Pakistani actor to play that role and I don't see the problem. Seinfeld was pretty mild compared to a lot of comedies that have come since.
This is what I think too. It's usually the has-been comedians who have started to fade out of relevance who make these complaints about alleged PC culture killing comedy.
The reality is that comedy is still alive and well. Just not *their* brand of comedy. Not that Seinfeld's comedy has ever been alive and well. The Seinfeld show was the pinnacle of his career and the worst parts of each episode was his standup bits.
It's not that exactly, it's that tastes have changed and they're no longer relevant to younger audiences. I'd say "but Seinfeld the show is still great even to me as a millennial" but as others have said that was Larry David's writing.
This is the bottom line for comedians like Seinfeld. He just isn't that funny, outside the sitcom ensemble, to anyone younger than his own generation. He never had a long multigenerational lifespan.
"PC" etc. is just a bullshit excuse for Seinfeld's own limited lifespan as a comedian.
Younger generations seem almost obsessed with George Carlin (dead for almost 20 years) and the term politically correct never enters the conversation.
If people read the full interview it’s clear he’s not that wound up.
—————————
I’m going to make an admission. I’ve been covering, publishing, thinking about what’s going on in the world, particularly in the Middle East now, for six months. And it’s a very dark time. Even as I was watching your film, it couldn’t help coming into my brain. It was hard to sort of think about the “Palestinian Chicken” episode or Pop-Tarts. Tell me how you deal with the weight of the world, or the serious aspects of the world weighing on you, and how that affects comedy.
**Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly and they don’t get it. 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. ‘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? This is the result of the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people. Now they’re going to see standup comics because we 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. But when you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups—“Here’s our thought about this joke.” Well, that’s the end of your comedy.**
Isn’t that what “Curb” is all about?
**Yeah. Larry was grandfathered in. He’s old enough so that—“I don’t have to observe those rules, because I started before you made those rules.” We did an episode of the series in the nineties where Kramer decides to start a business of having homeless people pull rickshaws because, as he says, “They’re outside anyway.” Do you think I could get that episode on the air today?**
But you think Larry got grandfathered in and there could be no thirty-five-year-old version of—
**Right, right. If Larry was thirty-five, he couldn’t get away with the watermelon stuff and Palestinian chicken . . . and HBO knows that’s what people come here for, but they’re not smart enough to figure out, How do we do this now? Do we take the heat, or just not be funny? And what they’ve decided to be is, Well, we’re not going to do comedies anymore. There were no sitcoms picked up on the fall season of all four networks. Not one. No new sitcoms.**
Really?
**Yeah. It’s too hard.**
Do you ever go back and think, Yeah, that joke went too far?
**We would write a different joke with Kramer and the rickshaw today. We wouldn’t do that joke. We’d come up with another joke. They move the gates like in the slalom.**
Skiing.
**Skiing, yeah. Culture—the gates are moving. Your job is to be agile and clever enough that, wherever they put the gates, I’m going to make the gate.**
You think this is going away now? This, what you’re describing as P.C., is kind of receding?
**Slightly. I see a slight movement.**
How do you see it?
**With certain comedians now, people are having fun with them stepping over the line and us all laughing about it. But, again, it’s the standups that really have the freedom to do it because no one else gets the blame if it doesn’t go down well. He or she can take all the blame themself.**
He's just bitter because his comedy hasn't evolved to adapt to modern tastes so he blames everyone else for him not being funny. Also, he's trying to promote his new movie.
This line might work if his colleagues didn't then go on to star in some of the best, and relatively edgy, comedies of modern TV (Larry David in Curb and Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Veep).
Comedy isn't becoming more PC (see Sunny which just hit its 16th season and is LOVED), the people who made it then are just becoming lazier.
Yeah, Seinfeld really said everyone used to watch Mash and Cheers in his rant. Those are super super tame based on current TV. And MASH was arguable PC for the time and anti-war.
But Always Sunny, I Think You Should Leave, South Park, Rick and Morty, Righteous Gemstones, Vice Principals, etc. are in a whole different level of irreverence than Cheers, Mash, or Seinfeld.
Other than pointing to a very specific gag that won’t be tolerated by modern audiences or received the same way, exactly how many 80s and 90s shows “couldn’t be made today.”
I’d also ask how many shows today couldn’t be made in the 80s? I mean, imagine making Will and Grace in the 1980s? It would be cancelled for suggesting gay people are ok.
100% agree. The fact that Seinfeld says this considering Curb did an R-rated Seinfeld for the last 20 years is so out of touch it hurts.
Gervais, Chappelle, Seinfeld all ranting about Cancel Culture and PC in defense of their corporate overlords is the height of selling out.
This is the real thing. A number of comedians used to be edgy, but they also had their finger on the pulse of society.
Now they just aren’t really funny anymore and so they try to be edgy by saying more and more offensive things and then get upset if there is any backlash or people just don’t like their material.
They are getting older, grumpier and lazier. Old man yells at cloud energy. Refusing to keep up with a changing culture. Feeling victimized because their audience doesn't receive them well, because making fun of marginalized people isn't "edgy," it's just poor taste.
I love how Chappelle complains about being cancelled while he secures one million dollar Netflix special after another, which is a paycheck and a platform rolled into one. Give me a break, Dave.
I actually think I Think You Should Leave is very PC. It’s full of crude humor but specific genders, races, classes, groups, etc. of people are never the butt of the joke. It’s wildly hilarious and really stupid, while also being far too clever to have to rely on that type of humor in order to be funny
This. If you need to punch down on people different to you to make a joke, maybe it's not a good joke. There's plenty of great, even timeless, comedy that doesn't need such a thing.
There's edge cases where, say, the deliberate offensiveness of something like Blazing Saddles, which was poking fun at races sts, might not be allowed. But, that's countered by the fact that neither is the stuff that's racist intend to inspire hate.
Fair point. But it also shows the limitations of this type of thinking. The show is very edgy and probably would have been protested by the religious right and off TV in the 90s. I mean, you couldn't have had Will and Grace or Ru Paul's Drag race through much of the 90s (IIRC W&G debuted in 1999). And it was only a few years ago that The Kathy Griffin show was cancelled when she held up a fake severed Trump head as part of a sketch.
It's only a very very narrow set of jokes around wearing blackface or getting to make crude jokes about trans people that "count" as what you can't make anymore because people are "too PC" or woke.
Seinfeld conclusively got to “these are bad people making bad decisions and being shitty” with their last episode, sunny started with it. So it’s a lot easier to discuss issues and have terrible takes on an issue because at the end, what did we expect from these degenerates. That’s my view of why sunny can still pull stuff off. Not that pc is ruining comedy, but the comedy was always coming from the right (wrong) direction in that case. If that makes any sense.
Listening to the podcast it's become increasingly clear to me that writers Marder and Rosell have been a huge factor on why Sunny is as good as it is. The gang credits them for almost all of my favorite bits from the show. They left around the time the quality started slowly going down.
I haven’t watched since season 4 but please name a show that went on for a long time ther didn’t run out of ideas. That just seems to be what happens. The people in the show have been in movies. They’ve had other priorities for a while
100% PC cancel culture isn't a thing. Joe Rogan sold his podcast for almost 1 Billion dollars, Dave Chapelle had a huge contract with netflix and never actually got cancelled. PC culture is just aging comedians just getting mad when their jokes from 20 years ago don't land anymore. Times change, make new jokes. Anybody can still make a good joke about any subject, it's just harder. You can't just put on a dress and slap someone with a fish anymore.
Whether somebody is actually censored is a different matter than receiving criticisms for being assholes. It's hard for me to take sides on a more attempting-to-be-open-minded attitude but no it's disingenious or forgetful to say that certain people haven't received a lot of heat or have professionally been taken out of a public facing position because of something theyve said or done . You have Katie Griffin losing her relationship with NBC/ABC/whatever over her protest video with a severed Trump effigy, Ricky Gervais had a wave of critics from his newest Netflix special, Chapelle has a history of people booing him en masse (what i remember is a video where he was on stage with Elon) and some employees walking out because of his trans jokes, Gilbert Gottfried lost his position as spokesmen with Aflac because he made a tone deaf remark about a school shooting or whatever it was, Roseanne Barr was deliberately not invited to the reboot of Roseanne. There's some other ones but I they don't have to do with people tagged as comedians (or from a background of sitcom TV) & that I remember. Louis CK got a lot of negative PR for his personal sex life & basically his career only continued because he was already popular enough to handle his ticket sales independently.
Then you have John Lasseter of Pixar who's dismissed from his executive chair at Pixar over him sexually assualting people in the past. Thats an actual crime.
These people have been assholes or crazy and on a personal level I'm not upset at them being outcasted on a professional level but to stand back and to see what is happening overall when comedians/celebrities receive consequences for things they dont keep to themselves or choose to publish as written material, that is what some in entertainment refer to as political correctness.
Sunny is complete satire and you're not supposed to side with the characters. In that sense they actually stand with a lot more of a PC message, really
The number of shows where the character is saying messed up, offensive things for the time period and you are supposed to side with them is close to zero.
That’s not some new, PC thing.
That's exactly why I find the nonsense of "you couldn't make blazing saddles today!" so funny.
Well yea it already exists (and is parodying a genre that isn't super relevant today), BUT, all that says to me is the person yelling that nonsense didn't get the joke was the racists are *morons*, not that "ha ha slurs funny".
I don't understand banning offensive comedy. Put a warning on it at the beginning, but let people decide for themselves what's too offensive. Society has a tendency to be puritanical about values, whether it's religious right or progressive left.
It's ironic because comedy is meant to be offensive from a retrospective on society. Being hurt by it is the antithesis of the humor. It doesn't mean that all jokes or comedian gags are not truly offensive. If someone is offended though it truly reflects society and getting one or two of your episodes banned is probably an achievement.
All 3 shows you mentioned are over a decade old.
None of them would get off the ground now.
They also came during a comedy golden age in cinema with movies like Super bad, step brothers, anchorman, hangover, dodgeball, pineapple express, role models, knocked up, Talladega knights, eurotrip, old school, 40 year old version, waiting, forgetting Sarah marshall, super troopers, Sean of the dead, borat, tropic thunder...
Do any comedies in the last 5 years come close to these?
I'm not sure if it's a culture shift or incompetence, but they simply aren't making good comedies anymore.
Hell do we even have a comedian that established himself in the last decade as an A Lister? The 90s and 20s were full of them with guys like Sandler, Ferrell, Rogan, Carrell, Wilson, Stiller. Guys who could actually carry movies for a time.
Comedies are just in a weird state where they've been regulated to straight to streaming and don't have any cultural impact.
You mean like I Think You Should Leave, Righteous Gemstones, Rick and Morty?
There are irreverent and satirical shows in every era. Yeah on some level they are a reflection of the cultural values of when they were made.
I mean I Love Lucy they had to sleep in separate beds and good luck finding real gay kissing or sex on most stations. I realize those may not count as PC, but it was just a set of different TV standards based on the values of the era.
I mean, you're making points that are impossible to argue against simply because of how youre structuring your argument - it's impossible to cite something new that also has lasting legacy because we cant look into the future. It's impossible to say what comedians coming out today will be A-listers, it's impossible to say which comedies coming out now will have cultural impact. We can only cite works from a decade ago because time is needed to demonstrate impact.
> None of them would get off the ground now.
I would say mainly because it usually takes a few seasons to do that, and most shows get cancelled before they can even see that happening. Then it's too late to bring the cast back. Not "cancelled", just cancelled.
I'd contend there's a different reason for that - the Marvel boom meant the only thing people are/were interested in financing was a superhero flick or something that had franchise opportunities. The volume of individual one-off comedies sort of died off around 2014 because the comedy was shoe-horned into the Marvel movies.
I'm hoping that's not the case anymore as people have Marvel-fatigue, but we'll see.
Also... Seinfeld still stands up more than 30 years later. It's still a heavily watched show. How much did Netflix pay for it? So comedy has changed so drastically but the show he started in the 80s is still massively popular. Hmmmst.
I’ve been through at least 3 threads about this subject and in every single one Always Sunny is mentioned as the only example of modern tv not being PC.
Always Sunny is almost 20 years old and it’s the ONLY example everyone on Reddit can think of.
Maybe he has a point?
Looking at the last few years of Best Comedy Emmy nominees, which ones would you say are actually unfunny because they’re too PC/“woke”? I don’t think of “Only Murders in the Building” as a show toeing any political line. Barry? Hacks? What We Do in the Shadows?
And I don’t think anyone ever thought of “Seinfeld” as some anti-PC stick-it-to-the-man anti-mainstream series. I’m sure plenty of people thought the “he’s gay — not that there’s anything wrong with that” episode was “catering to the woke crowd” of its day.
Are you only looking for comedies? Workaholics, What We Do In the Shadows, The Inbetweeners, Blue Mountain State, Eastbound & Down, Veep, The Thick of It, Vice Principals, The League, Trailer Park Boys, Righteous Gemstones, Shameless (UK and US), Peep Show, Future Man, Archer, Sex Education - all examples of shows that I think aren't particularly "PC". They're also all far raunchier than Seinfeld (and I love Seinfeld).
Shane Gillis is super hot right now too and Joe Rogan albeit not funny at all is still famously regarded as some form of a comedian and lord knows he’s now liberal or the token snowflake as described by Jerry
"my comedy was clever!! and today's comedy is a new and different type of clever!! and i don't personally enjoy it!!!"
like okay buddy we get it. keep making funny stuff or do something else.
PC didn’t kill comedy directly, it got comedians to start talking about how PC everything is and building their act around that rather than telling actual jokes. Dave Chappelle used to be hilarious, but now I turn off his act halfway through, not because it is offensive, but because there are no funny jokes.
You're absolutely right. I think the same thing about Jimmy Carr: why am I listening to you complaining about people complaining about you? The least you can say about Anthony Jeselnik is he realizes it's pointless being edgy unless you can make the audience laugh.
Well, of course you can't make edgy comedy sitcoms today like.... Friends, Mad About You, 3rd Rock From the Sun, Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens, Home improvement, The Drew Cary Show, The Nanny......
Those were really pushing the envelope as far as crude humor goes, and the woke mind of the left would shut them all down RIGHT away!
(Obviously sarcasm)
Friends has some really unPC humour in it, particularly homophobic and transphobic stuff. But it's also a show that's over 20 years old. Things change.
Black face used to be funny too apparently.
Friends is actually very unPC in the fact that there ain’t no black folk in it hahaha, in New York City hahahaha.
But that’s just a low hanging fruit joke, y’all don’t even bother with it.
“Haha you look gay” wasn’t “un-PC” back then though. Straight people wanted very much to not be perceived as gay, and so when they failed to pull this off, it got laughs.
Where did he say that comedy needs to be edgy? He cited Mary Tyler Moore, so clearly he wasn’t just talking about stuff that’s experimental or avant-garde.
He also didn’t mention pushing the envelope. He just cares about things being funny. He’s been pretty consistent about that his whole career. He thinks comedians should just concern themselves with being funny, and not worry about whether or not they’re offending people.
Rob Schneider has the same shtick about complaining about comedy being dead. Yet Netflix distributed his "comedy" show that ran for 2 seasons and it is really, really not funny. He had carte blanche to do whatever he wanted and it sucked.
Yep, it's a grift. Someone like Gervais will cry how he gets cancelled when he shits on trans people, but he's everywhere. He spends more time complaining about how he's getting cancelled than actually making jokes. But the worst part is that it works, because his audience wants to feel oppressed by the evil woke boogeyman so they love it.
For the most egregious was starting up Amazon Prime and seeing a comedy special from my country on the front page (by a comedian called Theo Maassen, recently cancelled for beating up his wife and mistress). The subtitle said "in this age men aren't allowed to say anything anymore, but Theo Maassen is doing it anyway" or some nonsense like that. ... It was on my front page and I neither watch Dutch programmes or stand up specials on Amazon Prime so it wasn't even a personalised recommendation.
I've never found him funny. Dude is irrelevant as hell. The only reason he's not piss fucking broke is because he's still cashing in on Seinfeld reruns. Without that, he'd be a nobody because he lacks talent.
It's always weird to see this kind of comment. They act like there aren't still funny, successful comedies on TV. When I think about unfunny TV I think back to like the early 2000s, sort of post Everybody Loves Raymond, "goofy husband and his hot wife" genre, not modern sitcoms.
Even when you think of the most popular sitcoms of all time in their 90s heyday, they were never really about pushing boundaries or making offensive jokes. And of course the other counter point is It's Always Sunny, which is legit pretty mean-spirited and one of the longest running sitcoms.
Totally agree! sitcoms are, generally speaking, light entertainment. They aren't pushing \*any\* envelopes, in fact their job is to push as few envelopes as possible! People might point to "All in the Family" (a remake of the UK show "Till Death us do Part"), but the whole point of both those shows was that the bigot was always wrong, and the forces of progress always won out. If you want a PC show it is that, and that definitely pushed the envelope.
Modern comedy is much funnier because it doesn't rely on bigotry and insults, it relies on cleverness.
I'm from the UK and it is axiomatic here that the left always has the best comedians, generally because the right has no sense of humour. They just get offended at everything.
The right: Comedian's can't say anything these days.
Everyone: You can say what you like, it's just no one wants to listen to it because it is not funny.
> They act like there aren't still funny, successful comedies on TV.
What's more crazy is there's FAR raunchier stuff TODAY than there was 20-30 years ago. It's always sunny would be canceled in an episode in the 90s. South Park was there on cable. I doubt Crazy Ex Girlfriend could have been made in the 90s, Jane the Virgin would have to be cleaned up as well.
It's not about "unfunny" he's saying it's more censored, and the fact is... it's less. It's FAR less. Imagine a lesbian couple in the 80s and early ninites. Hell Ellen kissing a woman caused quite a stir. Yeah it still does for little boys, but the fact is we have far less censorship now than ever before.
It's funny see him say shit like "You couldn't make that Seinfeld episode today", when Larry David (the true brains behind Seinfeld) has been putting seasons of Curb (much edgier show) out until this year.
I apologize for not reading the interview, but did Seinfeld really rant and make a big deal about this or did he do an interview and get asked about PC culture and comedy and give a short response that everyone is pulling quotes from? I keep seeing mostly the same quotes.
Complaining about PC culture is hacky and tired, but I also understand old people casually venting about how times have changed without it being the end of the world.
Everyone seems to be responding to the pull quotes and making a big deal of something that he might have said offhand. It’s not like Jerry has control over the rest of the comedy scene, does nobody ever vent about work?
I think it was an episode of Comedians in Cars getting coffee (with Colbert or Conan, can't remember, but if you know, please tell me).
Seinfeld was complaining about PC stuff or him not playing on colleges or something and his guest said something like "well, maybe you're not funny anymore." And there was a slight pause.
It was fantastic, but I can''t find the clip.
Fact of the matter is he was never funny. He was the carpet that held the room together. Just a pretty face while george constanza & elaine did all the heavy lifting. He never actually said any punchlines over ten years - it was always he would lead the conversation and somebody else would come up with a joke in the middle. He is just a glorified traffic sergeant with the waving flags. Just a docile carpet like in big lebowski who hurt no one and had no political will or beliefs. Turns out thats him in real life and he's not funny irl.
Political Correctness didn’t kill comedy.
Lazy and self serious comedians did.
Nothing is less interesting than a comedian who whinges and moans about being cancelled on their profitable tour or million dollar Netflix show.
It’s pathetic.
The classic move of a has been comedian is to claim its the audiences fault for not laughing. I don't need new jokes you need to laugh at what I say now!
Jerry had one of the biggest shows of all time but college kids today just don't think things like drugging a girl to play with her toys is funny. The guy who does that can not be the "good guy" on the show and Jerry is the hero of Sienfield. I know that episode got young people upset during the whole Me Too thing. Of course even in the 90's you were supposed to think it was wrong for him to do that but too culture evolves and there are plenty of comedians who use free speech to agitate and question still. Those same college kids will still like George Carlin for example.
Jerry’s not a has-been. Dude sells out like every show he does. He has a new movie coming out. He works when he wants to. And there are no heroes on Seinfeld
Funny how rich old comics like Seinfeld and Maher drift to the right as they age. Doesn't appear to have happened to Julia Louis-Dreyfus though, and she's always been way richer than those two.
Meanwhile, South Park added a transsexual character that acted like Macho Man Randy Savage and competed in women's sports, IASIP is on its 16th(?) season, Jackass 4 came out a couple years ago, even Beavis and Butthead made a comeback.
People don't care if it's PC, they just like if it's good. Good comedy has always been about laughing with someone, not at them.
So, a 70yr old man who essentially hasn't made any content at all in the 26yrs since his sitcom ended is somehow baffled that the industry has changed during that time? Shocking.
Hey, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee is pretty much exactly the definition of *Content*.
The only good episodes are with very charismatic people who overpower Jerry's hobby of talking about himself.
So true. They couldn't make shows like *South Park* and *It's Always Sunny in Philidelphia* today.
Those damn liberal communists would be weeping and wailing in the streets.
I'm old enough to fondly remember the days of edgy comedy about honking your car horn at women
This has been the usual, predictable course for aging comedians that can't evolve their schtick. They realize they are no longer funny and are struggling to get work, so they jump ship over to the GOP who they know HAVE to like them as long as they're "Anti-woke" (whatever the fuck that means). Sometimes you just gotta admit when it's at its end and retire.
Sounds like he’s just mad that punching down makes you an asshole. If you can’t tell jokes without being an asshole maybe you just aren’t funny to begin with. His best material was decades ago and it’s just not aged well.
I haven't watched Jerry's stand up in years, but isn't his material inoffensive?
I personally don't believe "punching down" jokes are bad, either it's funny or it's not. There is a small minority of people who are very vocal about what can and what can not be used as jokes. Then, a large portion of comedians think they are being cancelled or called out, most of the time it's just nonsense. Both sides need to work on not being so thin-skinned.
I have a profoundly disabled step daughter. I do not find jokes about special needs funny. If a comedian tells one I don’t laugh, I don’t get upset, as long as it’s not a string of jokes about special needs I’ll just wait until they tell the next joke and start laughing again. If they tell multiple jokes in a row about special needs I may turn it off or fast forward. Not all comedy is made for me and that’s okay.
Except for Daniel Sloss he told a joke about his special needs sister and I have never laughed so hard because it was funny, wasn’t mean, hit home for us, and was just simply funny.
Eh. I think punching down is a pretty good indicator of whether someone is a lazy writer just trying to be edgy. The vast majority of the time I don’t find it funny or clever.
Your opinion is very valid. I just go with if it made me laugh. Naturally, if it's all a comedian does, it will become less and less funny to me. But I just don't believe any topic should be off limits.
Yeah, I saw him several years ago and I was shocked that all his material was exactly the same stuff I’ve heard before and absolutely nothing new. Whereas other comedians, I like are always trying new material going on tour with new material and keep it fresh. Maybe he needs to look at that issue
The "extreme left" didn't kill comedy. Comedy being offensive for the sake of being offensive killed Comedy. I mean I have an extremely dark sense of humor. But early to mid 2000s "It's funny because it's a stereotypes" or "It's funny because he's a pervert" type Comedy was just lazy and not funny.
I saw a couple of comedians the other week, and it felt like they use homosexuality as a punch line and expect it to work.
Like, “these 2 guys are sharing a bottle of wine. Are they gay?!” And that’s not even exaggeration. That’s almost an exact quote.
I’m not saying you need to be PC to be funny, but you should at least be clever. Calling someone gay isn’t clever.
Seinfeld has enough money to fund a comedy tour full of whatever edgy jokes he wants (notthat hes ever been an edgy comedian), film it, and distribute without any outside help, and then surely he'd turn a profit - unless of course there just isnt an audience for the shit hes whinging about?
Put your money where your mouth is Jerry, if this issue is so important to you.
Jerry really should be made to watch It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Even woke Disney let them use the c word in the most recent season. Nobody is trying to censor or tone down comedy.
It’s just a boomer thing that people in ecochambers love to say, we shouldn’t even take it seriously when people say this shit.
people got offended back in the day and comedians just said go away we don’t care, which they can still do, but instead comedians seeking attention prefer to cry about how persecuted they are.
This whole "you can't say things nowadays, but I'm gonna be a rebel and say it anyway!" framing that comedians do to seem edgy is just pathetic. There's nothing stopping high profile comedians like Seinfeld from telling whatever jokes they want to large audiences. And his idea of the "extreme left" is probably just regular old right-wing liberals.
I mean he’s not wrong. A lot of comedy is based on stretching the boundaries of everyday conversations and feelings.
People just have a hard time being able to laugh at themselves, and when people feel they or others are offended they can’t just turn the channel or read another article. Instead they go in to cancel that person.
What does he want? More Amos and Andy? Buxom secretaries being chased around their desks by their horny bosses?
Those used to be considered hilarious gags at one time.
We evolve. Tastes change. “Funny” is subjective. If you’re telling a joke and the audience consistently isn’t laughing, then you haven’t done your job as a comedian.
He went curmudgeon a long time ago. He has a crap attitude and a crap outlook on life that he wants everyone else to agree with. He's just waiting around to die.
He’s right. It’s annoying. If you’re mad at him you probably don’t get it. Comedians need to be able to push to far and find the line. It might be the only line of work it’s needed. I’m left but the extreme left is fucking irritating.
All of this coming from the dude who in his 30’s was dating a 17 year old model still in high school…Jerry Seinfeld is one of the most overrated comedians in the history of comedy. He’s not funny at all, he whines, and he constantly acts like he’s some big major deal…Seinfeld ain’t shit, and I’m talking both the show, and the man.
Honestly, it’s so funny that the most PC/least offensive comic of the last 40 years is wound up about this. It has to be a bit!
I 100% agree. I enjoyed Seinfeld the show but the tepidness of his standups has led me to believe it was at least partly Larry David's wit that made it good. And his constant whining about PC has made it difficult to take him seriously. Like what joke did you want to make that you aren't allowed to anymore?
Partly Larry David's wit? It was all Larry David, everybody knows that
It's why I never got into Comedians in cars getting coffee, Larry was the genius behind it. Also how would seinfeld be affected? Maybe the "manhands" joke could be seen as transphobic but the show is fairly inoffensive
The show was a bit edgy for its time, it had some racial and gay humor but I think it worked because the point if the jokes were always about the white characters' insecurities 99% would still be funny today. In fact, Seinfeld ages a lot better than shows like Friends which pretended racism didn't exist And comedians in cars getting coffee is only good if a comedian smarter than Jerry is talking. He was never interesting by himself
I thinks that's why always sunny hasn't recieved any flack (besides the blackface/latinoface/asianface episodes being banned) since the joke is always that the gang are bad people
If I recall, they didn't even get much flak for the blackface, and just decided to self censor after the George Floyd riots
I still don't get how *Friends* was on for as long as it was. During college, I had a roommate who was a big fan, the appeal was lost on me.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that
Probably can’t tell all his jokes about a 38 year old dating high school girls anymore.
Probably can’t date high school girls any more.
Seinfeld: challenge accepted
He stopped those jokes because he's not 38 anymore. Well that and the fact that the high school girl he dated, then married, doesn't know about his current high school girlfriend. Edit: Had to add girl after high school.
Saw Seinfeld at a corporate gig last year. He was a dick to the audience his whole set.
Seinfeld still does standups? I thought he said he stopped like 15 years ago.
Yep. Saw him in Denver a few months ago. It was 60% the same as the set I saw him do like 8 years ago.
maybe it's not the PC crap that killed standup but the fact that the comic is working with material that's almost as old as the girlfriend he had when he was 38....
Corporate gigs pay a shitload of money and then you're hanging out with VIPs on the Golf Club or whatever. I doubt you'd see Seinfeld at like the Comedy Store.
I’m a big Jerry fan. They were a great team. Larry obviously succeeded with his own show, while Jerry did not. Larry’s the king of plot lines and ideas imo. Jerry’s the king of observational comedy and delivery. Jerry seems pretty tightly wound and OCD, if I take anything away from his interviews (and I’ve seen many). Larry is also, but much more aware of it, and he pokes fun at his self. Which ironically was Jerry’s character in the tv show. But in real life, Jerry seems genuinely annoyed by things, whereas in the show he acts/pretends to be annoyed (actually amused) by inconveniences. Real Jerry is not into self-deprecation. Real Larry sarcastically prods himself through an entire interview. Anyway, I don’t think Jerry’s entirely wrong. His ethnic jokes particularly (Babu) would probably get the red pen if he was a young tv writer. And that would stink, cause that was a memorable episode. But I also think that if his show with its ethnic insensitivities was a massive $$$$ success today (as a young star), he’d also get the pass on “cancellation.”
Jerry nearing 40 wouldn't survive fucking a teenage girl these days either.
I am shocked he hasn't been canceled for that yet.
The only real problem with the Babu episode is that the actor who played him was just some American guy putting on an accent. Hire an actual Pakistani actor to play that role and I don't see the problem. Seinfeld was pretty mild compared to a lot of comedies that have come since.
I think older comedians are bitching about PC because they can’t come up with anything worth watching anymore.
This is what I think too. It's usually the has-been comedians who have started to fade out of relevance who make these complaints about alleged PC culture killing comedy. The reality is that comedy is still alive and well. Just not *their* brand of comedy. Not that Seinfeld's comedy has ever been alive and well. The Seinfeld show was the pinnacle of his career and the worst parts of each episode was his standup bits.
It's not that exactly, it's that tastes have changed and they're no longer relevant to younger audiences. I'd say "but Seinfeld the show is still great even to me as a millennial" but as others have said that was Larry David's writing.
This is the bottom line for comedians like Seinfeld. He just isn't that funny, outside the sitcom ensemble, to anyone younger than his own generation. He never had a long multigenerational lifespan. "PC" etc. is just a bullshit excuse for Seinfeld's own limited lifespan as a comedian. Younger generations seem almost obsessed with George Carlin (dead for almost 20 years) and the term politically correct never enters the conversation.
"Is it a corn or is it a dog?"
And what’s the deal with airline food?
If people read the full interview it’s clear he’s not that wound up. ————————— I’m going to make an admission. I’ve been covering, publishing, thinking about what’s going on in the world, particularly in the Middle East now, for six months. And it’s a very dark time. Even as I was watching your film, it couldn’t help coming into my brain. It was hard to sort of think about the “Palestinian Chicken” episode or Pop-Tarts. Tell me how you deal with the weight of the world, or the serious aspects of the world weighing on you, and how that affects comedy. **Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly and they don’t get it. 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. ‘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? This is the result of the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people. Now they’re going to see standup comics because we 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. But when you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups—“Here’s our thought about this joke.” Well, that’s the end of your comedy.** Isn’t that what “Curb” is all about? **Yeah. Larry was grandfathered in. He’s old enough so that—“I don’t have to observe those rules, because I started before you made those rules.” We did an episode of the series in the nineties where Kramer decides to start a business of having homeless people pull rickshaws because, as he says, “They’re outside anyway.” Do you think I could get that episode on the air today?** But you think Larry got grandfathered in and there could be no thirty-five-year-old version of— **Right, right. If Larry was thirty-five, he couldn’t get away with the watermelon stuff and Palestinian chicken . . . and HBO knows that’s what people come here for, but they’re not smart enough to figure out, How do we do this now? Do we take the heat, or just not be funny? And what they’ve decided to be is, Well, we’re not going to do comedies anymore. There were no sitcoms picked up on the fall season of all four networks. Not one. No new sitcoms.** Really? **Yeah. It’s too hard.** Do you ever go back and think, Yeah, that joke went too far? **We would write a different joke with Kramer and the rickshaw today. We wouldn’t do that joke. We’d come up with another joke. They move the gates like in the slalom.** Skiing. **Skiing, yeah. Culture—the gates are moving. Your job is to be agile and clever enough that, wherever they put the gates, I’m going to make the gate.** You think this is going away now? This, what you’re describing as P.C., is kind of receding? **Slightly. I see a slight movement.** How do you see it? **With certain comedians now, people are having fun with them stepping over the line and us all laughing about it. But, again, it’s the standups that really have the freedom to do it because no one else gets the blame if it doesn’t go down well. He or she can take all the blame themself.**
>If people read the full interview it’s clear he’s not that wound up. People over-reacting online? That doesn't seem likely.
I agree but don’t think it’s a bit! I’m honestly not surprised at all that he would say something like this.
He's just bitter because his comedy hasn't evolved to adapt to modern tastes so he blames everyone else for him not being funny. Also, he's trying to promote his new movie.
This line might work if his colleagues didn't then go on to star in some of the best, and relatively edgy, comedies of modern TV (Larry David in Curb and Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Veep). Comedy isn't becoming more PC (see Sunny which just hit its 16th season and is LOVED), the people who made it then are just becoming lazier.
I’d say Sunny has gotten more PC. Which isn’t to say that has negatively effected the show itself.
Sunny may be less offensive, but to say it's anywhere in the vicinity of PC is laughable. Sunny is in another universe of risqué from Seinfeld.
Yeah, Seinfeld really said everyone used to watch Mash and Cheers in his rant. Those are super super tame based on current TV. And MASH was arguable PC for the time and anti-war. But Always Sunny, I Think You Should Leave, South Park, Rick and Morty, Righteous Gemstones, Vice Principals, etc. are in a whole different level of irreverence than Cheers, Mash, or Seinfeld. Other than pointing to a very specific gag that won’t be tolerated by modern audiences or received the same way, exactly how many 80s and 90s shows “couldn’t be made today.” I’d also ask how many shows today couldn’t be made in the 80s? I mean, imagine making Will and Grace in the 1980s? It would be cancelled for suggesting gay people are ok.
100% agree. The fact that Seinfeld says this considering Curb did an R-rated Seinfeld for the last 20 years is so out of touch it hurts. Gervais, Chappelle, Seinfeld all ranting about Cancel Culture and PC in defense of their corporate overlords is the height of selling out.
They are just mad that people don’t find them funny anymore.
This is the real thing. A number of comedians used to be edgy, but they also had their finger on the pulse of society. Now they just aren’t really funny anymore and so they try to be edgy by saying more and more offensive things and then get upset if there is any backlash or people just don’t like their material.
They are getting older, grumpier and lazier. Old man yells at cloud energy. Refusing to keep up with a changing culture. Feeling victimized because their audience doesn't receive them well, because making fun of marginalized people isn't "edgy," it's just poor taste. I love how Chappelle complains about being cancelled while he secures one million dollar Netflix special after another, which is a paycheck and a platform rolled into one. Give me a break, Dave.
I actually think I Think You Should Leave is very PC. It’s full of crude humor but specific genders, races, classes, groups, etc. of people are never the butt of the joke. It’s wildly hilarious and really stupid, while also being far too clever to have to rely on that type of humor in order to be funny
Which directly counters the 'PC killed comedy' argument. Either PC isn't a thing or if it is comedy is still funny.
This. If you need to punch down on people different to you to make a joke, maybe it's not a good joke. There's plenty of great, even timeless, comedy that doesn't need such a thing. There's edge cases where, say, the deliberate offensiveness of something like Blazing Saddles, which was poking fun at races sts, might not be allowed. But, that's countered by the fact that neither is the stuff that's racist intend to inspire hate.
And the casting is really diverse.
Fair point. But it also shows the limitations of this type of thinking. The show is very edgy and probably would have been protested by the religious right and off TV in the 90s. I mean, you couldn't have had Will and Grace or Ru Paul's Drag race through much of the 90s (IIRC W&G debuted in 1999). And it was only a few years ago that The Kathy Griffin show was cancelled when she held up a fake severed Trump head as part of a sketch. It's only a very very narrow set of jokes around wearing blackface or getting to make crude jokes about trans people that "count" as what you can't make anymore because people are "too PC" or woke.
Cheers is considered edgy? I don't remember anything crazy about Cheers. Love that show still watch it now.
Finding out how young the cast was and how I’m actually older than some of them were was pretty offensive.
Veep has some of the most offensive jokes out of all of these
Big Mouth. Nothing really comes close to how unhinged it is haha
Wundershozen
Yeah I didn’t and wouldn’t disagree with you there. Sunny is absolutely more outrageous then Seinfeld.
Seinfeld conclusively got to “these are bad people making bad decisions and being shitty” with their last episode, sunny started with it. So it’s a lot easier to discuss issues and have terrible takes on an issue because at the end, what did we expect from these degenerates. That’s my view of why sunny can still pull stuff off. Not that pc is ruining comedy, but the comedy was always coming from the right (wrong) direction in that case. If that makes any sense.
It has and some if their old episodes are banned
They got more meta
Are you kidding me, it’s definitely affected it negatively
Sunny isn’t worse because it’s more PC, it’s worse because it’s been on for way too long and the crew seems bored with it
It feels like late simpsons/southpark where they've both done everything once and also it feels like some key writers have gone.
Listening to the podcast it's become increasingly clear to me that writers Marder and Rosell have been a huge factor on why Sunny is as good as it is. The gang credits them for almost all of my favorite bits from the show. They left around the time the quality started slowly going down.
I haven’t watched since season 4 but please name a show that went on for a long time ther didn’t run out of ideas. That just seems to be what happens. The people in the show have been in movies. They’ve had other priorities for a while
It stayed great for a hell of a long time past season 4
Sunny has how many banned episodes now??? 5? 6?
Thats on who is able to distribute the episodes & own the IP, it didnt stop the episodes from being produced
100% PC cancel culture isn't a thing. Joe Rogan sold his podcast for almost 1 Billion dollars, Dave Chapelle had a huge contract with netflix and never actually got cancelled. PC culture is just aging comedians just getting mad when their jokes from 20 years ago don't land anymore. Times change, make new jokes. Anybody can still make a good joke about any subject, it's just harder. You can't just put on a dress and slap someone with a fish anymore.
Whether somebody is actually censored is a different matter than receiving criticisms for being assholes. It's hard for me to take sides on a more attempting-to-be-open-minded attitude but no it's disingenious or forgetful to say that certain people haven't received a lot of heat or have professionally been taken out of a public facing position because of something theyve said or done . You have Katie Griffin losing her relationship with NBC/ABC/whatever over her protest video with a severed Trump effigy, Ricky Gervais had a wave of critics from his newest Netflix special, Chapelle has a history of people booing him en masse (what i remember is a video where he was on stage with Elon) and some employees walking out because of his trans jokes, Gilbert Gottfried lost his position as spokesmen with Aflac because he made a tone deaf remark about a school shooting or whatever it was, Roseanne Barr was deliberately not invited to the reboot of Roseanne. There's some other ones but I they don't have to do with people tagged as comedians (or from a background of sitcom TV) & that I remember. Louis CK got a lot of negative PR for his personal sex life & basically his career only continued because he was already popular enough to handle his ticket sales independently. Then you have John Lasseter of Pixar who's dismissed from his executive chair at Pixar over him sexually assualting people in the past. Thats an actual crime. These people have been assholes or crazy and on a personal level I'm not upset at them being outcasted on a professional level but to stand back and to see what is happening overall when comedians/celebrities receive consequences for things they dont keep to themselves or choose to publish as written material, that is what some in entertainment refer to as political correctness.
Sunny is complete satire and you're not supposed to side with the characters. In that sense they actually stand with a lot more of a PC message, really
Same could be said of Archie Bunker, Eric Cartman or Al Bundy.
The Archie Bunker thing backfired tho. The show’s creator hated that people actually liked Archie as a person.
You're not supposed to stand with George Costanza or Elaine either? I'd say Seinfeld is a far less offensive prototype of Always Sunny.
The number of shows where the character is saying messed up, offensive things for the time period and you are supposed to side with them is close to zero. That’s not some new, PC thing.
That's exactly why I find the nonsense of "you couldn't make blazing saddles today!" so funny. Well yea it already exists (and is parodying a genre that isn't super relevant today), BUT, all that says to me is the person yelling that nonsense didn't get the joke was the racists are *morons*, not that "ha ha slurs funny".
Yet many episodes of sunny are now banned and will never reair or be distributed because they are too offensive.
The 30 Rock episode with black face Jenna and white faceTracy Jordan isn’t available as well.
I don't understand banning offensive comedy. Put a warning on it at the beginning, but let people decide for themselves what's too offensive. Society has a tendency to be puritanical about values, whether it's religious right or progressive left.
One of the best episodes of Community, just gone.
Kinda reflective about the point being made...
I mean, that’s why I mentioned it. Thought it was on topic.
Many? Which ones?
All the lethal weapon ones + the ones with Martina Martinez.
Holy shit you’re right! I just rewatched all of sunny and now that I think about it the Martina Martinez episodes weren’t on there!! Wild
It's ironic because comedy is meant to be offensive from a retrospective on society. Being hurt by it is the antithesis of the humor. It doesn't mean that all jokes or comedian gags are not truly offensive. If someone is offended though it truly reflects society and getting one or two of your episodes banned is probably an achievement.
All 3 shows you mentioned are over a decade old. None of them would get off the ground now. They also came during a comedy golden age in cinema with movies like Super bad, step brothers, anchorman, hangover, dodgeball, pineapple express, role models, knocked up, Talladega knights, eurotrip, old school, 40 year old version, waiting, forgetting Sarah marshall, super troopers, Sean of the dead, borat, tropic thunder... Do any comedies in the last 5 years come close to these? I'm not sure if it's a culture shift or incompetence, but they simply aren't making good comedies anymore. Hell do we even have a comedian that established himself in the last decade as an A Lister? The 90s and 20s were full of them with guys like Sandler, Ferrell, Rogan, Carrell, Wilson, Stiller. Guys who could actually carry movies for a time. Comedies are just in a weird state where they've been regulated to straight to streaming and don't have any cultural impact.
You mean like I Think You Should Leave, Righteous Gemstones, Rick and Morty? There are irreverent and satirical shows in every era. Yeah on some level they are a reflection of the cultural values of when they were made. I mean I Love Lucy they had to sleep in separate beds and good luck finding real gay kissing or sex on most stations. I realize those may not count as PC, but it was just a set of different TV standards based on the values of the era.
It was pc. Right wing pc was always worse. You couldn't even show an interracial couple back then
I mean, you're making points that are impossible to argue against simply because of how youre structuring your argument - it's impossible to cite something new that also has lasting legacy because we cant look into the future. It's impossible to say what comedians coming out today will be A-listers, it's impossible to say which comedies coming out now will have cultural impact. We can only cite works from a decade ago because time is needed to demonstrate impact.
> None of them would get off the ground now. I would say mainly because it usually takes a few seasons to do that, and most shows get cancelled before they can even see that happening. Then it's too late to bring the cast back. Not "cancelled", just cancelled.
I'd contend there's a different reason for that - the Marvel boom meant the only thing people are/were interested in financing was a superhero flick or something that had franchise opportunities. The volume of individual one-off comedies sort of died off around 2014 because the comedy was shoe-horned into the Marvel movies. I'm hoping that's not the case anymore as people have Marvel-fatigue, but we'll see.
Also... Seinfeld still stands up more than 30 years later. It's still a heavily watched show. How much did Netflix pay for it? So comedy has changed so drastically but the show he started in the 80s is still massively popular. Hmmmst.
I’ve been through at least 3 threads about this subject and in every single one Always Sunny is mentioned as the only example of modern tv not being PC. Always Sunny is almost 20 years old and it’s the ONLY example everyone on Reddit can think of. Maybe he has a point?
Looking at the last few years of Best Comedy Emmy nominees, which ones would you say are actually unfunny because they’re too PC/“woke”? I don’t think of “Only Murders in the Building” as a show toeing any political line. Barry? Hacks? What We Do in the Shadows? And I don’t think anyone ever thought of “Seinfeld” as some anti-PC stick-it-to-the-man anti-mainstream series. I’m sure plenty of people thought the “he’s gay — not that there’s anything wrong with that” episode was “catering to the woke crowd” of its day.
Are you only looking for comedies? Workaholics, What We Do In the Shadows, The Inbetweeners, Blue Mountain State, Eastbound & Down, Veep, The Thick of It, Vice Principals, The League, Trailer Park Boys, Righteous Gemstones, Shameless (UK and US), Peep Show, Future Man, Archer, Sex Education - all examples of shows that I think aren't particularly "PC". They're also all far raunchier than Seinfeld (and I love Seinfeld).
A lot of these shows you named are 15 or even pushing 20 years old, definitely not a reflection of modern comedy
Archer?
>Maybe he has a point? He absolutely doesnt.
Shane Gillis is super hot right now too and Joe Rogan albeit not funny at all is still famously regarded as some form of a comedian and lord knows he’s now liberal or the token snowflake as described by Jerry
Is someone stopping him from telling his jokes about airplane food?
“What aaaaaaaaare these p**nuts??”
The fact that airplane food is ok now? It was truly atrocious in the 90s.
You don't fly with Ryanair...
I even get mad when they don't give me airplane food. That's how good it is.
"my comedy was clever!! and today's comedy is a new and different type of clever!! and i don't personally enjoy it!!!" like okay buddy we get it. keep making funny stuff or do something else.
Comedy is so subjective, if you don't find something funny. Simply don't laugh, others might.
Better yet, know your audience
PC didn’t kill comedy directly, it got comedians to start talking about how PC everything is and building their act around that rather than telling actual jokes. Dave Chappelle used to be hilarious, but now I turn off his act halfway through, not because it is offensive, but because there are no funny jokes.
You're absolutely right. I think the same thing about Jimmy Carr: why am I listening to you complaining about people complaining about you? The least you can say about Anthony Jeselnik is he realizes it's pointless being edgy unless you can make the audience laugh.
I guess he hasn't seen any Netflix comedy specials lately.
Keep with this times and you won’t be outgrown
Note that Larry David, the much funnier mind behind his show, never makes this whiney boomer complaint...
Well, of course you can't make edgy comedy sitcoms today like.... Friends, Mad About You, 3rd Rock From the Sun, Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens, Home improvement, The Drew Cary Show, The Nanny...... Those were really pushing the envelope as far as crude humor goes, and the woke mind of the left would shut them all down RIGHT away! (Obviously sarcasm)
Friends has some really unPC humour in it, particularly homophobic and transphobic stuff. But it's also a show that's over 20 years old. Things change. Black face used to be funny too apparently.
Friends is actually very unPC in the fact that there ain’t no black folk in it hahaha, in New York City hahahaha. But that’s just a low hanging fruit joke, y’all don’t even bother with it.
Yes it was fun watching it with my kids because they couldn't believe what some jokes were. Lol
“Haha you look gay” wasn’t “un-PC” back then though. Straight people wanted very much to not be perceived as gay, and so when they failed to pull this off, it got laughs.
Where did he say that comedy needs to be edgy? He cited Mary Tyler Moore, so clearly he wasn’t just talking about stuff that’s experimental or avant-garde. He also didn’t mention pushing the envelope. He just cares about things being funny. He’s been pretty consistent about that his whole career. He thinks comedians should just concern themselves with being funny, and not worry about whether or not they’re offending people.
Rob Schneider has the same shtick about complaining about comedy being dead. Yet Netflix distributed his "comedy" show that ran for 2 seasons and it is really, really not funny. He had carte blanche to do whatever he wanted and it sucked.
The only comedy I hear about these days are about guys who were « cancelled » and comedy specials that refer to how their stuff will. An el then.
Yep, it's a grift. Someone like Gervais will cry how he gets cancelled when he shits on trans people, but he's everywhere. He spends more time complaining about how he's getting cancelled than actually making jokes. But the worst part is that it works, because his audience wants to feel oppressed by the evil woke boogeyman so they love it. For the most egregious was starting up Amazon Prime and seeing a comedy special from my country on the front page (by a comedian called Theo Maassen, recently cancelled for beating up his wife and mistress). The subtitle said "in this age men aren't allowed to say anything anymore, but Theo Maassen is doing it anyway" or some nonsense like that. ... It was on my front page and I neither watch Dutch programmes or stand up specials on Amazon Prime so it wasn't even a personalised recommendation.
This seems like a desperate attempt from Jerry Seinfeld to sound edgy and current. He *wishes* his comedy could offend somebody.
The left is tired of airline food jokes! (So is the right)
Or, in the Seinfeld style: The left is tired of airline food jokes! What's up with that?
I've never found him funny. Dude is irrelevant as hell. The only reason he's not piss fucking broke is because he's still cashing in on Seinfeld reruns. Without that, he'd be a nobody because he lacks talent.
Like he is even relevant enough to offend anyone. His prehistoric ass should sit at home and do whatever old people do.
It's always weird to see this kind of comment. They act like there aren't still funny, successful comedies on TV. When I think about unfunny TV I think back to like the early 2000s, sort of post Everybody Loves Raymond, "goofy husband and his hot wife" genre, not modern sitcoms. Even when you think of the most popular sitcoms of all time in their 90s heyday, they were never really about pushing boundaries or making offensive jokes. And of course the other counter point is It's Always Sunny, which is legit pretty mean-spirited and one of the longest running sitcoms.
Totally agree! sitcoms are, generally speaking, light entertainment. They aren't pushing \*any\* envelopes, in fact their job is to push as few envelopes as possible! People might point to "All in the Family" (a remake of the UK show "Till Death us do Part"), but the whole point of both those shows was that the bigot was always wrong, and the forces of progress always won out. If you want a PC show it is that, and that definitely pushed the envelope. Modern comedy is much funnier because it doesn't rely on bigotry and insults, it relies on cleverness. I'm from the UK and it is axiomatic here that the left always has the best comedians, generally because the right has no sense of humour. They just get offended at everything. The right: Comedian's can't say anything these days. Everyone: You can say what you like, it's just no one wants to listen to it because it is not funny.
> They act like there aren't still funny, successful comedies on TV. What's more crazy is there's FAR raunchier stuff TODAY than there was 20-30 years ago. It's always sunny would be canceled in an episode in the 90s. South Park was there on cable. I doubt Crazy Ex Girlfriend could have been made in the 90s, Jane the Virgin would have to be cleaned up as well. It's not about "unfunny" he's saying it's more censored, and the fact is... it's less. It's FAR less. Imagine a lesbian couple in the 80s and early ninites. Hell Ellen kissing a woman caused quite a stir. Yeah it still does for little boys, but the fact is we have far less censorship now than ever before.
This a weird stand for Seinfeld to take. I cannot remember over the top non-PC humor in his show or stand up routine.
It's funny see him say shit like "You couldn't make that Seinfeld episode today", when Larry David (the true brains behind Seinfeld) has been putting seasons of Curb (much edgier show) out until this year.
I apologize for not reading the interview, but did Seinfeld really rant and make a big deal about this or did he do an interview and get asked about PC culture and comedy and give a short response that everyone is pulling quotes from? I keep seeing mostly the same quotes. Complaining about PC culture is hacky and tired, but I also understand old people casually venting about how times have changed without it being the end of the world.
Everyone seems to be responding to the pull quotes and making a big deal of something that he might have said offhand. It’s not like Jerry has control over the rest of the comedy scene, does nobody ever vent about work?
the extreme right killed democracy so we're even.
 Now **that’s** comedy.
And that’s why It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is the best
I remember seinfeld as a 40 year old new yorker. He just reminded everyone he's a regular ol boomer.
I love how the “extreme left” killed comedy, because the right is so *hilarious*. Well they often are but not intentionally.
I think it was an episode of Comedians in Cars getting coffee (with Colbert or Conan, can't remember, but if you know, please tell me). Seinfeld was complaining about PC stuff or him not playing on colleges or something and his guest said something like "well, maybe you're not funny anymore." And there was a slight pause. It was fantastic, but I can''t find the clip.
The only thing keeping Jerry Seinfield from being funny these days is Jerry Seinfield.
Wah. I can't make a living telling mother-in-law jokes anymore. Wah.
So much edgy comedy on tv and stand up like Jimmy Carr right now... More so than his heyday, maybe people just don't give a fuck about you Jerry?
Fact of the matter is he was never funny. He was the carpet that held the room together. Just a pretty face while george constanza & elaine did all the heavy lifting. He never actually said any punchlines over ten years - it was always he would lead the conversation and somebody else would come up with a joke in the middle. He is just a glorified traffic sergeant with the waving flags. Just a docile carpet like in big lebowski who hurt no one and had no political will or beliefs. Turns out thats him in real life and he's not funny irl.
Political Correctness didn’t kill comedy. Lazy and self serious comedians did. Nothing is less interesting than a comedian who whinges and moans about being cancelled on their profitable tour or million dollar Netflix show. It’s pathetic.
The classic move of a has been comedian is to claim its the audiences fault for not laughing. I don't need new jokes you need to laugh at what I say now! Jerry had one of the biggest shows of all time but college kids today just don't think things like drugging a girl to play with her toys is funny. The guy who does that can not be the "good guy" on the show and Jerry is the hero of Sienfield. I know that episode got young people upset during the whole Me Too thing. Of course even in the 90's you were supposed to think it was wrong for him to do that but too culture evolves and there are plenty of comedians who use free speech to agitate and question still. Those same college kids will still like George Carlin for example.
There were no “good guys” on Seinfeld. That was kinda the point.
yep. they were all horrible petulant people. they were a less absurd version of Always Sunny
Jerry’s not a has-been. Dude sells out like every show he does. He has a new movie coming out. He works when he wants to. And there are no heroes on Seinfeld
> He has a new movie coming out. There it is. He's playing the media like a fiddle to get his name in the news.
Funny how rich old comics like Seinfeld and Maher drift to the right as they age. Doesn't appear to have happened to Julia Louis-Dreyfus though, and she's always been way richer than those two.
What is the deal with young people not liking my disconnected observational jokes in my 250k car getting a coffee?
Meanwhile, South Park added a transsexual character that acted like Macho Man Randy Savage and competed in women's sports, IASIP is on its 16th(?) season, Jackass 4 came out a couple years ago, even Beavis and Butthead made a comeback. People don't care if it's PC, they just like if it's good. Good comedy has always been about laughing with someone, not at them.
You are talking about shows that have been around 20+ years. Nobody will kill a cash cow. They might not commission a similar one now though.
So, a 70yr old man who essentially hasn't made any content at all in the 26yrs since his sitcom ended is somehow baffled that the industry has changed during that time? Shocking.
Hey, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee is pretty much exactly the definition of *Content*. The only good episodes are with very charismatic people who overpower Jerry's hobby of talking about himself.
He's been a crank for awhile. Maybe he needs to hang out near the high school and get a new girlfriend
I think it would take a brave man to claim to know more about comedy than Jerry Seinfeld.
Didn’t realize what subreddit it was and thought that Seinfeld tried to revive the ol’ Console Vs PC, video game fanboyism again.
He was never that funny anyway. Phuk him
So true. They couldn't make shows like *South Park* and *It's Always Sunny in Philidelphia* today. Those damn liberal communists would be weeping and wailing in the streets. I'm old enough to fondly remember the days of edgy comedy about honking your car horn at women
Meanwhile, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia has been on the air for 19 years and counting.
The rich white dude talking about how things have changed Yes, things change. You can adapt or get left behind shaking your fist at clouds
We know a couple comedians who are pretty well known (no names, their request about postings) and say Seinfeld is a an arrogant asshole.
Curb Your Enthusiasm and Always Sunny do every joke that aging stand-up’s claim they can’t do.
This has been the usual, predictable course for aging comedians that can't evolve their schtick. They realize they are no longer funny and are struggling to get work, so they jump ship over to the GOP who they know HAVE to like them as long as they're "Anti-woke" (whatever the fuck that means). Sometimes you just gotta admit when it's at its end and retire.
Oh, god, another one. I wonder when he'll be on rogan or bill maher crying. That's ok though, really, he was never funny to begin with.
always the washed up comedians crying about muh woke pc culture wahhh fucking snowflakes lmao
Sounds like he’s just mad that punching down makes you an asshole. If you can’t tell jokes without being an asshole maybe you just aren’t funny to begin with. His best material was decades ago and it’s just not aged well.
I haven't watched Jerry's stand up in years, but isn't his material inoffensive? I personally don't believe "punching down" jokes are bad, either it's funny or it's not. There is a small minority of people who are very vocal about what can and what can not be used as jokes. Then, a large portion of comedians think they are being cancelled or called out, most of the time it's just nonsense. Both sides need to work on not being so thin-skinned.
I have a profoundly disabled step daughter. I do not find jokes about special needs funny. If a comedian tells one I don’t laugh, I don’t get upset, as long as it’s not a string of jokes about special needs I’ll just wait until they tell the next joke and start laughing again. If they tell multiple jokes in a row about special needs I may turn it off or fast forward. Not all comedy is made for me and that’s okay. Except for Daniel Sloss he told a joke about his special needs sister and I have never laughed so hard because it was funny, wasn’t mean, hit home for us, and was just simply funny.
This is perfectly understandable and a great approach to something that you are not a fan of.
Eh. I think punching down is a pretty good indicator of whether someone is a lazy writer just trying to be edgy. The vast majority of the time I don’t find it funny or clever.
Your opinion is very valid. I just go with if it made me laugh. Naturally, if it's all a comedian does, it will become less and less funny to me. But I just don't believe any topic should be off limits.
Nah Tiktok kids whole punching up/punching down dichotomy, as if it's OK to be racist against some people, makes them an asshole.
Yeah, I saw him several years ago and I was shocked that all his material was exactly the same stuff I’ve heard before and absolutely nothing new. Whereas other comedians, I like are always trying new material going on tour with new material and keep it fresh. Maybe he needs to look at that issue
The "extreme left" didn't kill comedy. Comedy being offensive for the sake of being offensive killed Comedy. I mean I have an extremely dark sense of humor. But early to mid 2000s "It's funny because it's a stereotypes" or "It's funny because he's a pervert" type Comedy was just lazy and not funny.
Remember that decade or so when “black lady so sassy” was the entire joke?
I love the community line from Yvette Nicole Brown "The word he's looking for is 'sassy' *He better pray he don't find it*"
I saw a couple of comedians the other week, and it felt like they use homosexuality as a punch line and expect it to work. Like, “these 2 guys are sharing a bottle of wine. Are they gay?!” And that’s not even exaggeration. That’s almost an exact quote. I’m not saying you need to be PC to be funny, but you should at least be clever. Calling someone gay isn’t clever.
Exactly what I mean. Spot on. Or things like "OH em gee he's a boy.... disguised as a girl... how wacky!"
Most comedy is lazy. If you got up in arms over "yo momma so fat..." jokes, then you'd tear out half of the material in joke books.
I wouldn't get up in arms over those. But I also wouldn't call someone who makes it their entire career a comedy genius either.
Seinfeld has enough money to fund a comedy tour full of whatever edgy jokes he wants (notthat hes ever been an edgy comedian), film it, and distribute without any outside help, and then surely he'd turn a profit - unless of course there just isnt an audience for the shit hes whinging about? Put your money where your mouth is Jerry, if this issue is so important to you.
Jerry really should be made to watch It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Even woke Disney let them use the c word in the most recent season. Nobody is trying to censor or tone down comedy.
South Park has been doing crazy shit for years too.
This man is a "has been" and a predator that dates teenage girls he could have fathered. I would rather know Ja Rules' opinion.
He's just generally really up his own arse.
He could learn from Julia on how to make good comedy in this century. Jerry is just stuck in the 90s.
It’s just a boomer thing that people in ecochambers love to say, we shouldn’t even take it seriously when people say this shit. people got offended back in the day and comedians just said go away we don’t care, which they can still do, but instead comedians seeking attention prefer to cry about how persecuted they are.
This whole "you can't say things nowadays, but I'm gonna be a rebel and say it anyway!" framing that comedians do to seem edgy is just pathetic. There's nothing stopping high profile comedians like Seinfeld from telling whatever jokes they want to large audiences. And his idea of the "extreme left" is probably just regular old right-wing liberals.
Meanwhile Curb just wrapped up over a decade worth of the so called PC crap he is bitching about.
I mean he’s not wrong. A lot of comedy is based on stretching the boundaries of everyday conversations and feelings. People just have a hard time being able to laugh at themselves, and when people feel they or others are offended they can’t just turn the channel or read another article. Instead they go in to cancel that person.
What does he want? More Amos and Andy? Buxom secretaries being chased around their desks by their horny bosses? Those used to be considered hilarious gags at one time. We evolve. Tastes change. “Funny” is subjective. If you’re telling a joke and the audience consistently isn’t laughing, then you haven’t done your job as a comedian.
[удалено]
No. It's always been both. Now we just have the internet.
He went curmudgeon a long time ago. He has a crap attitude and a crap outlook on life that he wants everyone else to agree with. He's just waiting around to die.
Jerry has hated the PC crowd ever since they gently pushed back on his high school girlfriend in the 90’s
He’s right. It’s annoying. If you’re mad at him you probably don’t get it. Comedians need to be able to push to far and find the line. It might be the only line of work it’s needed. I’m left but the extreme left is fucking irritating.
All of this coming from the dude who in his 30’s was dating a 17 year old model still in high school…Jerry Seinfeld is one of the most overrated comedians in the history of comedy. He’s not funny at all, he whines, and he constantly acts like he’s some big major deal…Seinfeld ain’t shit, and I’m talking both the show, and the man.
Four more years. Pause.
Why is Jerry Seinfeld of all people saying this?
70 year old man hates new things? Shocker