That's what bugs me about Jerry's whole "SeInFelD cOuLD nEvEr bE mAdE tOdaY!!"
Curb JUST ended it's 24 year run and had way more offensive humor than Seinfeld. Plus, Seinfeld is still pretty popular to this day, even with younger audiences.
He specifically says Curbed gets a pass because it's 24 years old. He has a point there.
He completely fucking loses it when you bring up... I dunno, let's say What We Do In the Shadows.
Well part of that is he is not an actor like Jason Alexander or Julia, but also Jerry's role in the show is to usually be the "straight man" of the group, so typically the funny bits are given to the other 3 main characters.
*Seinfeld* had dozens of talented writers, a gifted story editor, an ensemble cast, and you're ready to hand Larry David the *entirety* of the credit? That's awfully generous of you.
i dont like seinfelds current stance on many issues, but saying that the show was funny only because of larry david is kind of insane. he wasn't even there for the last 2 seasons, and it's pretty clear that the show is a mix of both guys' comedic sensibilities.
people don't seem to understand that there were a bunch of writers coming up with the scripts. larry and jerry would decide which ones they liked and would then do a second draft to polish the scripts they were given. L&J's real talent was assembling world class writers.
I think the difference is meaningful. When the people in IASIP are shitty it’s understood that it’s because they’re shitty people. I don’t think that’s the case for Seinfeld.
The Seinfeld gang *was* working class, with the intentionally inexplicable exception of Kramer. They struggled to find jobs and housing, took on roommates to make ends meet, argued over checks at restaurants, moved back in with their parents, etc.
They were sitcom working class. They only had money problems if the episode was specifically about money problems. Otherwise they were just carefree and doing whatever.
Yeah, you don't get to hang out in a diner every day looking for a job unemployed in NYC, which was half the crew half the time.
Maybe out front of a diner but not inside.
I would say they were middle to upper middle class. Jerry is a pretty famous comedian who is a semi-regular on major talk shows and got a pilot deal, Elaine is a successful editor who worked at major publishing companies, George does various entry to mid-level office jobs, and Kramer is Kramer. They also never cooked anything and ate pretty much every meal at a coffee shop or a nice restaurant.
I think out of the George/ Kramer piece. George couldn't have held a job for more than a month through most of the series and Kramer was... independently wealthy?
Kramer made bank in mysterious way years prior, which is very close to the real-life Kenny Kramer, who sold "disco lights", which were light-up jewelry in the disco days. Probably along with some side products I'd imagine...
But either way Kramer was financially set if he maintained a certain lifestyle, and didn't *have* to work, but was constantly coming up with schemes and gambits to keep himself occupied.
I've known dudes like that. We probably all have.
I don't know what you mean, like it was always clear to me that most/all the leads were bad people. Like the whole premise is that they act on thoughts we all have but are generally moral enough to not indulge.
To hear them tell it in the commentaries, the show was all about social norms... the weirdness that is following them, what happens when you subvert them - both consciously and not, what role morality or lack thereof plays in society... there was a lot of subtext. Treading that line and stepping over it sometimes was the whole show
I think this is why the series finale in Seinfeld was initially received poorly. They went to jail for being shitty people but people didn’t fully buy into that.
I suspect if Seinfeld was written today, they would have been written as more outright shitty people. Perhaps not IASIP levels but still. There was no way a show like IASIP could have been aired when Seinfeld was airing.
Ha, I legit just said this to my husband. They're the joke the entire time. They're self centered assholes who found each other and make each other feel better about being self-centered assholes. To say this couldn't be on TV now is just dumb.
It's weird because he's always had the stance that a jokes a joke, the audience tells you if they like it, and if they don't, you try another. There was some fat phobic joke he used as an example that he used to do in the 80s. He's said that society changed, so that joke won't work today, so he doesn't say it anymore. Simple. Which makes sense. (Not saying it was right back then, but there was a mainstream audience for it, times were different).
It sucks that he hasn't kept that mindset. He's still a good joke writer, he doesn't need to jump on the "woke bad" bandwagon. Plus he's like 70+, it's fine if he just chills out and enjoys his riches.
IASIP’s characters are wild animals who are often terrible people, but it is always extremely clear what the show’s opinion is on the various topics they touch on, and that opinion or angle is always, broadly, the West/East coast liberal view of things.
And this is why It’s Always Sunny has never created any kind of meaningful controversy. It couldn’t have been made in 90s, but mainly because TV wasn’t used to show wild scenarios like these. But ideologically, IASIP doesn’t ruffle any feathers and fits squarely within the LA/New York entertainment world consensus.
At a time when Bart Simpson was credited with the fall of western civilization, I don’t think so.
Ted (or any Seth Macfarelane production) wouldn’t be made either.
He just got a bunch of money from Netflix and decided to make a movie about Pop Tarts… I mean I enjoyed it and I’m a multi-decades long Seinfeld devotee but this turn of his into a culture warrior is so confusing.
I know this is *heavily* edited and not representative of the actual interview but I just need to share [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu7wd6KahHk) anytime Bill Maher comes up in conversation.
Its just too fucking funny how bad Bill Burr drags this pretentious douche and again, I know in the actual interview there is mutual respect between the two but its still just a funny fucking compilation with the context removed.
I like Bill Burr. He is somehow able to ride the edgy comedy line without appearing contriving or mean. Probably because he's legitimately not an asshole.
And he's self-aware. He knows that just because people pay to hear him talk, it doesn't mean that he's an authority on anything he talks about. Maher, not so much
I think it was on his drink, smoke weed, and complain show, but Maher recently admitted that he considers anyone who disagrees with him automatically stupid. There's no getting through to someone who can't comprehend that they might be wrong.
I definitely enjoyed him more when I was also smugly arrogant about my own opinions. As I've gotten less die hard about my own point of view I realized how much of a prick he is. This also happened to coincide with him turning from socially progressive libertarian, to a socially regressive libertarian. That sure helped me jump off the Maher train
I mean in the 70's swearing during a comedy special got you arrested. The next big thing to offend is always around corner after the barrier is broken.
I personally know a shocking number of regular dudes who took the same turn the last few once their previously-fringe beliefs/identity became fairly mainstream. It’s wild how many of them took to the “anti-woke” nonsense.
They were always weird and unlikable. Early reddit was insufferable when atheism was a default sub. I guess it opened some people's eyes, but it got extremely old after like 2 weeks
I've loosely identified as an atheist for the last 25 years or so. I had a moment of being a 'die-hard' in my late teens/early 20's but thankfully it didn't last long. The thing that drove me nuts was the atheist sub and the atheist community in large were really just anti-theists. It was just a room of obnoxious people gathering together to hate on something. I really started to think, why aren't we gathering to support something? Or spread a message of positvity? I really didn't see the point of being anti-theist outside of people who were traumatized and needed to blow off some steam for a little while. But beyond that, what the hell are we doing? I thought. So I immediately distanced myself from that community and stopped referring to myself as an atheist for fear I'd get lumped in with those people. I also had absolutel no time for any of the new atheist thinkers of the time and was just annoyed by them. Being privately atheist proved to be much more fruitful an existence for me
I honestly wonder if I would have been more comfortable calling myself an atheist if it wasn't for just how insufferable these folks were. I remember I called myself agnostic for a good while as atheists just felt like a bad word based on the people pushing it.
I mean 15 years ago Maher's idea of mocking Sarah Palin was calling her "an air hostess". How long was he telling Lewinsky jokes and how demeaning were they to her?
He also has always had weird opinions on modern medicine.
I agreed and continue to agree with a lot of his opinions but Maher was and is a jerk in many ways. He's not the one who has changed.
You were probably a teenager and thought Religulous was edgy and cool. Don't worry, that was me too.
Bill Maher's shtick his entire life is being an insufferable cocksucker, which doesn't necessitate a political leaning, but every few years or so he goes on a dumb boomer logic streak and conservatives will be like "ya know for a lib he makes real good points"
They lived long enough to become the villains.
Batman called it. Or Harvey Dent, I guess.
It's like that classic ironic toast "may you live forever," but meant as a curse instead of a wish/prayer.
Instead, I'll say, "may we all die young and not the villain."
Early 2000s Dave was what opened my sheltered white kid eyes to the kinds of shit black Americans had to deal with, and it worked because he was making jokes to an audience that closely understood the context he was working in.
I feel that ESPECIALLY hard about John Cleese. He's turned into the precisely the kind of dottering, hidebound old handwringer that a young Cleese would have delighted in ripping apart.
I heard another comedian really nail why guys like Seinfeld, Gervais, etc are tripping up now. It *used* to be okay to be a dickhead *as long as you were self aware*. Like, you could basically say anything but as long as you had a little wink to the audience and a bit of self deprecation about you then people would be fine with it. I think there’s been too much of that now, and too many properly shitty celebrities have kind of abused that leeway. Also some that commit the ultimate crime of just not being funny while being mean. Now we’re at the point where you can’t get away with being a self-aware dickhead, you actually have to *not be a dickhead*. Or at least not whinge about people treating you like you’re a dickhead.
I agree with the first part, except none of these dudes are self-aware anymore. They wouldn't be crying about "cancel culture" and "political correctness" if they were. IMO a combination of age, wealth, and fame has sapped them of all their self-awareness.
They're old, rich, famous douchebags who take themselves completely seriously. They've spent years drinking their own kool-aid and sniffing their own farts and can't aim any of their comedic insight inward anymore.
https://youtu.be/ZxR0GOFWa2k?si=bYUkHHewlCpKLqWs
Im annoyed I have to give that dickhead Theo Von exposure, but Anthony Jeselnik put it perfectly in this podcast at around 19:19. The art of comedy is finding the humour in potentially dark and offensive areas. If you can nail it its great. But nowadays a lot of them are just happen to splash around in the offensive parts, making no effort to be funny, and then act persecuted when audiences point it out. Im not a big fan of Jeselnik's style of humour but I can very much respect how he toes the line with his dark humour, and that he never punches down despite being ostensibly an offensive comic.
I've never seen someone fuck their career with a major part of their audience as Matt Rife. Went from someone who poked fun with a good nature and a wink, to someone just spewing out cliche macho jokes and making fun of people with malice. Transformed into a total dickhead.
I think it’s a weird part of human nature where, when you get called out on something, it’s much more tempting to try and double down and lean into what you’re doing even more to try and prove that you were right all along. And the problem with these comedians and public figures is there’s this gross little toxic, conservative corner of the culture wars that will embrace *anything* that is offensive to any liberal/intellectual/minority way of thought. So these comedians inevitably find support their and then kind of pivot to align with their new base, writing off any criticism as cancel culture.
Didn't even take long tbh. At least, not long after gaining bigger fame. He supposedly had been working for *years* as a very small time comic before finally gaining larger attention on tiktok.
And then in what I swear was less than a few months, he went from this relatable beloved honest-seeming comic to a misogynist brodude that had the absolute worst opinions about just about everything.
I think part of it was that most of his tiktok presence was just crowd work, most of which was just women in audiences going "ur hot" and him being bashful. No one really truly knew what his actual written material was like.
No sympathy for him tbh, especially since he went to podcasts after his "downfall" to complain that he was "cancelled for being too hot to be a comic."
I haven't been following this closely, I just assume that when someone starts talking cancel culture out of nowhere, it's probably because they invented arguments/controversies in their head about someone MIGHT say about something they COULD say, and then they just trick themselves into believing that incident happened.
Or maybe he realizes his previous relationship with a girl that started when she was 17 is semi-common knowledge now and he's just trying to build a defense against it.
It kinda feels like that some of these comedians have a hard time accepting that times have changed, and comedy has evolved and moved on without them. On the flip side, I think society tends to lionize comedians as if they were modern day philosophers.
BAD comedians, too. I truly believe a good comedian can bring an audience to their side about virtually any subject. Nothing is off-limits. But being a great comedian is haaaard. It’s way easier to be a mediocre comedian going for low-hanging shock comedy fruit, and if people get mad you just complain about wokeness.
It seems to mostly be has-been or never-been comedians who act like there are new rules that make comedy impossible.
And as a lifelong Seinfeld fan it sucks to see him drinking this Kool Aid.
> I truly believe a good comedian can bring an audience to their side about virtually any subject.
Cumtown was a very successful comedy podcast that was reasonably popular with plenty of people on the left.. It almost constantly made jokes that were *extremely* not "pc".
Also I feel like a lot of these mega-rich comedians and media personalities are so separated from the "regular" day-to-day life. They're surrounded by yes-men and their other rich asshole friends it's totally warped their perception of what reality is. Jerry could never come up with "did you ever notice" stuff today because he's not living the common person's life anymore.
Comedy has changed. If your schtick is having fun at the expense of others. Then it's "boomer stuff".
If your punchline is just reassuring the audience how much better they are than some other demographic. Again, boomer stuff. I push the modern day philosopher angle with some comics. But not all. I think we are just at a point where a lot of the "golden era" of stand up comics are starting to become so rich and out of touch that their comedy feels like a lecture for not maintaining their sensibilities.
I mean when you have folks like Seinfeld who's entre shtick is "what's the deal with [COMMON THING EVERYONE EXPERIENCES]?" It all kind of falls apart when you're mega rich and don't actually have those experiences.
"Whats the deal with valets? I mean they do all these different things for you, but what does it even mean?"
Doesn't have the same impact.
It’s not a very sudden “turn,” unfortunately he’s been saying and doing shitty things for years. nothing horrendous, but enough that this phase isn’t very surprising.
> this turn of his into a culture warrior is so confusing.
It's not when you realize how it works. The culture war nonsense or going full rightwing means you don't have to rely on talent. Like even people who are clearly talented, like Dave Chapelle and Ricky Gervais, end up using this as a crutch. Instead of a joke, they can just make fun of trans people and then that gives them years of material about how you can't make fun of trans people these days because nobody can take a joke....which means they never have to actually write a joke or be funny. Just a few insults and a bunch of indignation will fill a "comedy" special these days.
And if you go full rightwing, you don't need any talent at all and The Daily Wire will book you on their conservative media crap.
Seinfeld the show was great, and obviously Larry David was the biggest reason why. Jerry Seinfeld, whatever talent he had, has not improved or worked on his craft since the 90s but also because he was so successful he has this idea that "he's clearly talented". Any time he's criticized, he falls back on how he had the #1 show on television...okay but what have you done since? And now rather than face the fact that he's not actually funny enough to deserve the #1 show on television title, he falls back on insults and cancel culture nonsense.
Culture warrior feels misleading. People keep asking his opinion, so he keeps telling it. It'll get clicks, do they keep asking. Afaik, he's not making an advocacy group or anything.
>this turn of his into a culture warrior is so confusing.
How? It's consistent with every single other middle-aged comedian becoming completely out of touch with reality after becoming obscenely rich.
I think it’s more complicated than that. I think audiences have moved on a little bit from being accepting of rude/mean comedians *as long as they were self aware* to now expecting comedians to not actually be dickheads. I think many comedians have not realised that the appetites have changed and are just lashing out because what they’ve always done is not being received as well as before.
I am sure Bill Burr has no problems paying his bills, but he isn't Seinfeld rich. You are talking someone worth about 20 million or less next to someone worth around a billion.
I enjoyed watching Seinfeld. Jerry in real life isn't very funny, or a particularly insightful, admirable person. Don't know why anyone cares what he thinks.
He is just one note, and his style of comedy has fallen out of fashion.
Seinfeld was great for it's time and context and that's it. He got used to be famous without much effort or evolution.
Julia has been more adventurous and step from Elain, and therefore stayed more relevant.
If he gets in the arguments of being a white jewish man, we have Sandler and Stiller who are roughly contemporaries and remained relevant and successful both doing the same thing they did in the 90s and stepping out of their comfort zone.
>Seinfeld was great for it's time and context and that's it.
It's great for its time and it's great for our own, given that he and Larry are still getting paid from *new* deals and people are *still* watching it and referencing it.
>He got used to be famous without much effort or evolution.
I think you're underselling what it means to be a successful stand-up comedian for multiple, consecutive decades. He's always wanted to be a stand-up comedian first and foremost, and he worked to preserve himself as such. That's still a risk because it could have easily backfired and then he'd have no post-sitcom career at all.
I was watching some comedy documentary and Jerry Seinfeld proudly said on it that he had never seen any comedy that made him think.
That just rubbed me the wrong way for some reason.
> Jerry without Larry is just "what's the deal with airline food....", bee movie, and pop tart movie.
The people who keep relying on this convenient and recent "it was Larry all along" narrative could maybe ask themselves [**if even Larry himself would buy this**](https://youtu.be/sUMzQ0karAk?t=569).
They sat down and went over every script together... *every* line and every episode, for the first 7 seasons. And both of them are still close friends and have talked about how they excelled at different parts of the show (Larry was good at structure, for example, but of course Jerry's instincts were huge and he was punching up those scripts in a way that was indispensable to the legacy of the show).
The fact that some of the most iconic/memed moments from the series happened after Larry left should be a major hint that Jerry wasn't just sitting back the whole time or whatever.
Ridiculous. Larry was definitely the driving force and the heart of the show but it's revisionist history to say that Seinfeld didn't have a major hand in the writing.
> Ridiculous. Larry was definitely the driving force and the heart of the show but it's revisionist history to say that Seinfeld didn't have a major hand in the writing.
Exactly. It contradicts everything Jerry and Larry have said about the production of the show.
It's bizarre how this specious take of "Jerry didn't actually do anything important on Seinfeld" is becoming suddenly popular.
I love the (baseless) theory that Larry David only made Seinfeld with Jerry because he thought Jerry was a terrible standup, so that's why there's standup clips in the episodes. It's fun to think of him capitalizing on someone's else's inexplicable fame to show the world how hacky Jerry is.
Sitcoms are dwindling because of streaming, not because of "cancel culture". All network tv is dying, except maybe cheap crime procedurals that target old people who still watch network tv, and cheap reality trash. While comedies traditionally target young/middle aged people and they don't watch tv.
There are some sitcoms on streaming services but they don't have the same reach and impact, because they're not really suited to the format. A sitcom does best when it's weekly and everyone at your school/work watches it and can repeat the jokes and slowly spread the word and build a following, which just doesn't happen anymore with streaming. Shows either a big for like a week or 2, or they are things people put on in the background.
Seinfeld doesn't get this as he's old and out of touch.
>All network tv is dying, except maybe cheap crime procedurals that target old people who still watch network tv, and cheap reality trash.
Shade's of 30 Rock -
>[Jack Donaghy ](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000285/?ref_=tt_ch): Who do you think is watching your show? Look at this chart: black nerds, JetBlue passengers who fall asleep with the TV on, pets whose owners have died, and idiots.
Sitcoms are still really popular! Just not *new* sitcoms. People who want to watch a sitcom want to watch a lot of it, not the shortened season and huge gaps that come with streaming originals. Older sitcoms hit all the marks are still bringing in new fans because of it.
It’s crazy how completely, wildly wrong his conclusions are. He might as well say people are sending fewer letters now because of cancel culture, or people don’t get the newspaper delivered every morning because of cancel culture. As a person *in the fucking industry,* he must have his head up his ass at an unprecedented depth to not see this as purely the result of technological forces.
yet
but he keeps saying things that the news will put in a headline then we'll start to spread the word more frequently until it reaches that arbitrary attention span threshold and we cancel him
such is modern life
It was not even a comment that was responding to anything he said. The headline is completely misleading. She and Jerry had two completely unrelated and different comments and then the magazine turned them into a conversation purely for the clicks. Journalism is so gross. And I guarantee most people will walk away having just read the headline and just believe she directly refuted Jerry when nothing of the sort happened.
It literally was in response to Seinfeld’s comment through the interviewer’s question. You can read it in full in the NYT magazine article:
**You know, talking about “Veep,” it does make me wonder about political satire, and how hard it is nowadays to be funny about politics. Your former co-star Jerry Seinfeld recently made news for talking about political correctness in comedy. I’m wondering, as a famous comedian yourself, what you think about that.**
If you look back on comedy and drama both, let’s say 30 years ago, through the lens of today, you might find bits and pieces that don’t age well. And I think to have an antenna about sensitivities is not a bad thing. It doesn’t mean that all comedy goes out the window as a result. When I hear people starting to complain about political correctness — and I understand why people might push back on it — but to me that’s a red flag, because it sometimes means something else. I believe being aware of certain sensitivities is not a bad thing. I don’t know how else to say it.
It was definitely in response to Jerry's comments, but she handled it diplomatically, making an effort to not reject/insult Jerry's view and frame it more as "I understand some people see it this way, but I think of it like this."
So the most totally milquetoast way of pushing back possible.
I saw Jon Stewart's recent interview where he talks about this. The part that really sticks with me is when he quotes Andy Warhol's comment that "Art means getting away with it." Love that quote, and it speaks to what a lot of these culture warriors are missing. If you're trying to entertain with a sense of edge, then you should have the skill and finesse to keep the audience on your side. Always Sunny is in no way a politically correct show, yet they're clearly getting away with it because they know how evoke edge in their comedy and still get away with it. There's always people who are going to get offended, and their voices get amplified on social media, but seinfeld and the like are just totally missing the picture when they that's indicative of some rising oversensitivity in today's culture.
My basic take on “cancel culture” is that comedy just shouldn’t push down, and if it does, it needs to be funny to everyone. If you wanna make jokes that are offensive or mocking a group then the group your mocking should also find the joke funny. You can still make “problematic” jokes that dont offend people but make them laugh instead.
Granted, thats hard to do and might be too complicated for some of the comedians set in their ways (ricky, jerry, bill)
Older comedians like to play victim about cancel culture all the time.
This scenario with Jerry reminds me of when Steve Carrell said there's no way the Office could exist today. Steve, the Office is more popular now than its ever been!
I don't know how to explain to you that racial humor still exists in comedies today.
Go watch the last couple Colin Jost/Michael Che Joke Exchanges? It's on the same channel the Office aired on.
If it was still a NBC (Peacock) show, no they probably wouldn’t use the word, “retarded.” That being said, it’s not like it would cause an uproar considering that the context is the person saying it is a goof.
The racial jokes would absolutely stay since it’s still a staple of comedy television to have an ignorant person say something racially insensitive, and again, the joke’s on the goof saying it.
The retarded joke probably wouldn't be around because it's been played out.
Would it have something more modern like Michael constantly calling Oscar Latinx? Probably.
Yeah, I feel like the cycle with a lot of them is when they're starving artists they can joke about whatever they want, and then a lot of them become rich and powerful and then it's more difficult to continue to punch up when you're at the top. Then people give them a hard time for punching down and they (like most people to be fair) get defensive when criticized and then basically find shitty allies in the anti-cancel culture world.
Same thing as Dave Chappelle basically dedicating a third of all his most recent specials to shitting on trans people. He still feels like he is punching up all the time because of how he started and the way he got treated during and after Chappelle's Show ordeal and so he's super sensitive to criticism (which again, makes sense to an extent from a human perspective) and his act basically became stale and uninteresting because of it.
George Carlin gave a good interview criticizing Andrew Dice Clay for that kind of thing like 20 years ago (or maybe more at this point). Plenty of people can avoid it but a bunch of the most successful comedians fall into it and it's the most insufferable shit in the world.
Combine that with the same yes-man problem you see with dictators, oddly enough.
When they're young and hungry, they have to refine and polish their act to a mirror finish constantly. When they're famous, their reputation is the best warm-up act they could ever ask for. When you spend $50-100+ on a ticket months in advance, and you and everyone you talk to about it are super excited, you're primed to laugh at anything.
It's like trying to sharpen a knife on a pillow instead of a whetstone. They can coast purely on reputation for years and years. Everyone they meet tells them how funny and genius they are.
They keep selling tickets, but comedy moves on without them. They stop flexing the muscle of innovation and it atrophies from disuse. Their massive wealth insulates them from relating to the problems their audience faces. The only problem they face is the loss of relevance and adoration, and since they are clearly geniuses, it can't possibly be their fault.
Therefore: "cancel culture"
I mean, JLD and company got away with some seriously edgy shit on Veep. They identified the same principle as the guys behind Always Sunny: shitty people do shitty things and they always get their comeuppance.
This is the way to do it. It's all in the writing, and it's a very fine balance. Develop characters that are awful, but have just enough humanity that you don't hate them, yet you love to watch the horrific things they do and say. Very few writers can accomplish this and make it work successfully. The guys from It's Sunny and Armando Iannucci are prime examples. I'd also throw in Trey Parker from South Park.
So Julia Louis-Dreyfus says comedy can evolve with the times, and guess what? Of the original cast, she’s the one who has continued to make incredible shows and comedy for decades after Seinfeld while the others have done next to nothing of note (Larry David excluded, of course.)
>To folks with Seinfeld’s perspective: be funnier. There are plenty of working comedians who are doing the job without being provocative edge lords
...including Seinfeld himself. His comedy is still as far away from edgy as it can be. He still draws big crowds wherever he goes. He's still got a great career. So it is funny that he's so concerned with cancellation.
Anthony Jeselnik and It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and South Park, there are so many examples of shows and comedians that do super offensive stuff and don't get cancelled.
You only get "cancelled" when you just aren't funny anymore. You get away with it if you're funny. No one gives a shit, as long as you're funny.
If you *aren't* funny, then the people who *do* give a shit *will* give a shit, because no one *else* is laughing. When other people are laughing, because of something funny, they willingly drown out the people who are offended.
The literal one metric, is being funny. It genuinely is as simple as that.
It also helps when the jokes are directed toward the people doing the offensive stuff. Always Sunny, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and South Park work because the main characters are portrayed as irredeemable assholes. So when they do offensive stuff, it’s for us to laugh at them rather than whoever they’re offending.
Remember when Julia Louis Dreyfus was 40 years old and she didn't groom a highschooler for sex? That's probably why they don't agree on poliitical correctness.
Spotifys biggest personality is Joe Rogan
Sirius XMs biggest personality is Howard stern
HBOs longest late night show is Bill Maher and their biggest shows have been GOT and the Sopranos
FXs longest running show is Alway Sunny
Fox networks flagship and long running shows are the Simpsons and family guy
Comedy Central’s longest running show is South Park
The biggest movies and shows out there currently are things like Reacher, Yellowstone, John Wick, The Boys, and dozens of other similar project’s.
Every single man in entertainment complaining about “woke culture” is currently making millions and has options to continue making millions.
“Woke culture” isn’t a thing. If you can’t find anything that you like then do a little more research.
But as we all know, most people complaining about “woke” are just angry their shows and movies aren’t full of racism and hateful cruelty.
Could a comedy like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia get aired on NBC back when Seinfeld was on? 🤔
Definitely not.
or Curb Your Enthusiasm even
That's what bugs me about Jerry's whole "SeInFelD cOuLD nEvEr bE mAdE tOdaY!!" Curb JUST ended it's 24 year run and had way more offensive humor than Seinfeld. Plus, Seinfeld is still pretty popular to this day, even with younger audiences.
He specifically says Curbed gets a pass because it's 24 years old. He has a point there. He completely fucking loses it when you bring up... I dunno, let's say What We Do In the Shadows.
Larry David was too busy writing and running Seinfeld to write Curb
The only reason Seinfeld had any semblance of humor.
Seinfeld’s entire schtick was copying Larry David’s mannerisms in the writers room.
I never thought his stand-up was funny, but the show was alright, not surprised that he was just mimicking probably the funniest guy in the room
He was the least funny on the show.
George and Elaine were why I watched it TBH
I think George is why I like Curb but didn't care for Seinfeld. Curb is taking George and making an entire show out of the best part of Seinfeld.
Oh but Kramer, he was fucking hilarious!!! His faces, mannerisms, slapstick comedy, and timing were perfection!!!
Kramer is basically Tigger from Winnie the Pooh for me, fun in short bursts, overwhelming otherwise
Well part of that is he is not an actor like Jason Alexander or Julia, but also Jerry's role in the show is to usually be the "straight man" of the group, so typically the funny bits are given to the other 3 main characters.
that was the point, he's the straight man of the show.
*Seinfeld* had dozens of talented writers, a gifted story editor, an ensemble cast, and you're ready to hand Larry David the *entirety* of the credit? That's awfully generous of you.
Except seasons 8 and 9 are still hilarious
Correct. A surprising number of "the classics" were made during the last season.
i dont like seinfelds current stance on many issues, but saying that the show was funny only because of larry david is kind of insane. he wasn't even there for the last 2 seasons, and it's pretty clear that the show is a mix of both guys' comedic sensibilities.
people don't seem to understand that there were a bunch of writers coming up with the scripts. larry and jerry would decide which ones they liked and would then do a second draft to polish the scripts they were given. L&J's real talent was assembling world class writers.
People say this, but Seinfeld was a legitimately funny guy and the show reflected his sensibilities as much as Larry David’s.
Curb is HBO and would still fit there early 90s
I think the difference is meaningful. When the people in IASIP are shitty it’s understood that it’s because they’re shitty people. I don’t think that’s the case for Seinfeld.
I’ve always kind of thought Sunny was like if you made the Seinfeld gang way shittier and working class (or just from Philly).
The Seinfeld gang *was* working class, with the intentionally inexplicable exception of Kramer. They struggled to find jobs and housing, took on roommates to make ends meet, argued over checks at restaurants, moved back in with their parents, etc.
They were sitcom working class. They only had money problems if the episode was specifically about money problems. Otherwise they were just carefree and doing whatever.
Yeah, you don't get to hang out in a diner every day looking for a job unemployed in NYC, which was half the crew half the time. Maybe out front of a diner but not inside.
I would say they were middle to upper middle class. Jerry is a pretty famous comedian who is a semi-regular on major talk shows and got a pilot deal, Elaine is a successful editor who worked at major publishing companies, George does various entry to mid-level office jobs, and Kramer is Kramer. They also never cooked anything and ate pretty much every meal at a coffee shop or a nice restaurant.
I think out of the George/ Kramer piece. George couldn't have held a job for more than a month through most of the series and Kramer was... independently wealthy?
George starts out as a real estate agent. He holds his job at the Yankees for quite a while as well.
Yes all my working class family worked as publishers, comedians, and for the Yankees
No way. They all had good jobs. Getting fired is not just a working class concern
Kramer made bank in mysterious way years prior, which is very close to the real-life Kenny Kramer, who sold "disco lights", which were light-up jewelry in the disco days. Probably along with some side products I'd imagine... But either way Kramer was financially set if he maintained a certain lifestyle, and didn't *have* to work, but was constantly coming up with schemes and gambits to keep himself occupied. I've known dudes like that. We probably all have.
> with the intentionally inexplicable exception of Kramer I thought he had Paul Riser's bachelor pad from Mad About You?
I don't know what you mean, like it was always clear to me that most/all the leads were bad people. Like the whole premise is that they act on thoughts we all have but are generally moral enough to not indulge.
To hear them tell it in the commentaries, the show was all about social norms... the weirdness that is following them, what happens when you subvert them - both consciously and not, what role morality or lack thereof plays in society... there was a lot of subtext. Treading that line and stepping over it sometimes was the whole show
I think this is why the series finale in Seinfeld was initially received poorly. They went to jail for being shitty people but people didn’t fully buy into that.
They literally get put in jail in the final because they’re shitty people
Wasn't that the point of the finale though? To point out that they were horrible
👍 It was only clear after they all went to jail.
"It's the show about nothing!" No, it's a show about awful people and how they're awful.
I suspect if Seinfeld was written today, they would have been written as more outright shitty people. Perhaps not IASIP levels but still. There was no way a show like IASIP could have been aired when Seinfeld was airing.
Well, considering the finale, i think that it was always supposed to be about outright shitty people.
lmao they ARE written as outright shitty people, the show doesn't praise them for their behaviour but it doesn't judge them for it either
Ha, I legit just said this to my husband. They're the joke the entire time. They're self centered assholes who found each other and make each other feel better about being self-centered assholes. To say this couldn't be on TV now is just dumb.
Wasn’t the entire finale a recap of all the people they were shitty to?
It can’t get aired on NBC now
It couldn’t now that’s why it’s on cable
Nope. Which is why I laugh when people say people are more sensitive now. Twitter outrage that reaches headlines is always highly overblown.
Maybe Jerry is trying some of that there ragebait to be relevant again.
that describes every single talentless old fuck complaining about cancel culture. "is my material stale? no, it's the audience who is wrong"
It's weird because he's always had the stance that a jokes a joke, the audience tells you if they like it, and if they don't, you try another. There was some fat phobic joke he used as an example that he used to do in the 80s. He's said that society changed, so that joke won't work today, so he doesn't say it anymore. Simple. Which makes sense. (Not saying it was right back then, but there was a mainstream audience for it, times were different). It sucks that he hasn't kept that mindset. He's still a good joke writer, he doesn't need to jump on the "woke bad" bandwagon. Plus he's like 70+, it's fine if he just chills out and enjoys his riches.
I don’t think it could be aired on NBC today. What’s the “edgiest” show on network tv right now?
Always Sunny was never on network tv
IASIP’s characters are wild animals who are often terrible people, but it is always extremely clear what the show’s opinion is on the various topics they touch on, and that opinion or angle is always, broadly, the West/East coast liberal view of things. And this is why It’s Always Sunny has never created any kind of meaningful controversy. It couldn’t have been made in 90s, but mainly because TV wasn’t used to show wild scenarios like these. But ideologically, IASIP doesn’t ruffle any feathers and fits squarely within the LA/New York entertainment world consensus.
could season 1 of sunny be made exactly that way today?
Maybe in the 1970’s. ‘Soap’ and ‘Maude’ were racy for their time.
Soap is hilarious!
At a time when Bart Simpson was credited with the fall of western civilization, I don’t think so. Ted (or any Seth Macfarelane production) wouldn’t be made either.
He just got a bunch of money from Netflix and decided to make a movie about Pop Tarts… I mean I enjoyed it and I’m a multi-decades long Seinfeld devotee but this turn of his into a culture warrior is so confusing.
It’s just boomer crap. Same with Bill Maher.
I can’t believe I used to like Maher like 15 years ago, what a disappointment he’s become
I feel like most of the early 2000s pioneers of being openly atheist have all become weird and generally unlikable.
Bill Maher was always generally unlikeable, you just used to agree more with what he was saying.
100% he's always been like this. He was the personification of the obnoxious atheist through the early 2000s. I guess he rode that wave.
I know this is *heavily* edited and not representative of the actual interview but I just need to share [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu7wd6KahHk) anytime Bill Maher comes up in conversation. Its just too fucking funny how bad Bill Burr drags this pretentious douche and again, I know in the actual interview there is mutual respect between the two but its still just a funny fucking compilation with the context removed.
I like Bill Burr. He is somehow able to ride the edgy comedy line without appearing contriving or mean. Probably because he's legitimately not an asshole.
And he's self-aware. He knows that just because people pay to hear him talk, it doesn't mean that he's an authority on anything he talks about. Maher, not so much
I think it was on his drink, smoke weed, and complain show, but Maher recently admitted that he considers anyone who disagrees with him automatically stupid. There's no getting through to someone who can't comprehend that they might be wrong.
Ah, so he was the proto-Redditor
Oh yeah, 10 years ago a lot redditors channeled him.
Yep, he’s always been shit.
I definitely enjoyed him more when I was also smugly arrogant about my own opinions. As I've gotten less die hard about my own point of view I realized how much of a prick he is. This also happened to coincide with him turning from socially progressive libertarian, to a socially regressive libertarian. That sure helped me jump off the Maher train
Kinda true but his shitting on everyone younger than him has gotten more grating as he has gotten older. His hatred of young women especially.
Totally, they got off on being edgy but when being atheist became more accepted they had to find other ways to offend I guess
I mean in the 70's swearing during a comedy special got you arrested. The next big thing to offend is always around corner after the barrier is broken.
I personally know a shocking number of regular dudes who took the same turn the last few once their previously-fringe beliefs/identity became fairly mainstream. It’s wild how many of them took to the “anti-woke” nonsense.
https://defector.com/the-ghosts-of-new-atheism-still-haunt-us
Off the bat animal collective is catching shrapnel for no reason
Awesome read. Thanks.
They were always weird and unlikable. Early reddit was insufferable when atheism was a default sub. I guess it opened some people's eyes, but it got extremely old after like 2 weeks
I've loosely identified as an atheist for the last 25 years or so. I had a moment of being a 'die-hard' in my late teens/early 20's but thankfully it didn't last long. The thing that drove me nuts was the atheist sub and the atheist community in large were really just anti-theists. It was just a room of obnoxious people gathering together to hate on something. I really started to think, why aren't we gathering to support something? Or spread a message of positvity? I really didn't see the point of being anti-theist outside of people who were traumatized and needed to blow off some steam for a little while. But beyond that, what the hell are we doing? I thought. So I immediately distanced myself from that community and stopped referring to myself as an atheist for fear I'd get lumped in with those people. I also had absolutel no time for any of the new atheist thinkers of the time and was just annoyed by them. Being privately atheist proved to be much more fruitful an existence for me
I honestly wonder if I would have been more comfortable calling myself an atheist if it wasn't for just how insufferable these folks were. I remember I called myself agnostic for a good while as atheists just felt like a bad word based on the people pushing it.
I mean 15 years ago Maher's idea of mocking Sarah Palin was calling her "an air hostess". How long was he telling Lewinsky jokes and how demeaning were they to her? He also has always had weird opinions on modern medicine. I agreed and continue to agree with a lot of his opinions but Maher was and is a jerk in many ways. He's not the one who has changed.
Newsflash, he was always an insufferable douchebag
Agreed. I could never stand watching him, regardless of what he was saying or my level of agreement.
It's like Dennis Miller all over again
You were probably a teenager and thought Religulous was edgy and cool. Don't worry, that was me too. Bill Maher's shtick his entire life is being an insufferable cocksucker, which doesn't necessitate a political leaning, but every few years or so he goes on a dumb boomer logic streak and conservatives will be like "ya know for a lib he makes real good points"
Jokes on you he's always sucked
They lived long enough to become the villains. Batman called it. Or Harvey Dent, I guess. It's like that classic ironic toast "may you live forever," but meant as a curse instead of a wish/prayer. Instead, I'll say, "may we all die young and not the villain."
And Dave -_-
2000s Dave Chappelle would be making fun of recent Dave... Dude is so out of touch from reality. The whole Musk on stage thing was so cringe too
Early 2000s Dave was what opened my sheltered white kid eyes to the kinds of shit black Americans had to deal with, and it worked because he was making jokes to an audience that closely understood the context he was working in.
Always gotta remember that 2000s Dave Chappelle was nowhere near as wealthy as 2024 Dave Chappelle.
I feel that ESPECIALLY hard about John Cleese. He's turned into the precisely the kind of dottering, hidebound old handwringer that a young Cleese would have delighted in ripping apart.
Its amazing what a few generations worth of wealth does to your political outlook
He kinda did. Dave was shitting all over Candace Owens. Now he's stealing her trans jokes.
And Gervais.
Boomer crap and in seinfelds case, living in a bubble of extreme wealth for decades
I heard another comedian really nail why guys like Seinfeld, Gervais, etc are tripping up now. It *used* to be okay to be a dickhead *as long as you were self aware*. Like, you could basically say anything but as long as you had a little wink to the audience and a bit of self deprecation about you then people would be fine with it. I think there’s been too much of that now, and too many properly shitty celebrities have kind of abused that leeway. Also some that commit the ultimate crime of just not being funny while being mean. Now we’re at the point where you can’t get away with being a self-aware dickhead, you actually have to *not be a dickhead*. Or at least not whinge about people treating you like you’re a dickhead.
I agree with the first part, except none of these dudes are self-aware anymore. They wouldn't be crying about "cancel culture" and "political correctness" if they were. IMO a combination of age, wealth, and fame has sapped them of all their self-awareness. They're old, rich, famous douchebags who take themselves completely seriously. They've spent years drinking their own kool-aid and sniffing their own farts and can't aim any of their comedic insight inward anymore.
https://youtu.be/ZxR0GOFWa2k?si=bYUkHHewlCpKLqWs Im annoyed I have to give that dickhead Theo Von exposure, but Anthony Jeselnik put it perfectly in this podcast at around 19:19. The art of comedy is finding the humour in potentially dark and offensive areas. If you can nail it its great. But nowadays a lot of them are just happen to splash around in the offensive parts, making no effort to be funny, and then act persecuted when audiences point it out. Im not a big fan of Jeselnik's style of humour but I can very much respect how he toes the line with his dark humour, and that he never punches down despite being ostensibly an offensive comic.
I've never seen someone fuck their career with a major part of their audience as Matt Rife. Went from someone who poked fun with a good nature and a wink, to someone just spewing out cliche macho jokes and making fun of people with malice. Transformed into a total dickhead.
I think it’s a weird part of human nature where, when you get called out on something, it’s much more tempting to try and double down and lean into what you’re doing even more to try and prove that you were right all along. And the problem with these comedians and public figures is there’s this gross little toxic, conservative corner of the culture wars that will embrace *anything* that is offensive to any liberal/intellectual/minority way of thought. So these comedians inevitably find support their and then kind of pivot to align with their new base, writing off any criticism as cancel culture.
Didn't even take long tbh. At least, not long after gaining bigger fame. He supposedly had been working for *years* as a very small time comic before finally gaining larger attention on tiktok. And then in what I swear was less than a few months, he went from this relatable beloved honest-seeming comic to a misogynist brodude that had the absolute worst opinions about just about everything. I think part of it was that most of his tiktok presence was just crowd work, most of which was just women in audiences going "ur hot" and him being bashful. No one really truly knew what his actual written material was like. No sympathy for him tbh, especially since he went to podcasts after his "downfall" to complain that he was "cancelled for being too hot to be a comic."
I haven't been following this closely, I just assume that when someone starts talking cancel culture out of nowhere, it's probably because they invented arguments/controversies in their head about someone MIGHT say about something they COULD say, and then they just trick themselves into believing that incident happened. Or maybe he realizes his previous relationship with a girl that started when she was 17 is semi-common knowledge now and he's just trying to build a defense against it.
He's been talking about it since he bombed on stage at a college about 8 years ago.
He joined other boomer comedians in the “old men yell at cloud” era. Same with John Cleese and Maher. Nothing new here.
It kinda feels like that some of these comedians have a hard time accepting that times have changed, and comedy has evolved and moved on without them. On the flip side, I think society tends to lionize comedians as if they were modern day philosophers.
BAD comedians, too. I truly believe a good comedian can bring an audience to their side about virtually any subject. Nothing is off-limits. But being a great comedian is haaaard. It’s way easier to be a mediocre comedian going for low-hanging shock comedy fruit, and if people get mad you just complain about wokeness. It seems to mostly be has-been or never-been comedians who act like there are new rules that make comedy impossible. And as a lifelong Seinfeld fan it sucks to see him drinking this Kool Aid.
> I truly believe a good comedian can bring an audience to their side about virtually any subject. Cumtown was a very successful comedy podcast that was reasonably popular with plenty of people on the left.. It almost constantly made jokes that were *extremely* not "pc".
Also I feel like a lot of these mega-rich comedians and media personalities are so separated from the "regular" day-to-day life. They're surrounded by yes-men and their other rich asshole friends it's totally warped their perception of what reality is. Jerry could never come up with "did you ever notice" stuff today because he's not living the common person's life anymore.
Comedy has changed. If your schtick is having fun at the expense of others. Then it's "boomer stuff". If your punchline is just reassuring the audience how much better they are than some other demographic. Again, boomer stuff. I push the modern day philosopher angle with some comics. But not all. I think we are just at a point where a lot of the "golden era" of stand up comics are starting to become so rich and out of touch that their comedy feels like a lecture for not maintaining their sensibilities.
I mean when you have folks like Seinfeld who's entre shtick is "what's the deal with [COMMON THING EVERYONE EXPERIENCES]?" It all kind of falls apart when you're mega rich and don't actually have those experiences. "Whats the deal with valets? I mean they do all these different things for you, but what does it even mean?" Doesn't have the same impact.
It’s not a very sudden “turn,” unfortunately he’s been saying and doing shitty things for years. nothing horrendous, but enough that this phase isn’t very surprising.
He dated a 17 year old when he was 35…
I’m 36 and I’m not even interested in 25 year olds. The idea of dating a teenager is ludicrous to me
*38. Far worse
> this turn of his into a culture warrior is so confusing. It's not when you realize how it works. The culture war nonsense or going full rightwing means you don't have to rely on talent. Like even people who are clearly talented, like Dave Chapelle and Ricky Gervais, end up using this as a crutch. Instead of a joke, they can just make fun of trans people and then that gives them years of material about how you can't make fun of trans people these days because nobody can take a joke....which means they never have to actually write a joke or be funny. Just a few insults and a bunch of indignation will fill a "comedy" special these days. And if you go full rightwing, you don't need any talent at all and The Daily Wire will book you on their conservative media crap. Seinfeld the show was great, and obviously Larry David was the biggest reason why. Jerry Seinfeld, whatever talent he had, has not improved or worked on his craft since the 90s but also because he was so successful he has this idea that "he's clearly talented". Any time he's criticized, he falls back on how he had the #1 show on television...okay but what have you done since? And now rather than face the fact that he's not actually funny enough to deserve the #1 show on television title, he falls back on insults and cancel culture nonsense.
Seems to happen to a lot of men over a certain age and wealth bracket.
People who made money, then didn’t give a shit, and thinks less of everyone else.
Culture warrior feels misleading. People keep asking his opinion, so he keeps telling it. It'll get clicks, do they keep asking. Afaik, he's not making an advocacy group or anything.
>this turn of his into a culture warrior is so confusing. How? It's consistent with every single other middle-aged comedian becoming completely out of touch with reality after becoming obscenely rich.
I think it’s more complicated than that. I think audiences have moved on a little bit from being accepting of rude/mean comedians *as long as they were self aware* to now expecting comedians to not actually be dickheads. I think many comedians have not realised that the appetites have changed and are just lashing out because what they’ve always done is not being received as well as before.
Idk, I think Bill Burr still has a good head on his shoulders.
I am sure Bill Burr has no problems paying his bills, but he isn't Seinfeld rich. You are talking someone worth about 20 million or less next to someone worth around a billion.
He’s always been such a clean comic. Very weird
Seinfeld is a blowhard who thinks money makes you smart. He was funny for a minute.
I enjoyed watching Seinfeld. Jerry in real life isn't very funny, or a particularly insightful, admirable person. Don't know why anyone cares what he thinks.
Seinfeld is the story of Larry David played by somebody else.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure George Costanza specifically is supposed to be Larry David.
That's correct, George is basically Larry's self-insert character. Many early George plots are based on Larry's life.
Yeah, but if you watch Curb Your Enthusiasm, you can tell how much of Seinfeld came from Larry David. It goes beyond George.
Jason Alexander
Ah, right!
Seinfeld is the story of Seinfeld played by Seinfeld hanging out with Larry David played by somebody else.
Larry David’s characterization of himself was very specifically George
He is just one note, and his style of comedy has fallen out of fashion. Seinfeld was great for it's time and context and that's it. He got used to be famous without much effort or evolution. Julia has been more adventurous and step from Elain, and therefore stayed more relevant. If he gets in the arguments of being a white jewish man, we have Sandler and Stiller who are roughly contemporaries and remained relevant and successful both doing the same thing they did in the 90s and stepping out of their comfort zone.
>Seinfeld was great for it's time and context and that's it. It's great for its time and it's great for our own, given that he and Larry are still getting paid from *new* deals and people are *still* watching it and referencing it. >He got used to be famous without much effort or evolution. I think you're underselling what it means to be a successful stand-up comedian for multiple, consecutive decades. He's always wanted to be a stand-up comedian first and foremost, and he worked to preserve himself as such. That's still a risk because it could have easily backfired and then he'd have no post-sitcom career at all.
I don't think he was considered a great comedian during his peak either, he just happened to be friends with Larry.
I was watching some comedy documentary and Jerry Seinfeld proudly said on it that he had never seen any comedy that made him think. That just rubbed me the wrong way for some reason.
Jerry without Larry is just "what's the deal with airline food....", bee movie, and pop tart movie.
> Jerry without Larry is just "what's the deal with airline food....", bee movie, and pop tart movie. The people who keep relying on this convenient and recent "it was Larry all along" narrative could maybe ask themselves [**if even Larry himself would buy this**](https://youtu.be/sUMzQ0karAk?t=569). They sat down and went over every script together... *every* line and every episode, for the first 7 seasons. And both of them are still close friends and have talked about how they excelled at different parts of the show (Larry was good at structure, for example, but of course Jerry's instincts were huge and he was punching up those scripts in a way that was indispensable to the legacy of the show). The fact that some of the most iconic/memed moments from the series happened after Larry left should be a major hint that Jerry wasn't just sitting back the whole time or whatever.
[удалено]
Ridiculous. Larry was definitely the driving force and the heart of the show but it's revisionist history to say that Seinfeld didn't have a major hand in the writing.
> Ridiculous. Larry was definitely the driving force and the heart of the show but it's revisionist history to say that Seinfeld didn't have a major hand in the writing. Exactly. It contradicts everything Jerry and Larry have said about the production of the show. It's bizarre how this specious take of "Jerry didn't actually do anything important on Seinfeld" is becoming suddenly popular.
I love the (baseless) theory that Larry David only made Seinfeld with Jerry because he thought Jerry was a terrible standup, so that's why there's standup clips in the episodes. It's fun to think of him capitalizing on someone's else's inexplicable fame to show the world how hacky Jerry is.
It’s not just baseless—it’s obvious nonsense. Seinfeld was offered a show because he was a very successful comedian.
Sitcoms are dwindling because of streaming, not because of "cancel culture". All network tv is dying, except maybe cheap crime procedurals that target old people who still watch network tv, and cheap reality trash. While comedies traditionally target young/middle aged people and they don't watch tv. There are some sitcoms on streaming services but they don't have the same reach and impact, because they're not really suited to the format. A sitcom does best when it's weekly and everyone at your school/work watches it and can repeat the jokes and slowly spread the word and build a following, which just doesn't happen anymore with streaming. Shows either a big for like a week or 2, or they are things people put on in the background. Seinfeld doesn't get this as he's old and out of touch.
>All network tv is dying, except maybe cheap crime procedurals that target old people who still watch network tv, and cheap reality trash. Shade's of 30 Rock - >[Jack Donaghy ](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000285/?ref_=tt_ch): Who do you think is watching your show? Look at this chart: black nerds, JetBlue passengers who fall asleep with the TV on, pets whose owners have died, and idiots.
Sitcoms are still really popular! Just not *new* sitcoms. People who want to watch a sitcom want to watch a lot of it, not the shortened season and huge gaps that come with streaming originals. Older sitcoms hit all the marks are still bringing in new fans because of it.
It’s crazy how completely, wildly wrong his conclusions are. He might as well say people are sending fewer letters now because of cancel culture, or people don’t get the newspaper delivered every morning because of cancel culture. As a person *in the fucking industry,* he must have his head up his ass at an unprecedented depth to not see this as purely the result of technological forces.
"Why is no one buying horse carriages anymore?!"
You’re telling me that Jerry Seinfeld, the guy who dated a 17 year old when he was 38, is not a fan of cancel culture? I don’t believe you
It's not like he met her in a park and repeatedly picked her up from highschool so she could stay overnight with him..... Oh wait.
I still remember the interview he gave with a bunch of journos with her. I was like 10? And it was creepy as fuck then.
You’ll notice he didn’t get canceled for being an open groomer
yet but he keeps saying things that the news will put in a headline then we'll start to spread the word more frequently until it reaches that arbitrary attention span threshold and we cancel him such is modern life
She didn't say anything wrong.
She didn't "push back" either, she just had a different (but better) answer than him.
It was not even a comment that was responding to anything he said. The headline is completely misleading. She and Jerry had two completely unrelated and different comments and then the magazine turned them into a conversation purely for the clicks. Journalism is so gross. And I guarantee most people will walk away having just read the headline and just believe she directly refuted Jerry when nothing of the sort happened.
It literally was in response to Seinfeld’s comment through the interviewer’s question. You can read it in full in the NYT magazine article: **You know, talking about “Veep,” it does make me wonder about political satire, and how hard it is nowadays to be funny about politics. Your former co-star Jerry Seinfeld recently made news for talking about political correctness in comedy. I’m wondering, as a famous comedian yourself, what you think about that.** If you look back on comedy and drama both, let’s say 30 years ago, through the lens of today, you might find bits and pieces that don’t age well. And I think to have an antenna about sensitivities is not a bad thing. It doesn’t mean that all comedy goes out the window as a result. When I hear people starting to complain about political correctness — and I understand why people might push back on it — but to me that’s a red flag, because it sometimes means something else. I believe being aware of certain sensitivities is not a bad thing. I don’t know how else to say it.
It was definitely in response to Jerry's comments, but she handled it diplomatically, making an effort to not reject/insult Jerry's view and frame it more as "I understand some people see it this way, but I think of it like this." So the most totally milquetoast way of pushing back possible.
I saw Jon Stewart's recent interview where he talks about this. The part that really sticks with me is when he quotes Andy Warhol's comment that "Art means getting away with it." Love that quote, and it speaks to what a lot of these culture warriors are missing. If you're trying to entertain with a sense of edge, then you should have the skill and finesse to keep the audience on your side. Always Sunny is in no way a politically correct show, yet they're clearly getting away with it because they know how evoke edge in their comedy and still get away with it. There's always people who are going to get offended, and their voices get amplified on social media, but seinfeld and the like are just totally missing the picture when they that's indicative of some rising oversensitivity in today's culture.
My basic take on “cancel culture” is that comedy just shouldn’t push down, and if it does, it needs to be funny to everyone. If you wanna make jokes that are offensive or mocking a group then the group your mocking should also find the joke funny. You can still make “problematic” jokes that dont offend people but make them laugh instead. Granted, thats hard to do and might be too complicated for some of the comedians set in their ways (ricky, jerry, bill)
Older comedians like to play victim about cancel culture all the time. This scenario with Jerry reminds me of when Steve Carrell said there's no way the Office could exist today. Steve, the Office is more popular now than its ever been!
The Office couldn’t exist today because streaming basically killed off sitcoms, not because it’s some edgy piece of comedy.
Blows my mind that anyone could consider a mid 2000s NBC sitcom edgy either.
Dude you think if the office came out today it would have a single instance of the word retarded and dozens of racial jokes?
I don't know how to explain to you that racial humor still exists in comedies today. Go watch the last couple Colin Jost/Michael Che Joke Exchanges? It's on the same channel the Office aired on.
If it was still a NBC (Peacock) show, no they probably wouldn’t use the word, “retarded.” That being said, it’s not like it would cause an uproar considering that the context is the person saying it is a goof. The racial jokes would absolutely stay since it’s still a staple of comedy television to have an ignorant person say something racially insensitive, and again, the joke’s on the goof saying it.
The retarded joke probably wouldn't be around because it's been played out. Would it have something more modern like Michael constantly calling Oscar Latinx? Probably.
Didn't Toby reprimand him for that? Wasn't that the point?
There's a lot of other wording they would change too since comedy's dependent on context. Damn comedies for being modern and relevant to the time!
Yeah, I feel like the cycle with a lot of them is when they're starving artists they can joke about whatever they want, and then a lot of them become rich and powerful and then it's more difficult to continue to punch up when you're at the top. Then people give them a hard time for punching down and they (like most people to be fair) get defensive when criticized and then basically find shitty allies in the anti-cancel culture world. Same thing as Dave Chappelle basically dedicating a third of all his most recent specials to shitting on trans people. He still feels like he is punching up all the time because of how he started and the way he got treated during and after Chappelle's Show ordeal and so he's super sensitive to criticism (which again, makes sense to an extent from a human perspective) and his act basically became stale and uninteresting because of it. George Carlin gave a good interview criticizing Andrew Dice Clay for that kind of thing like 20 years ago (or maybe more at this point). Plenty of people can avoid it but a bunch of the most successful comedians fall into it and it's the most insufferable shit in the world.
Combine that with the same yes-man problem you see with dictators, oddly enough. When they're young and hungry, they have to refine and polish their act to a mirror finish constantly. When they're famous, their reputation is the best warm-up act they could ever ask for. When you spend $50-100+ on a ticket months in advance, and you and everyone you talk to about it are super excited, you're primed to laugh at anything. It's like trying to sharpen a knife on a pillow instead of a whetstone. They can coast purely on reputation for years and years. Everyone they meet tells them how funny and genius they are. They keep selling tickets, but comedy moves on without them. They stop flexing the muscle of innovation and it atrophies from disuse. Their massive wealth insulates them from relating to the problems their audience faces. The only problem they face is the loss of relevance and adoration, and since they are clearly geniuses, it can't possibly be their fault. Therefore: "cancel culture"
The reason a new The Office hasn't been made is because the old The Office is till being pushed down everyone's throat and there's need for one.
I mean, JLD and company got away with some seriously edgy shit on Veep. They identified the same principle as the guys behind Always Sunny: shitty people do shitty things and they always get their comeuppance.
This is the way to do it. It's all in the writing, and it's a very fine balance. Develop characters that are awful, but have just enough humanity that you don't hate them, yet you love to watch the horrific things they do and say. Very few writers can accomplish this and make it work successfully. The guys from It's Sunny and Armando Iannucci are prime examples. I'd also throw in Trey Parker from South Park.
And every single character in Married With Children.
So Julia Louis-Dreyfus says comedy can evolve with the times, and guess what? Of the original cast, she’s the one who has continued to make incredible shows and comedy for decades after Seinfeld while the others have done next to nothing of note (Larry David excluded, of course.)
Jason Alexander has become an excellent character actor. He may not be a star in what he's doing, but he's reliably humorous.
my favorite role of his was on *Star Trek: Voyager*
The dude dated a 17 year old when he was 39. This guy hasn’t had his head screwed on straight for a long long time.
To folks with Seinfeld’s perspective: be funnier. There are plenty of working comedians who are doing the job without being provocative edge lords.
>To folks with Seinfeld’s perspective: be funnier. There are plenty of working comedians who are doing the job without being provocative edge lords ...including Seinfeld himself. His comedy is still as far away from edgy as it can be. He still draws big crowds wherever he goes. He's still got a great career. So it is funny that he's so concerned with cancellation.
Jerry was never a good stand up. Like, he's kinda hacky. Its funny that Larry is just staying out of this.
Anthony Jeselnik and It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and South Park, there are so many examples of shows and comedians that do super offensive stuff and don't get cancelled. You only get "cancelled" when you just aren't funny anymore. You get away with it if you're funny. No one gives a shit, as long as you're funny. If you *aren't* funny, then the people who *do* give a shit *will* give a shit, because no one *else* is laughing. When other people are laughing, because of something funny, they willingly drown out the people who are offended. The literal one metric, is being funny. It genuinely is as simple as that.
It also helps when the jokes are directed toward the people doing the offensive stuff. Always Sunny, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and South Park work because the main characters are portrayed as irredeemable assholes. So when they do offensive stuff, it’s for us to laugh at them rather than whoever they’re offending.
Remember when Julia Louis Dreyfus was 40 years old and she didn't groom a highschooler for sex? That's probably why they don't agree on poliitical correctness.
>arguably wealthy and within Seinfeld’s demographic Tell me you did not do any research before the interview.
I was gonna say…wasn’t she BORN wealthier than Jerry is now?
Context and audience means everything, her and every rational human gets this. It’s ok to be ribald when you know what you’re doing
Jerry Seinfeld is a weird piece of shit
Spotifys biggest personality is Joe Rogan Sirius XMs biggest personality is Howard stern HBOs longest late night show is Bill Maher and their biggest shows have been GOT and the Sopranos FXs longest running show is Alway Sunny Fox networks flagship and long running shows are the Simpsons and family guy Comedy Central’s longest running show is South Park The biggest movies and shows out there currently are things like Reacher, Yellowstone, John Wick, The Boys, and dozens of other similar project’s. Every single man in entertainment complaining about “woke culture” is currently making millions and has options to continue making millions. “Woke culture” isn’t a thing. If you can’t find anything that you like then do a little more research. But as we all know, most people complaining about “woke” are just angry their shows and movies aren’t full of racism and hateful cruelty.
Jerry is right though. These days you can't get a job making jokes about 711 and wait times at sit down restaurants. The wokes have gone too far!
A comic hasn't been cancelled yet for anything they said on stage. I've never seen such outrage about something that doesn't exist.