Did PC Wokeness Kill Comedy or Is Jerry Seinfeld Unfunny?

Post Reply New Topic

Jerry Seinfeld recently came out against the extreme left and their woke agenda as a reason why comedy is dead and Hollywood can't produce good cinema anymore.

I've seen both reactions to this.
The Right's reaction: He pretty much hit the nail on the head.

The Left's reaction: Jerry Seinfeld has been out of touch and unfunny for years. Without Larry David, he's nothing.

What's your take?

There's a lot of comedy out there. Last year there was a show showcasing quite a few comedians called The Great American Joke Off although not all comics were actually American (it was presented as a sort of game show). I laughed quite a bit at that. What's really happening might be that there aren't many funny movies? Maybe people aren't going to the cinema for comedy. Well you still have Kevin Hart AFAIK.

There's so much comedy being made and so much of it is funny, from stand up comedy specials to comedians doing podcasts to late night TV shows like Colbert, Kimmel, Meyers, the Daily Show and so on. Most of these are leftists and they are hilarious.

I don't watch movies very often so I don't know if there are funny movies, but I imagine that there are. There are also hilarious comedy TV shows, like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which is so weird and silly it avoids politics completely.

"Wokeness" only killed comedy for those who think the only funny jokes are at the expense of women, immigrants, minorities, and vulnerable people generally. Those jokes are awful and were never funny.

As for Jerry Seinfeld, I don't think he's a nice or likeable person, but I think he's generally quite funny. But this was a stupid comment for him to make.

Comedy isn’t dead. IMO, Seinfeld isn’t that funny. To be perfectly honest, I never thought he was particularly funny, but he probably just doesn’t appeal to my type of humor. I know lots of people loved him. In any case, there’s an endless number of topics people can use for material that aren’t offensive. It’s just really strange to me when comedians complain about this stuff. Are they really that uncreative, unimaginative, or untalented that they can’t think of anything else to talk about?

Jerry was never that funny. Seinfeld is itself a hilarious show, but the situational comedy is always leaps and bounds above his standup. He is probably anti-"woke" because he can't get away with all the comedy he used to. That and the fact that more people are learning that he dated a 17 year old when he was in his 30s.....

Bill Maher is doing well centering his whole program around being "anti-woke".

You have to be over 35 to remember when Seinfeld went off the air. His audience is aging out of the demographics most advertisers want.

I couldn't stand Seinfeld, so I can't comment.

It's not just comedy, every movie and TV show that comes out today is unentertaining. It's exactly like one of my teachers in high school told me years ago: "The older you get the more stupid TV gets". And this was long before Trump was president.

Some of it has to do with today's politics, but frankly its also because the acting of our actors is so hollow, every special effect has now been replaced with obviously fake CGI, and our script writers are a bunch of mediocre hacks who either copy or remake other people's works or churn up too many cliche Super Hero movies or Game of Thrones-style torture porn copycats.

Nothing is original anymore because it's all about money and power over art and entertainment. When a society's Art reaches a true low point that's a warning that things will fall apart in that society too.


For the record I never watched Seinfield either. But I'm not going to pretend like something fishy isnt going on with our entertainment today.

She must not have seen Gilligan’s Island.

She was an older black woman who's probably seen a lot more than you think. She was probably aware of the racist stereotypes on a lot of TV but as a Christian lady who was also involved her church she didn't like how today's TV shows normalized things like rape, drugs, and violence.

And you can't deny that TV shows today are doing this. She did have something of a point me thinks...

I was referring to the word “stupid.” TV can’t get much more stupid than Gilligan’s Island.

Overall, I think TV is getting better when it comes to racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. Those things are most often presented in a negative light when they come up. For example, husbands aren’t hitting their wives as part of a joke anymore. Domestic violence is treated in a serious way.

you're taking the lady too literally. She probably meant "the older you get the more you realize how stupid TV ALWAYS was and is"(because you the viewer get older and wiser). And Gilligan's Island would be a prime example.

Not that TV really was smarter, but got dumber over time.

I agree with the second part of what you said about TV getting more enlightened about spousal abuse and etc.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 30 Apr 2024, 7:59 pm, edited 2 times in total.

^
Off topic. But there is odd glitch in the website thats not allowing me to capitalize the first word in my post. In the box you compose your post its capitalized, but I when hit the submit button it comes out lowercase. Interesting.

Not that I didn't enjoy them necessarily, but many TV shows when I was young were incredibly stupid and inane, from Lost in Space to I Dream of Jeannie to Three's Company to Family Matters (the one with Urkel) to Perfect Strangers, and so on. Even good shows like Golden Girls were very simplistically put together and unsophisticated.

TV shows are sophisticated and well made now, in large part, although I think many (not comedies usually) are overly violent. There are also a lot more of them.

I don't like action films or movies with a lot of CGI but there are plenty of other films, though personally I prefer TV series.

I think TV today is trashy plain and simple.

Yes.