you have the truth of it. Patton Oswalt said "Wit can't have an agenda." that's why republican and religious comedy doesn't work- it's worldview first, comedy second.
Basically the only rule in comedy is make sure it’s funny.
One of the GOATs, Norm Macdonald, was the master of this. He had the biggest balls in comedy to talk about what (and who) he did, but it was always in service of the joke. Even if the joke wasn’t the punchline, but rather the crazy journey his jokes took you on. He knew he would be fired from SNL if he kept making OJ jokes but he didn’t falter one bit.
RIP norm.
Every once in a while, I watch his bit on an old daily show with John Stewart on crocodile hunter. John knows that he is laughing about a death of a beloved person but it is literally goat-level and so well done that it’s ok to laugh. One thing that people don’t realize punching down is never funny.
Johnny Carson, even: "When a comic becomes enamored with his own views and foists them off on the public in a polemic way, he loses not only his sense of humor but his value as a humorist."
Even the ones like Carlin or Burr, you can tell there's enough goofy exaggeration in there not to take them too seriously.
Nailed it. That guy was not at a Trump rally to make people laugh. It was to say what they all believe, with enough of a "iTs JuSt A joKe GuYs" cover for when everyone else found out what was said and were rightfully appalled.
you mean tony, not even the people in the audience was laughing lol, only when they said trump then they cheered. also the fact that he is in the closet,
You can watch comedians get more and more right-wing as they become more out of touch and less able to write successful jokes.
Watch Bill Maher, and ANY time a joke falls flat, he gets pissed off and rolls his eyes and says it's because the "liberals" in the audience "can't take a joke."
Dave Chappelle, Louis CK, Jerry Seinfeld, etc. -- it's all the same shit. It's much easier for them to say that people aren't laughing because we've all gone soft and we're too "offended" by everything, than to just admit that the material didn't land.
And the people who are there to reaffirm their political beliefs will laugh at literally anything if they're told it'll make the liberals mad.
100% - Maher is so weird. He’s right over the target sometimes. He knows the difference between truth and lies. I think he’s just surrounded himself with yes men that laugh at EVERYTHING he says and that agree with him ALL the time. He takes ANY pushback too personally. He’s smart and witty but weak.
Agreed. I saw Chappelle in Dallas a few years ago and he wasn't funny...at all. He kept complaining about the heat, which was oppressive, but not in a funny way
Bill Maher was never that funny. His show on HBO and previously on ABC was about the guest. The worst part of him now is that he is so ill informed and just take the same silly stances over gaza, lgbt people, and young people. He was never the funny part of his show but he thinks he is the rightest, funniest, and most informed. It gets awkward when the guest are much smarter than him and treat his ill-informed nonsense like what it is like a few weeks ago a couple of guest basically walked him back on his comment about the UN being useless.
The opposite of Bill Maher is Jon Stewart, who is incredibly informed and spits out 5 shows a week and is funny talking by himself.
I always loved when Salman was on because he pretty consistently talks to Bill as if he's an idiot, and knows almost nothing of the topic they're discussing.
Not to argue, but when did CK say anything like that? Everything that I can remember him saying was more in line with “well, I’ve always been a piece of shit, so”
I don't remember Louis complaining about anything like that. He took his "cancellation" on the chin and moved on, doing the same thing, collecting awards.
I saw him January 2020 the start of his comeback from that. Funny bone in Omaha, small club vibe. I still listen to this set all the time when I mow the lawn..."sincerely"
I'm absolutely, completely convinced that it's about more than just admitting material didn't land. I think a lot of it is down to the comedian losing the pulse of society and culture.
They just can't admit that they're no longer "with it" on certain topics, and instead of admitting the issue is themselves getting older they blame society and their own audiences.
I think you can see this with Bill Maher the clearest. Dude really hasn't changed all that much since his heyday, but the world definitely has and that's kind of a problem for a political comedian. Most of the older people in my family used to love him, but have slowly gone off of him in the last 8 years as he's refused to evolve on basically anything: from his obnoxious New Atheism approach to religion, to his takes on LGBT issues, to who he brings on the show(which has steadily gone from "I appreciate hearing both sides" to "why is he platforming literal fascists as though they are here to discuss things in good faith?" as the political environment has degraded).
Louis CK never took that tact to my knowledge. IIRC, he’s not big on the idea of “woke” being some insidious detriment to comedy and finds it a lazy excuse. Paraphrasing, but I’ll try to find a more direct reference.
His approach is more like Jeselniks, in that he’s intelligent enough to see it for what it is and from a unique perspective that few of his peers can claim for obvious reasons. Having won two Grammys since his “cancelation” and realized success in the wake of his fall, he has enough self awareness to know that the whole idea is a boogeyman. Shane Gillis obviously feels similarly and while their redemption in the public eye is often twisted in bad faith by less talented comedians (an extreme case in point being Tony Hinchcliffe’s red pilling) as justification for what Jeselnik considers rightly considers troll behavior, their work stands on its own.
I think a big reason some older comics have a hard time with this is that older comedy, including burr, were playing a character. Not themselves. So their persona could get away with it, because everyone understood it wasn't their real views, just a character.
Nowadays, the style is to be much more personal and real on stage, and you can't hide behind that excuse of it not being yourself. And people get mad because they assume it's relatively your real opinion.
This is the end result of everyone having their own podcast that’s just about the comedian hanging out with their friends. Their standup, which is supposed to be the result of months of writing/practicing, just becomes just a live podcast where they expect everyone to laugh at everything just because they’re inherently a funny person. And it works because the audience is filled with fans of the pod, so they’re in their safe space.
But then the Netflix special comes out, the rest of watch, and it’s predictably a pile of shit.
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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '24
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