Lenny Bruce and George Carlin are history. These days, there are no banned words or forbidden subjects. Comics can say anything they want. So what do new cutting-edge comics do, to go where no comic has gone before? What is the next generation of comedy?
I don’t think it is a matter of using four letter words, or not using four letter words. I think, as always, there is a personality factor that makes or breaks a comic.
Some comedians seem to have a wry sense of humor, others are just bawdy, others seem like the guy/girl next door, some use their race, or sexual orientation - there are any number of factors that set one comic apart from the next.
It also has to do with delivery, timing and personality - the same “jokes” or “bits” would never work with someone else.
Robin Williams rode his niche for a long time (and still is) although some (like myself) find it tiring now. Don Rickles has been the smart-assed, sarcastic bastard for generations, but even at his age can still sell out theaters. Steven Wright found his niche and still has legions of followers - Ellen Degeneris is doing quite well with her show, and Seinfeld has made a few bucks along the way.
It takes the right person. with the right personality and insight, at the right time, in the right place - and that is like putting lightning in a bottle. For every hit comedian, there 1000’s of other funny people who just never click in all the right ways at the right time. I don’t believe there are very many “overnight success” stories when it comes to comics - most have worked their way up the ranks, playing crappy showrooms, to crappy audiences, and simply never gave up the dream. I am sure they could give you their opinion on what it takes to be the next great comedian - but if anybody could be 100% sure of that, my guess is they would be doing it right now.
I have to disagree that there are no boundaries today: what about making jokes mocking races, women, people with disabilities, using the n-word, joking about rape, child abuse etc. Comedians have to be careful with those issues.
There was an article in the Guardian last week you might be interested in.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/jul/27/comedy-standup-new-offenders
I’ve heard all of the above in stand-up.
Some comics (mostly hacks, IMO) are offensive for the sake of being offensive, as if they think it’s cutting edge to be anti-PC, or it makes them one of the “cool kids”.
Others may have a larger point to make, and venturing into taboo territory can help drive it home.
I suppose you’re right that they “have to be careful,” as it can be a very difficult line to walk. If people don’t get your joke about airplane food, there’s an awkward pause and you move on. If they don’t get your joke about underaged incestual homosexual rape, you look like a giant asshole. Audiences can turn pretty quickly in that situation.
But that’s not to say that any of those topics are strictly off-limits. In my experience, nothing is.
As a believer that all the basic, original ideas in any field of creative endeavor were used up decades ago (not a statement that creativity is illusory: there’s still a lot of juice left in the twelve tones of the chromatic scale), I am convinced that the next comedic revolution will be a matter of marketing.
Comedians have been narrowcasting for a long time, just not all of them: Black comics targeting Black audiences, Jews targeting Jews, rednecks ditto rednecks, etc etc. I predict it’s going to get even more niche-y, with comics clearly targeting their acts to sub-demographics like “29-34 cohabiting Mac users with no kids and not enough insurance.”
Russell Brand seems to have no problem offending people.
There are no banned words? That’s funny, because I watched that Comedy Central Roast of Joan Rivers the other night - broadcast on cable, at 10 p.m. on a Sunday (and rerun several times even later) - and almost all the cursing was bleeped out. Now, it’s true that the audiences for these shows are completely fine with the cursing, but the words are still considered obscene.
Things have loosened up in a lot of ways, but there will always be taboos and things you’re not supposed to say, otherwise there wouldn’t be any humor at all. I don’t remember hearing jokes about child molestation when I was younger, but there’s more of that now. And racial and ethnic humor has come back in a pretty significant way; that’s where a lot of the action seems to be at.
Ho boy, you must have missed the Joan Rivers roast on Comedy Central.
Robin Quivers (from the Howard Stern show) has previously revealed that she was molested by her father as a young girl. A lot of the comics had some pretty tasteless jokes on the matter.
“Banned words” and “words Comedy Central does not want to allow on their channel unbleeped because it will scare away advertisers” are two very different categories of words.
Functionally they are the same: they are words people find inappropriate. That’s what makes them good for comedy. The words are still banned from daytime broadcasts (my children will never learn to swear!), and they are usually edited out even on cable. Whether they are banned or simply bleeped, it’s for the same reason: people think they are dirty. It makes people nervous, and it makes advertisers nervous people will associate the dirtiness with their product.
Obscenity laws, like the ones from George Carlin’s Supreme Court case, are still on the books and you can’t broadcast certain indecent words at certain hours of the day on network television or radio. And if you happen to swear during a live broadcast, the station that does the broadcast can be fined.
I suspect we’ve only just begun to plumb the murky depths of the fart joke.
Language banned from broadcast and networks being fined are ***completely ***different than things like Lenny Bruce being **arrested **for obscene speech. When was the last time a comedian was arrested for something he said during a performance?
Yeah, they should concentrate on more wholesome outlets, like underaged incestual homosexual rape.
I understand there are difference, but what they reflect is the same: some words are considered bad. There will always be words that are considered bad, so there will always be comedy about those words.
You’d have to try pretty hard to get thrown in jail for cursing, I understand that. But the OP says there are no banned words, and that’s wrong. There are still plenty of restrictions on language, and it doesn’t matter how those are enforced beacuse enforcement will always be arbitrary and ridiculous. For example, you can say crap on primetime TV, but you can’t say shit.
Only if you get all your comedy from TV. If you do, I feel very sorry for you.
Who said I do? It doesn’t only apply to TV anyway, it’s also true on terrestrial radio, it affects marketing of movies, and last I knew, if you put out an album with icky words on it, the largest CD retailer in the country wouldn’t carry it. (Maybe that last one doesn’t matter so much anymore.)
OK, I misspoke: The mistake you’re (apparently) making is thinking that comedy is only distributed* via the same mass-marketing channels that existed in the 1960s. Stop that. The number of people making a living off their blog is large enough to prove that era is over. Saying that free speech is limited to what the advertisers will tolerate is disproven by sites like Something Awful and XKCD, both of which support their creators to the point they’ve quit their day jobs.
*(Comedy that only exists a few nights a week in a club is not being distributed.)
Well, his biggest problem is not being funny while doing it.
You’re right, it’s only the largest and most popular outlets that are restricted. Clearly this is the same as having no restrictions at all.
Although there may be some words that are banned in some contexts, there always will be. But it is no longer ground-breaking or novel to do an entire routine about the word “shit” like George Carlin did, or the word “fuck” like Lenny Bruce. It’s no longer edgy. The OP is asking about the next trend in comedy now that those words will no longer get you arrested (my interpretation of the OP), and it’s hard to find taboo subjects today that can be funny. I don’t think you’ll see comedians getting into abortion jokes, for example. Maybe I’m wrong.
Maybe the next trend will be more “persona” comics, like Emo Phillips.