I’ll agree with you about that. And what I was trying to say initially is the same thing you said in your first sentence - there will always be words that offend people, so it’s not true that everything is permitted.
I’ll stand by the ethnic humor thing. After the Kings of Comedy tour, it seems like there have been spinoffs for just about every race and ethnicity and other social group.
Sasha Baron Cohen would probably be a better example. I’m not a big fan of his, but I guess the current thing (the next thing?) is getting more and more comedy off the stage , where people know what the rules are, and getting out into the wider world.
I see the trend toward unfunny comedy. Much of what Will Farrell and Judd Apatow are producing relies on a sort of mildly harmless obnoxiousness, but it’s not in and of itself funny. I think some newer talents go for outrageous but can’t do funny.
(I know YMMV and all, but really, a lot of it doesn’t come from a funny place.)
I like Apatow and don’t like Ferrell, but your post made me think of something else we see a lot more of these days, which is that ‘comedy of awkwardness’ kind of thing. Christopher Guest’s people were doing it a long time ago, but now there’s a lot more of it in scripted and unscripted comedies.
Actually, it was the Joan Rivers roast that was the impetus for the OP. Almost every one of the comics were making crude jokes about the vagina of a 76-year-old woman, who was sitting there appearing to be having a good time (with that face, it was impossible to tell if it was a smile or an involuntary spasm) . . . with her daughter sitting a few feet away.
And yeah, the Robin Quivers racial and child-molestation jokes.
See, this is more of that Nanny State bullshit that has me pissed off. Why is it Television’s job to teach your kids to swear? Why can’t you, their parent, do it? Or the older kids down the block?
Maybe you’re not into roasts, because that’s what a roast IS. They’re crude and nasty, and they’re an old tradition. They’re not supposed to be a reflection of modern comedy at all.
I’ve been watching the Friar’s Club and Comedy Central Roasts since they started putting them on TV, and there’s always an older woman on the dais so they can do jokes about dust in her vagina, and usually an older man so they can say something like “I’m sorry Abe Vigoda couldn’t be here to see this” [cut to shot of Abe Vigoda laughing]. They’ve ratcheted up the racial humor lately- in the Flavor Flav roast that was pretty much all they did. (End result: uncomfortable, not very funny.) Most of the jokes about Quivers weren’t very good; they were just ‘you’re black :: comparison to a servant.’
The stuff about the comedy of awkwardness seems to ring true.
There’s fewer ‘punchline’ comedies out there. Stuff like ‘According to Jim’ seems to be less prevelent and stuff like ‘It’s always Sunny in Philadelphia’ or ‘Arrested Development’ or ‘Family Guy’ seem to be coming to the fore.
Don’t forget the jokes about gigantic vaginas. Though Lisa Lampanelli wasn’t at the latest roast, I don’t think.
Apparently at Bob Saget’s roast, he was miffed about some of the sexual jokes leveled at the Olsen twins, and he actually kind of winced and was visibly upset by some of them as they were being told. He later spoke out about it. Which is weird, coming from him of all people. Plus, he laughed at the jokes being told about his young girlfriends and someone made a Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana joke which he seemed to find funny, and she IS underage, so…yeah. I don’t know.
Lisa Lampanelli was supposed to be there, but on the way to the theater she fell into Suzy Essman’s vagina. [It’s almost like Mad Libs.]
That was a really good line. I think it was Jeffrey Ross, and it went, “Most comedians dream of performing in Las Vegas, Nevada. Bob Saget dreams of performing in Hannah Montana!”
It’s not at all surprising that a woman who has a joke about how she should have taught her daughter how to give head (also about how her tits have dropped, how old men’s balls drop, how she’s gotten farty in her old age…) wouldn’t mind someone making jokes about her vag. All taken from this performance at Just For Laughs.
Also…that seems fairly tame for a roast [edit - I see this point has already been made, but, hey, if we’re talking roasts…]…if for no other reason, because they actually seem to have focused on the nominal guest of honour - Pam Anderson’s was mostly about Courtney Love and Andy Dick (who mimed giving head to Tommy Lee at one point), with a few broadsides about Tommy Lee; Bob Saget’s was more about John Stamos (with a few obligatory Lisa Lampinelli cracks); Bill Shatner’s was mostly about George Takei - the only real good joke about the Shat was from Takei himself; Larry the Cable Guy was mostly on-topic, though the best joke was Gary Busey taking an absolutely BEAUTIFUL shot at himself…
My personal favorite was “The Olsen twins are like Tom Green’s balls. One is fake and empty inside and the other has been licked by Heath Ledger.” That was Greg Giraldo.
And yeah, from what I can tell, an insult from a fellow comedian is kind of like a compliment. It’s just what you do. Everyone seems cool with it. Except for Carrot Top who at one of them (I don’t remember which–I was watching some "Best of the Roasts last weekend) who got huffy that people were making so many jokes about him.
I was going to ask for a “cite” on that 50 year old age median, but Googled it and, holy crap - you’re right!
I don’t know how I missed that tidbit in the news.
No wonder viewership is going down - if the average age is 50, but the ideal advertising/marketing demographic is 18-49, well - you can see how programming content is not exactly matching up with audience. Sort of makes sense though - I teach college and I would guess fewer than 10% even watch much television anymore - at least when I ask them, none of them have a favorite show, nor care much for anything on television other than maybe a sporting event or the occasional cable movie.
I can’t say really where comedy will go that it hasn’t, other wise we would already be there.
Though as far as current trends in comedy, especially with younger crowds, I think it is in the direction of quirky, often random and sometimes nerdy; people like Zach Galifianakis, Demitri Martin, Paton Oswald, or the late Mitch Hedberg. Also the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim type of shows- Tim & Eric, Mighty Boosh, ATHF, Wondershowzen (technically not AS), etc. For a decent up and coming sketch troop look for ‘The Whitest Kids You Know’ on OnDemand’s IFC channel.
I just thank the gods of comedy that the kids seem to be have grown out of the Dane Cook thing.
What some of us (including me) were saying is that that stuff isn’t cutting edge at all. It wouldn’t have been on TV decades ago, but roasts haven’t changed too much over the years.
Zach Galifianakis is great. He’s got some performance artist qualities and he’s very, very funny.
