Stand Up Comics and Cancel Culture

Great Debates
1

It seems to me, a certain amount of stand up comics are pushing back against the whole political correctness thing. That’s what they do after all, make fun of people’s foibles. Sometimes those foibles are race/sex/religion based. I think Jerry Seinfield and others have said working a college in unimaginable these days.

As a whole, i think the Stand Up community probably leans left but they doesn’t mean they don’t take potshots at some hot button issues.

I’m not talking about Andrew Dice Clay types.

Do they have a point or are they part of the problem?

2

Seinfeld is a giant of comedy. He’s also an old man who complains about the young people today, as old men always have.

Standup comedy is an art form in constant change. The standup comedians of today are as edgy and as willing to give offense as they have ever been; they just have different targets. What constitutes an acceptable target has always shifted, and the old comedians who were incapable of adjusting have always whined like big babies about it.

3

Was i just whooshed? From the OP, it sure sounds like the whining isn’t coming from the comics, but instead from the targets of comics (ie… the cancel culture crowd?)

4

“We can’t say anything anymore” to their 10,000 Twitter followers.

5

Really? You’re grouping stand up comedians as a monolithic ‘they’?
That seems to incredibly devalue any point you were making, I think.

If any bunch needs to be judged individually, it’s got to be SU comedy, so, so much variation. From biting to mildly amusing puns and jokes about song lyrics, wives/husbands, dating, kids, etc, etc.

‘They’? You can’t be serious, surely.

6

Blaming the audience for not getting laughs is not a good strategy.

7

Hasn’t this always been a thing? I thought Lenny Bruce got cancelled for cursing too much. The Smothers Brothers were cancelled for making fun of the president. Do you think blow job jokes and menstruation jokes would fly in the '50s and '60s?

Now, comedians can curse all they want, make sex jokes, and make fun of political figures, but they can’t make gay jokes or make fun of minorities. Boo fucking hoo.

As RickJay says, it’s just old guys complaining about kids today, can’t take a joke.

8

Taking Seinfeld specifically, his complaint is bullshit. These are the two examples he has given (in multiple interviews):

(1) He makes a joke about people scrolling through their smartphones “like a gay French king” and getting a negative reaction.

(2) His teen-aged daughter reacted to a statement by her parents that she might like to “hang out with boys” by saying “that’s sexist.”

In neither case does Seinfeld have a valid point about “cancel culture” or political correctness.

In the first case, it’s just a bad joke. What “gay French king” is part of the public consciousness that a hand gesture will evoke that image? There is none. “Gay French king” is not a thing. It doesn’t evoke any associations in my mind. That makes it seem like “gay” (and “French”) are supposed to be intrinsically funny.

It’s true that maybe a decade or two ago, saying “gay” by itself might have been enough of a joke. And it’s true that society has changed to the point that calling something “gay” isn’t intrinsically funny. But that doesn’t mean that society has lost its sense of humor and Seinfeld is now risking “cancellation” because people didn’t like this one joke. And it’s certainly not some fault on the audience’s part that they didn’t find this joke funny.

In the second case, middle-aged parents embarrassed their teen-aged daughter by bringing up a subject of a sexual nature and she reacted in panic to shut them down. This is nothing new.

The other comedians I’ve heard complaining about “cancel culture” and political correctness–some of whom I like a lot, like Dave Chappelle and Bill Burr–are just being whiny assholes.

The people who have been “cancelled,” if you want to use that term, are people who have actually harmed others, like Bill Cosby or Louis C.K.

Louis C.K. subjected several women to unwanted an non-consensual sexual acts and then his management team sabotaged their careers. That’s reprehensible. It’s not drugging someone and raping em like Cosby did, but it’s still something bad. And C.K. hasn’t even really apologized for doing that. Instead, he’s gone on stage to complain about how he has been treated.

Someone like Shane Gillis was hurt by his own actual racist statements. They weren’t failed jokes; they were actual racism.

9

Complaints about “cancel culture” have morphed from semi-legit criticisms of speech being stifled in a somewhat organized way in some venues (campaigns to get speaking events canceled on some campuses, etc), to whining about any form of criticism. If any form of criticism counts as cancel culture, then criticizing cancel culture is itself cancel culture. Seinfeld is trying to cancel his own daughter? That’s cold, man.

10

“Gay French King” is not funny to a college kid. Not because it’s not funny, but because it’s not relatable and they just don’t identify with Seinfeld and his generational take on what’s funny. Seeing Seinfeld’s most recent stand-up, I realized that he did half the act just to amuse himself. That said, “gay” is still funny. So are “jewish”, “black”, “irish”, “trans”, “rape” and a bunch of other human conditions that allow us to laugh at ourselves, even as they make us a little uncomfortable. Young/new comedians still use that as fodder for their jokes. I think what matters is not the subject of the joke but whether the joke and comedian can relate to his/her audience. There is now a generation of audience to whom Seinfeld (the show) is irrelevant. They have no connection to Jerry and much of the success of his jokes relies on the familiarity with the character, the man, and his life story.

11

Ricky Gervais is pretty out there, PC-wise, and he’s so canceled that he only has a few Netflix series and a stand-up special. Poor guy!

He just does a better job with non-PC humor and does a better job setting up the joke, than just throwing out “gay French king”.

12

I’m 48 years old, quite a bit closer to Jerry Seinfeld than college kids, and I didn’t get “gay French king” either. That’s a shitty joke.

Using homosexuality as part of a joke is fine if you do it right, but it has to be FUNNY.

I mean, Bill Burr is very un-PC, and he packs in crowds and they can’t film his Netflix specials fast enough. Dave Chappelle made fun of trans people once, got pushback for it, and now keeps doing it basically to spite his critics, and they can’t film his specials fast enough either. The thing is, those guys are really funny, and you can get away with a lot of you keep 'em laughing.

13

I disagree. None of those things are funny in and of themselves. Indeed, “rape” is a horrible, unfunny thing, if all you’re doing is mentioning rape.

Those things, like anything else, can be worked into something funny, but it takes more than merely mentioning them.

14

Well, yeah.

15

And note that Cosby did enough bad stuff to end up in prison, which seems a bit beyond just 'saying some offensive things - most careers, especially entertainment careers, get stopped or put on hold by doing prison time. Meanwhile Louis CK still has a comedy career, he still does shows and makes money at it, he just isn’t as successful as he was before his awful activities came to light and he had a TV series. Does it really count as ‘cancelled’ if you end up ‘in jail for rape’ or ‘still has a career, but not as successful because people don’t like him’?

As a 46 year old man who’s time out of college is old enough to graduate from college itself, I don’t find it funny either. Like someone else said, ‘Gay French King’ isn’t a meaningful cultural reference, and is clearly a callback to when people would snicker at the mention of ‘gay’.

No, this is wrong. Just saying that someone is ‘black’ or that they’ve been ‘raped’ or something along those lines isn’t actually funny. It’s certainly possible to make jokes on those topics, but you have to make an actual joke, just tossing in one of those words doesn’t make it funny. The sort of ‘jokes’ that rely on ‘hurr hurr, she has or had a penis’ are just being assholes to a minority group and hoping that the listener shares your prejudice, they’re not actual jokes.

16

Of course it’s not funny to use those terms to slur or insult someone. Why do people insist on wanting to stipulate the obvious?

As has already been mentioned up thread, Ricky Jervais has mentioned all those things and Hitler, and has managed to get away with it.

17

We feel the need to say something because of what happened in this thread, which is this:

I said: “[C]alling something ‘gay’ isn’t intrinsically funny.”

You said: “’[G]ay’ is still funny. So are ‘jewish’, ‘black’, ‘irish’, ‘trans’, ‘rape’ and a bunch of other human conditions.”

It seemed that you were saying that those things by themselves are intrinsically funny. They’re not. And that’s part of the reason why “gay French king” isn’t funny, because it relies on “gay” (and maybe also “French”) being intrinsically funny.

And now when we point that out, you say we’re stipulating the obvious. Well, you made it necessary because of what you said.

18

It was pretty obvious to me. His first sentence is:

So clearly he thinks the context of the joke is important, not the actual word itself. That’s how I read it.

19

I imagine a 14th century ponce French royal in a powered wig and various finery. That is the funny part.

But I can see how that may not be something everyone finds amusing. Even I don’t find it laugh out loud funny. It’s far from it. It’s just a good visual exaggeration of a mundane action absently performed by everyone standing on a train platform. Especially to an observer who normally keeps his phone in his pocket and watches people doing people things in the 21st century.

Why the fuck am I even having to explain this? I can’t even believe I’m having this fucking conversation.

20

No, it’s the comedians who are whining. They’re whining about audiences that are “too PC” to get their jokes.