Why Did Comedy Die? | Hacker News Reader

Why Did Comedy Die?

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I’m no expert but two things seem likely:

1. Genre popularity seems to move in cycles of trends. We’ll certainly look back at the Marvel eta as the time when “the nerds” took over and dominated media. My wife often remarks “I never thought I’d live the day when I saw a serious, high budget interpretation of ${something that seemed totally underground when she was a teenager}.” I’m sure there’s a market/economic explanation for this, where Studio A and Studio B release popular movies of similar genres around the same time so Studios C-Z plan their releases accordingly. If comedy is waning right now (and I’m not sure it is) it will probably swing back around, just as fantasy and action and horror all have.

2. This article strikes me as being akin to the old “music isn’t good anymore, everything after ${year} is trash” argument. It’s easy to look back at earlier times, pick out the gems, and decide that it was some magical time. All you have to do is forget about all the crap. (See also: Woodstock 1969 and claims of “life was simpler” about any era imaginable.) It’s hard to compare the current comedy environment to past “golden eras” while we’re still living it.

I can’t say I’ve come across too many recent comedies that absolutely killed me but they’re out there. “Booksmart” (2019) was easily the best new comedy movie I’ve seen in years. Profane and hilarious. Nora from Queens is high up there, too. We probably won’t remember this decade for comedy but I’m sure we’ll look back and identify some clear winners.

I'd argue that the recent popularity of certain underground genres isn't to do with a cyclical trend, but due to better profiling of audiences via big tech. Movie execs can now see the size and wealth of a certain audiences that were previously invisible to them, and coupled with an increase in writers from diverse backgrounds, can more easily offer these underground genres to a more mainstream audience.

Lets see... the most recent comedy movies I've seen...

Knives Out (2019) was probably the one I enjoyed the most.

JoJo Rabbit was trying too hard IMO, but I still smiled/laughed throughout it. WW2 is kinda overdone at this point (though serious films like Downfall are worth revisiting)

Free Guy was fine? Apparently "The Suicide Squad" also counts as a comedy. I guess Deadpool and Deadpool 2 were also fine. Maybe other people are tired of comicbook / superhero movies, but really I'm personally only tired of the "Marvel Formula" (and Deadpool / The Suicide Squad strays pretty heavily from the formula). Going back a bit further is "Jumanji"...

There's a lot of flicks / comedy films out there. Nothing is quite as good as Airplane but I'd say Knives Out is on-par, maybe even better than Clue (1985).

I don't really like the "Despicable Me" series, but my nieces really wanted to watch "Minions: Rise of Gru" and I actually enjoyed that one. (My nieces love this series, so I can say that I've watched all of it and its mostly trash. But Rise of Gru actually got me to laugh)

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I'm no critic. I enjoy just a basic flick now and then. Honestly, I'd rewatch "Knives Out" more than any Adam Sandler movie from the 90s or even Austin Powers. 90s era comedy just didn't mesh well with me, despite me growing up at that time. I do have a soft spot for the dry 80s stuff with Leslie Nielsen, and I guess I really liked Jackie Chan's action/comedies through the 90s and 00s.

I dunno, if I think "90s comedy I enjoyed", I think of Men in Black or Aladdin? Nothing in the list that this author wrote.

> It’s easy to look back at earlier times, pick out the gems, and decide that it was some magical time. All you have to do is forget about all the crap.

Case in point: the Master of Disguise.

How dare you speak Ill of that masterpiece.

My girlfriend made me watch one of those Iliza Schlesinger Netflix specials the other day and good fucking God it was one of the least funny things I had ever seen. I think I laughed once during the entire hour and a half. It was all about women and what women think and how men are basically apes, unfeeling monsters with flesh sex toys and bank accounts, at the same time preaching about how hurtful sexism and patriarchy is. It was completely unrelatable and impenetrable to me.

I was kind of miffed that she thought it was so funny and then I remembered all the moments of "locker-room talk" that me and my friends get up to. It's not like we are overtly sexist on purpose but you know how that shit is. I realized that I find that pretty funny depending on the context but she definitely wouldn't. It was good to hear her laugh for about an hour so I can deal with smiling along quietly.

Based on this I'll make the claim that comedy is deeply personal, it's ok that some comedy is not "for you" and as more people of different backgrounds make comedy you'll see more and more things you don't like and that's fine.

I don't find any gender's "locker-room talk" funny and would rather not hear it at all, but if one gender's version of it is on Netflix, the other's should also be.

I think casual sexism is harmful, but I think unidirectional casual sexism is likely much more harmful.

Eh Idk I think that an arms race of sexism might be pretty awful

It wouldn't be an arms race, it would just be treating everyone equally, albeit equally poorly. Unbalanced sexism looks more like an arms race as the those who are in the victim group will try to reverse the roles, and if they succeed, the new victim group will try the same. By far the most common justification for sexism seem to be perceived unfairness and sexism by others.

I feel like comedy as an art form is basically dead outside of small clubs. To be a real authentic comedian is to be a critic of society, but the general consciousness to how fucked we are has reached a much higher degree than the 1990s (I personally blame the crumbling of "respectability" in politics). So any comedy that doesn't have pretty radical undercurrents ends up feelings stale and tone-deaf, but those kinds of acts/movies aren't appreciated by ad-driven execs.

(One solution to this might be to just default to the hyper exaggerated comedy formula of the 90s the author talks about, like Happy Guilmore. if you can't say anything meaningful, at least say something just make everything as chaotic as possible.)

> To be a real authentic comedian is to be a critic of society

I don't think that the comedy masterpiece 'Airplane' (1982) was very critical of society.

There are certainly political comedies out there (Team America), but it's certainly not a requirement of comedy.

I dont even think that most comedies are critical. See Carbot Animation's StarCraft Brood War cartoons and it's more of a celebration of the glitches as opposed to pointed criticism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCEZ2hIcUW0

Ya, that's a really good example of exaggeration comedy. Also Airplane! was directly made as a reaction to the overly serious action/drama films of the time (literally a shot for shot remake of Zero Hour!) And those films definitely were a product of the 70s, but honestly that analytical line is just overwhelming.

But still, direct parody movies are a mostly dead genre on mainstream delivery channels, for reasons described in the article.

> literally a shot for shot remake of Zero Hour!

For illustration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-v2BHNBVCs

This is, bluntly, rubbish. The big sea-change is that mid-budget movies just aren’t made for cinemas anymore. They belong to streaming services and TV series now. Dating Amber, Do Revenge, Murder Mystery, Palm Springs, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, The Half of It, Always Be My Maybe, Tall Girl (1), Don’t Look Up, Isn’t It Romantic, Only Murders In The Building, Love Life… the list goes on and on.

If you’re not enjoying these, the problem isn’t that they don’t make great comedy or romance anymore, it’s that you got old.

All of that is feminized nonsense. Comedy is being killed by gender politics.

How do you define "feminized nonsense" and "gender politics"?

“I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!”

Comedy moved to Youtube and TikTok and big-Hollywood can't compete with more tailored, specific, comedy.

What's the funniest thing I've watched recently? ProZD, CarbotAnimations, CalebCity, Door Monster.

They're quite specific to my tastes (Anime, Video Games, and Dungeons and Dragons), that most others wouldn't get. But there's simply no way that a big Hollywood / general production can make a joke as specific as Door Monster and/or CarbotAnimation skits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCEZ2hIcUW0

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Longer bits of comedy can be found in longer-form Youtube videos, such as Oversimplified.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRmOWcWdQAo

I don't think any of these online cartoons or Youtubers have much mainstream appeal. But they're funny enough for me.

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I also seem to remember some relatively mainstream comedies out there: Harley Quinn was pretty good (though that tickles my taste in DC Superheroes). Knives Out was absolutely hilarious. But I admit I don't watch too many movies in general.

The Big Short was funny (though inaccurate to the history of the time), if people want a more recent somewhat political flick.

My kid loves “Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared”. I cannot see the point. I don’t deduce that comedy is dead, just that some stuff isn’t for me.

"Why do other people not like the things I like?" is VERY different from "why is comedy dead?"

Comedy isn't dead dummy, people just have different tastes.

> His character Borat was a sexist Slav who had a bit on Da Ali G Show.

Ah yes, the Slavic Kazakhs.

Proof that the Borat bit still works almost 20 years later. Americans still do not know anything about "other countries."

Been discussing the same thing with my buddies. I still laugh out loud watching clips from say Police Squad![1][2], yet I can't recall watching a comedy the last decade that cracked me up the same way.

Though it might indeed just be that we're getting older. Who am I to tell the young folks today what is funny?

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up9xtN1Jaz0

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcozDdtjhDY

Police Squad's a TV show, but if you like parodies and don't mind being force-feminized by a recent movie, check out Isn't It Romantic. Just don't tell the author it exists.

>Richard Pryor > Mel Brooks > Steve Martin > Eddy Murphy > Bill Murray > Adam Sandler > Ben Stiller > Will Ferrell > Judd Apatow > Tina Fey > ???

the ??? is Dave Chappelle, and some like Tina Fey or Will Ferrell were never as funny as other people oh the list, or part of the comedy heritage that made up future comedy. Robin Williams was a million times more influential than Ben Stiller or Will Ferrell, for example.

Even as a kid I thought Austin Powers or Adam Sandler were trash. "Don't Look Up" is funnier than most of his hits from the past.

I've noticed this too! As I get older, it seems like I'm seeing fewer and fewer comedies I really love, like Steve Martin's classic Sergeant Bilko. I look at a list of popular comedies of the past few years and I haven't seen any of them! Zeus' beard! It must be the entertainment industry writ large being force-feminized, no other explanation.

Comedy is a no-go zone when everyone is 'offended' at the drop of a hat. Some comedians might still have some spine, but no studio does.

Yeah missing those Adam Sandler flicks...

Distinctly missing from this piece is Old School and other early 2000s SNL flicks. Classics.

Comedy is milquetoast now because studios are scared to death of being cancelled by a small screeching minority of humour-less cretins, but that is the end bust of a comedy cycle.

Sucks because I really like his writing, but dude (we’re informal right, man?) the politics piece just makes me wonder if the author does a delicate dance of language there, juxtaposing Obama as “self-satisfaction”

I mean you try and be the first black president. And he was hella funny too, sooo. :/ to wink at his fellow moderate conservatives, and yes I vote blue, sometimes red if they give a f*ck.

Anyways, just kinda takes a weird turn for me with Trump. Like, we all need to take shit less seriously, and Trump is hilarious.. but I dunno, calling him funny is almost too obvious I guess, or too absurd.. I probably just can’t take a joke.

in my humble opinion, of course.

"Trump is objectively one of the funniest men alive. But any laughter at Trump is usually drowned out by scolding and warnings about the death of democracy. Is there any doubt that the 2000s were just way funnier than the 2010s?"

How inconvenient for you.

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