Comedy Is Not Pretty, and Nowadays It Isn’t Even Funny
Web Publication: The Wall Street Journal, by Joseph Epstein
I’m not a big consumer of comedy. More accurately, I’m not much of a consumer of big comedy; you know, like there is big business, big this, big that, there is also big comedy, the kind that that gets played on big networks and big cable. Instead, I find the truly funny stuff as short clips on the web. That’s were comedic genius now lives. Big comedy now means big anger. This article by Joseph Epstein at the Wall Street Journal does an amazing job articulating the whys and wherefores of how big comedy is dying. Consider it essential reading if you like comedy.
Of course its politics, but it’s really just a major front in the war on Trump, the self-impaling movement of Resistance, eternal disgust at Trump’s constituency: their values, their non-coastal ‘ignorance’. It’s ratings. Yes, enough people can be collected of Resistance mindset to meet the quotas or perhaps go a little above. Its SNL having a resurrected day in the sun even after the format went stale eons ago. Trump hatred unites. The new high priest of this movement within the comedic circuit is Colbert. How disappointing on so many levels. On the one hand, as the center of the Colbert Report, he was genuinely funny even with his underhanded liberalism. Then there was Colbert’s predecessor, David Letterman, with his brand of calm droll delivery, also equally effective in projecting New York values into the national audience without figuratively punching anyone in the face. So now, the new Colbert is a failure on both fronts. He lost his old shtick, debased what was there before, and is now a cold angry provocateur with a thin sheen of comedy pasted on like a bad dose of chap stick on Joe Kennedy. All of his contemporaries follow suit to one degree or another. Kimmel stayed away from politics for a while but caved for the ratings. Politics on his personality is poor fitting suit indeed. Just sad.
We still need comedy, real comedy sans-politics. If a comedian feels it’s their duty to ‘save the world’, they could do so on their own time. Certainly the suits, the media magnates, and the comedy producers are pushing the anger agenda. To what extent is it them vs. the comedian? Someone has to save comedy from itself. If they’ve forgotten how, there are roots to return to not to mention the superior work of mostly semi-amateurs on the web. Hatred won’t give laughter a break these days, but it’s never too late to hope for the day that it will.
Commentary by Lee Jones