redbloodedamerica:

The Truth About Woke Comedy

A clip from a BBC comedy show making fun of virtue-signaling social justice warriors went viral, collecting millions of views over the weekend.  Is this a sign of a backlash – backlash to yet another form of entertainment that the far-left obsession with identity politics has almost ruined:  comedy?  

Now, I’m not saying that woke comedy is dead.  People like John Oliver and Stephen Colbert still get huge audiences for their stale repetitive Trump-bashing monologues.  But it’s a different story for the likes of Samantha Bee, whose humor consists mainly of angry swearing and calling conservative women vulgar words.  She has lost a whopping 47% – nearly half – of her millennial viewers since 2017.  Because adopting this angry sanctimonious righteously indignant posture for nearly every single skit gets tiresome in a hurry.  It’s not funny.  Constantly picking on easy targets like Donald Trump supporters, playing on laborious stereotypes about right-wingers isn’t original.  It’s safe, intellectually lazy, and it’s been done to death. 

The backlash to woke comedy isn’t just about creating politically incorrect comedy for the sake of it to exact some kind of ideological revenge, it’s about being funny.  And it is objectively funny.  Amy Schumer talking about her vagina over and over again – that’s not funny.  Michelle Wolf slurring out predictable punchlines in front of a sycophant audience, that will laugh at anything she says so long as it’s anti-Trump, isn’t funny.   Sarah Silverman awkwardly crowbaring clichéd crap about “white privilege” into a comedy routine isn’t funny.   Woke comedy isn’t funny. 

“Trans improv performers making punchlines less cis” isn’t funny.  See if you think this PC friendly joke to promote Winnipeg’s won’t comedy night is funny: “What did the indigenous woman say to the non-binary person of color?  It doesn’t matter, because these people aren’t here to be the punchline.”   You can’t make something funny just by imbuing it with some pretentious moralizing social justice cause.  That’s not how humor works. 

The left has forgotten how to be funny.  Because as I’ve explained a million times, most of them seem to have no self awareness of the fact that they’re no longer the counterculture.  They’re the dominant culture.  They control the dominant cultural institutions.  They still control the dominant cultural narrative.  You can’t be edgy, rebellious, and daring if you’re just parroting establishment dominant cultural narratives.  It doesn’t work.  It’s not funny.  Decades ago, it was funny and it worked, because they were taking on hypocrites and Puritans who were predominantly on the right.  And they were typically punching up, because the right had cultural ascendancy.  Now that the left are the new Puritans, comedians are constantly petrified of offending somebody and always walking on eggshells.  This inhibits creative freedom.  It stifles the very thought process which makes good comedy.  The willingness to offend everybody, not just easy right-wing targets.  So long as it’s funny. 

Sarah Silverman used to be funny.  Now she sounds like someone’s turned her into a Stepford Wife.  People like Jay Leno, Seinfeld, and Chris Rock have stopped performing in front of college audiences, because the snowflakes just can’t handle it.   Even leftist darling Bill Maher was protested because he criticized Islam.  

Former head of BBC comedy, Shane Allen, said Monty Python – universally recognized as one of the funniest and most inventive comedy sketch shows of all time – wouldn’t be commissioned today, because it’s too white.  Co-writer Stephen Merchant said The Office wouldn’t get commissioned by the BBC today because, “Increasingly, now it feels like it’s the liberal agenda that dictates what can and cannot be joked about.”  British comedy was once the envy of the world.   Now we put people in jail for offensive jokes, and the BBC airs humor Holocausts instead.  You called Donald Trump a prick?  Hilarious!  How bold!  How fresh!  How long did it take your team of writers to come up with that stroke of comedic genius?  

But again, this goes back to prioritizing identity politics tokenism over being funny.  As soon as you remove being funny is the number one priority of any joke, comedy routine, or sketch show it stops being funny.  Also because most intersectional PC nonsense is embraced and promoted by government bodies big academic institutions and large corporations.  Politically incorrect comedy isn’t punching down, its punching up.  There’s also an elitism which runs through mainstream comedy genuinely does punch down against working class people like Brexit supporters.  

Signs that the backlash to political correctness is taking effect in comedy are everywhere.  Before she was forced to bite the bullet for an offensive tweet, Roseanne’s sitcom returns to glowing to claim and massive ratings.  ABC cancelled Tim Allen’s sitcom, which featured a conservative as the main character, despite good ratings.  YouTube Red surprisingly produced an unashamedly politically incorrect satirical series, Cobra Kai.  The first episode alone was watched by 40 million people.  Nearly all the truly talented and successful comedians in recent times – Joe Rogan, Bill Burr, Ricky Gervais – are anti-PC, or at least they don’t let their act be controlled by it.  Dave Chappelle’s comedy special was a huge success after he warned other comedians that boring formulaic Trump bashing jokes weren’t funny.  More comedians are speaking out.  Rob Schneider said, “Much late-night comedy is less about being funny and more about indoctrination by comedic imposition.  People aren’t really laughing at it as much as cheering on the rhetoric.  It no longer resembles a comedy show, it’s more like some kind of liberal Klan meeting.”  Mel Brook said, “A stupidly politically correct society is the death of comedy.” 

The revolt against the bland, sterile, castrated borefest that represents contemporary mainstream comedy is in full swing.  It’s another battle in the culture war against miserable pearl-clutching, self-important prudes who were determined to make everything tedious and joyless.  And if genuinely authentic, acerbic, punchy, offensive, funny comedy is to be reinvigorated, it’s a battle that must be won.