I wish I could remember who said this, because it was a standup saying something ... in an interview. Not performing.
"It's a sad state of affairs when the most accurate political commentary is done by comedians, while the country is being governed by clowns." Such an apt description of the UK. And while that was said two governments (ie. less than a year) ago, it's only slightly less accurate now.
Your comment is like saying "CEOs saying the current market is bad for their industry, while ...still running companies?!"
It's not like the observation that a trade is being hurt (in this case, in the kind of disconnect between your job being pointing out absurdity as something that stands out and making it funny, and a society that seems to drown and revel in it) cannot be done by practitioners of said trade while they practice it...
No, that's the uncharitable, strawman version, that goes for pedanticness over understanding what it means.
It's more like a crooner saying they're being put out of a job after rock n' roll or the Beatlemania, while still having gigs...
Yes, they might still get work and sell some records, but they have a harder time justifying their career, get smaller audiences, and people see them not that culturally or socially relevant anymore...
Standup comedian is a freelance job. It's perfectly possible to be unable to perform and still be a comedian, whether due to lack of material or lack of opportunity.
It's still possible to perform while being less able to get gigs, less able to come up with good jokes, less able to make those jokes relevant, increasingly feeling the jokes are superfluous as everything seems to get at satire-level status by itself, etc - in other words while "not being able to perform" and being slowly put out of a job.
Gentle inquiry: Are you a comedian or work in comedy? Can you state a general region of comedy you're familiar with (USA Comedy? UK Comedy?) without doxing yourself?
[I'm not, and therefore have no opinion on this, but I wanted to know where you're getting your repository of knowledge of "most comedians" from and how to contextualize your knowledge in this matter. I'm asking in good faith.]
Since you ask in good faith (hard to tell around these parts
sometimes);
I'm British, middle aged, and yes I have worked in entertainments
during my career.
So far I have heard (via media interviews or similar) John Cleese,
Mark Thomas, Eddie Izzard, Stewart Lee, Frankie Boyle, Charlie
Brooker, Chris Morris, Steve Coogan, Ian Hislop, and Armando Iannucci
all say approximately the same thing in a more-or-less serious
context.
Of course the "nothing is funny any more" trope is timeless. It
doesn't need saying. However, these comics are also serious cultural
analysts and they're identifying a genuine sea-change.
Thanks for providing me context. If it helps to display the depth of my ignorance about comedy (thus trying to get more context to the claim) I don't know who any of those names are.
Sorry, it's a very parochially British viewpoint. Perhaps where you
are there's also the same undercurrent, just not visible in the
mainstream. You may have to dig a little.
Cultural malaise often hides beneath the surface. One of the most
frightening accounts of this, on a more international stage, is what
Slavoj Zizek had to say on it; He said that in the former Yugoslavia,
humour kept ethnic tensions at bay. The civil war was foreshadowed by
a creeping political correctness and people "not finding things funny
anymore".
I run a podcast that regularly has comics on as guests. These comics are typically on the level of filling theaters across the country. I’m sure the open-mic early-career comics would be happy to play a college
>“I don’t play colleges.” Seinfeld says teens and college-aged kids don’t understand what it means to throw around certain politically-correct terms. “They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist;’ ‘That’s sexist;’ ‘That’s prejudice,'” he said. “They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about”
I think maybe the teens and college age kids DO understand what they're talking about, and the Seinfeld generation doesn't.
The difference is that many in the Seinfeld generation (and other generations) think of "Racism" or "Sexism" as terrible evils that they must never commit.
While likely the "teens and college-aged kids" he's complaining about recognize that we all engage in some level of racism or sexism in our daily internal or external lives.
So, if someone accused Seinfeld of racism or sexism, his reaction might be to defend himself, and say, "No! How dare you!"
But if someone told one of the "woke kids" they were racist or sexist, their reaction would more likely be, "yeah, probably."
To Jerry, being "a racist" is synonymous with being a bad person. The "woke kids" recognize that we're all racist and sexist and prejudiced to some degree, and (hopefully) trying to be better about it.
Having talked to trans and bi youth, they're cynical, well-read, yet simultaneously naive and emotional, use slurs copiously and ironically, and like any generation, are politically all over the map, including fashy. I would not dare to try and paint these people a certain way.
I would at least like to see real quantifiable evidence that comedy shows on college campuses are less frequent now than they used to be, as opposed to individual comedians who are two generations removed from current college students saying they personally don't feel welcome there any more.
Most of the people on a college campus will not even know who Seinfeld is or identify with his jokes at all - he's probably older than their parents. I'm sure there are plenty of younger comedians killing it on campus
"It's a sad state of affairs when the most accurate political commentary is done by comedians, while the country is being governed by clowns." Such an apt description of the UK. And while that was said two governments (ie. less than a year) ago, it's only slightly less accurate now.