Comedy's New Earnest Elite
The current age of comedy was born in a drug-fueled paroxysm somewhere in the middle 1970’s that birthed such anarchic classics as Animal House, Caddyshack, Airplane and Saturday Night Live’s Samurai Deli. After years of “Please Don’t Eat The Daisies” comedy was suddenly boisterous, rude, inappropriate and out of control. Comedians may never have been funnier but they were also people you’d be terrified to let in your home.
Three decades later, 30 Rock, the tentpole show of Tina Fey, the reigning doyen of the SNL legacy, is home to a parade of drop-by’s by the creme of Hollywood’s liberal elite from Matt Damon to Oprah Winfrey, not to mention Washington’s liberal elite in the person of guest star Al Gore. The effect is to produce a clubby circuit of backslapping and log-rolling guest appearances that runs roughly from the Daily Show to SNL, spilling over off the screen to co-hosting duties at Democratic fundraisers and events for liberal causes. And the comedy itself has morphed from untamed buffoonish anarchy to humor that “makes a point,” evidenced by the many young people who say they get their news from the Daily Show. Today’s comedy is glib, articulate, slick, highly self-absorbed and always on the look out for ways to let the laughs serve a goal that has nothing to do with the show itself.
It is impossible to imagine anyone wanting John Belushi to host an event for their campaign, nor any of the off-kilter, reckless comedy talents of the day. It is impossible to imagine turning to the cast and crew of Caddyshack for their views on global warming or health care reform. But that is where their predecessors have placed themselves.
There is no greater service comedy can perform for society than deflating pomposity, a maneuver usually handled by opposing it with buffoonery. From WC Fields to the Marx Brothers to Rodney Dangerfield and John Belushi, comedians have brought low our stuffed shirts with a long line of well aimed belches. But it’s hard to belch in the face of Dean Wormer while you are making an important point about global warming. The past decade has been widely considered a dark age for film comedy; it is hard to imagine that many of today’s comedies and Hangover rip-offs will be studied and recited a generation from now.
In the end, as with so much, the fault belongs to the Ivy League. Many of those who created the current era came out of Harvard and the Harvard Lampoon, but those early voices in the 1970’s were a very different crop, rebelling from a stuffy blue blood dominated culture rather the meritocratic elite of today. The current generation of Lampoon writers are quintessential overachievers who grade-grubbed and resume stuffed their ways into the prestigious schools, and rather than rebelling against today’s Ivy culture, are its proudest representatives. At Harvard, they chose to diligently study comedy knowing somewhere in their minds that at the end of the rainbow, thanks to the work of their predecessors that today’s Comedy Industrial Complex with its guild minimums provides a very lucrative career path for a glib well-connected Ivy grad. (Sorry to let the cat out of the bag Rob). Of course, not all comedy writers went to Harvard. Rob went to Yale, for instance. But so large are the Lampoon ranks in Hollywood, they can fairly be said to constitute the industry’s largest special interest, dominating all others and so even a UVA grad like Tina Fey ultimately falls under their sway.
But eventually, although they may be following in the footprints of some large clown shoes, the one thing no Harvard graduate can stand for too long is not being taken seriously, and sooner or later comedy was going to have to compromise if it was going to be graced with the talents of the brightest lights of our education system. And so slowly, earnest little messages began to sneak in between the laughs until here were are today. When laughs goes to war with enlightenment, in the end both will lose.
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Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
It sounds as if there is an opening for a comedian who focuses on the stuffed shirts. Does anyone from Fox read Ricochet?
Aug '10
Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
Mostly, it seems the current crop of comics are simply cowards. They are fine to poke fun at the stuffed shirted blowhards, so long as it's not THEIR stuffed shirted blowhards.
Jun '10
Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
Today's comedy usually works. It just has a very short shelf life. Maybe, because it's so often based on tabloid-type headlines, or entertainment fads, that also have short shelf lives. You have to joke about things that the public has heard about, and thanks to modern journalism and pedagogy, that's a dwindling storehouse.
Apr '11
Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
Greg Gutfeld and Judd Apatow. I don't watch The Daily Show or 30 Rock. I occasionally catch a bit of SNL, but usually only a skit or two.
Gutfeld is, well, Gutfeld, and while Apatow may or not be liberal - I just don't know - his politics aren't obvious in his movies. The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up were both vulgar and funny but also contained an under layer of unintended conservatism.
Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
Very interesting take, Richard. There was a time when it was impossible to break into the comedy ranks unless you were from Harvard. Conan O'Brian is a Harvard Lampoon graduate, as were many of the other Simpson's writers who ultimately become show runners. And forget it if you were a woman...this was a boys' club. That's why I cheer for Tina Fey's success, even if I don't like her politics.
But comedy not being the money machine it once was, the creative Harvard grads aren't heading out here as they once did. They're not trying to become the next Conan, but the next Zuckerberg. And the real comedy forces in television... I point to Trey Parker and Matt Stone creators of "South Park" as being the primary force in comedy now...are becoming interestingly unafraid to poke fun at everyone. Of course they're University of Colorado alums.
Interestingly, until the 60's comedians stayed out of politics specifically not to alienate an audience. No one knew who Bob Hope or Johnny Carson politics. Even political commentator Will Rogers kept his votes under wraps. Now they use elite politics to earn one.
Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
I'm a big 30 Rock fan, so it's good to hear that a fellow Ricochet reader likes Tina Fey. Obviously, she's a liberal. And Al Gore has made multiple appearances on the show. But I find it entertaining nonetheless.
I haven't read her new book, but I've read an interview, and I think she says that the Palin schtick ultimately lost her some potential conservative fans. Is that the case for anyone here?
Sep '11
Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
"Today’s comedy is glib, articulate, slick, highly self-absorbed..."
Terrific post--very insightful. And I would also add that there isn't that unbridled sense of plain goofiness and fun. I'm thinking here of Chris Farley and further back, Bill Murray.
Apr '11
Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
I don't understand this paragraph. Whom does their refer to? Who are the predecessors?
Mar '11
Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
Grendel
I don't understand this paragraph. Whom does their refer to? Who are the predecessors? · Nov 12 at 8:03pm
I think he meant successors, rather than predecessors.
"Their" refers to "anyone." I think he meant "any politician who wishes to be taken seriously as a candidate for office."
Dec '10
Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
I agree with some of the themes expressed here and would concur that the South Park exception shouldn't be overlooked. There is another, glaring, exception that seems to be, somehow, defying the odds by making money, getting laughs, and doing a smidge of enlightening. To elite critical disdain.
Mar '11
Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
You're forgetting one of his most famous lines: "I'm not a member of any organized political party - I'm a Democrat."
Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
Blue State Blues
Grendel
I don't understand this paragraph. Whom does their refer to? Who are the predecessors? · Nov 12 at 8:03pm
I think he meant successors, rather than predecessors.
"Their" refers to "anyone." I think he meant "any politician who wishes to be taken seriously as a candidate for office." · Nov 12 at 10:10pm
Precisely...that successor/predecessor thing...So easy to mix up in the heat of a post. My apologies though
Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
South Park is a truly great exception in this era. As I would argue is Beavis and Butthead which doesn't have carry hint of Harvard smarm. Comedy is not dead, just hiding out in various corners
Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
The sad thing for me in the comedy world of today is how many of the people who do not come from the Lampoon world fall into that voice, Fey being chief among them. There are some other vital alternate routes into comedy - Second City, UCB - for instance that are more theatricalc, less carrerist. But once get to the ranks of SNL or the "smart" sitcoms..in the Arrested Development lineage, that voice dominates all.
Aug '10
Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
Flagg Taylor: "Today’s comedy is glib, articulate, slick, highly self-absorbed..."
Terrific post--very insightful. And I would also add that there isn't that unbridled sense of plain goofiness and fun. I'm thinking here of Chris Farley and further back, Bill Murray. · Nov 12 at 6:41pm
For an "unbridled sense of plain goofiness and fun" you need look no further than Anna Faris.
Her latest movie tanked, it was painful to watch her launch on a run of raunchy goofiness and arch wit, I mean really bring the funny, only to be drug back down into the Heigl rom-com dreck zone just as she was getting up a head of steam. But those moments were well worth it.
Oct '11
Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
I don't think I agree with your premise actually. Go back and actually watch the full episodes of the old SNL shows from the 70's not just "The Best Of". They're generally much more one sided and dogmatic than today's version. The 30 Rocks and Arrested Developments of today are generally much more willing to poke fun at themselves and their "team" than the All in the Family's and Mary Tyler Moores of yesteryear. The South Parks and the Mike Judge's of today could probably never find a foothold in the industry of the the 70's.
The reason we see the politicians of the left stumping with the comedy elite is that the politicians are part of the worst generation. They refuse to ever grow up and have made a point to never learn a sense of decorum, all in an interest of "keeping it real, man."
Edited on Nov 13, 2011 at 1:59pmDec '10
Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
Part 1
Richard, 40 years ago an older generation had endured a depression, a World War, a not so cold Korean War, the dropping of the atom bomb, the holocaust, the creation of new alien technologies - computers (not personal but mainframe) and human dna. To say that older generation was both shell shocked and paranoid was to say the obvious. A younger generation naive with little hard experience intuitively tried to 'lighten things up'. After the list I opened with how much darker could it have been. That naive younger generation was subject to a peace time draft, a truly racist/sexist society and the most banal unchallenged consumerism the world had ever seen.
Dec '10
Re: Comedy's New Earnest Elite
Part II
With all of the above making the comedy of the 70's seem justified, for those of us who were still thinking, our mistakes became self evident. The great crusade against the War in Vietnam was made folly by the Cambodian genocide of Communist super-idealogues. Quota-based affirmative action damaged the people it was trying to help, the quality of everything else and finally froze racism into this culture rather then eradicating it. Man made global warming is a disasterous fraud. Trillions of dollars of world GNP have been wasted on this obsession.
Yet, the folly of our youth is repeated by rote by a new generation that is neither draftable nor in any way repressed by an older generation. Why would a new younger generation need to 'lighten up' a generation that is already way too loose. The stupidity of this culture is so obvious that it is not only 'not worth watching' but it is simply unwatchable. The triviality and pointlessness of reprising old forms when they are already long discredited makes any contact with this ?art form? odius.
I have only one suggestion for the younger generation. TRY SOMETHING NEW!
Edited on Nov 13, 2011 at 8:01pm