A giant elephant is standing in the middle of the room. Someone says, wow, look at that elephant. And the entire entertainment media and Twitter go into damage control mode to say that there isn’t a giant elephant standing in the middle of the room.
Yes, Jerry Seinfeld is right. He is simply stating out loud what everyone knows but is too afraid to say. He just happens to have enough fuck-you money to do that.
How many different ways can we say it, people? I’m getting tired of being the only person who covers film to talk about the elephant in the room. It should not be this hard to fix something so obvious.
Here’s one of the worst of those. Stuart Heritage. If there ever was a guy straight out of central casting to portray a woke scold, it’s this guy.
If someone did a skit on SNL and read Heritage’s piece verbatim — with an actor who looked just like him – it would be the funniest thing SNL has done in ages. Here is how he closes the piece:
So there have always been gatekeepers to what is and isn’t funny. Indeed, in his own work Jerry Seinfeld has been one of the staunchest gatekeepers of all. Perhaps the problem here isn’t that the extreme left has a stranglehold on comedy. Perhaps it’s just that Jerry Seinfeld is getting old.
Jerry Seinfeld is old — that’s the problem? No, that’s not the problem, Stuart. Nowhere near the problem. The problem is the virus that has overtaken all industries on the Left. ALL. But the really damaging part is what it has done to Hollywood, to comedy, to journalism. They are all obedient to the new social code and that code is not funny.
Here is an example. Ryan Gosling made an appearance on SNL. They brought back all of his sketches from the last he appeared. All except one — and it happened to be the funniest one:
You know you are in a cult when you can’t make fun of everyone. Seinfeld has always been known for pointing out the obvious. It was funny because it was the truth that almost no one talks about. A joke of his that has stuck with me forever was about how one sock always escapes and no one knows where it went.
Old? No. Seinfeld is still funny. Friends is still funny. Sanford and Son is still funny. You know what else was funny? All in the Family. Why? Because they did not have any sort of strict code to say what is offensive and what isn’t. They poked the bear because they had COURAGE, something distinctly lacking on the modern day left.
I know the game. It makes you feel heroic to stand up for what you think are “marginalized groups” or young idealists or the puritans. But all of them know what is going on. Gen-Z knows. My daughter knows. That’s WHY they have checked out of Hollywood. You get lots of engagement on Twitter — see what a good man is Stuart Heritage! What a GOOOD man.
You want to know how you write comedy? Like this:
This is really uncomfortable to watch, this scene. But the reason All in the Family was so good was that they told the truth about what people really thought and that allowed it be aired out in the public square and talked about. Today, this scene would never exist. They would not be allowed to use these words (I am not arguing that they should use them now) but they wouldn’t be able to depict a generational gap for laughs.
But guess what? When something is painful or makes us nervous or scares us, funny is how we stay sane. Archie Bunker is the one who comes off as the guy who is a bigot and out of touch. This comes with a trigger warning for LGBT readers. You have to click over to YouTube to watch it, as it is age-restricted. And that’s what is so funny about right now. Back in the 1970s, kids watched this because they weren’t coddled or babied. And again, I’m not saying they should use these words — but I am saying that making it funny, making a joke out of it, helps us navigate the changing times.
The difference is that now, these jokes would be censored and erased — as we’re all supposed to walk around pretending that no one is thinking the things everyone is thinking. That is death for comedy, but especially for someone like Jerry Seinfeld whose entire act was always pointing out the things that are obvious but that no one ever says out loud.
We all know that most of the best comedies of the past could never be made today. There is no way Tootsie would, for instance, for obvious reasons.
This scene is funny not just because Michael Dorsey gets hit on by an older man but also because he then has to pretend he is in a relationship with Bill Murray and hide from Terry Garr, who wants to date him. They layer on top of social norms, but today, Hollywood executives would be too uptight and nervous to ever dance around the lines of social norms because they have worked so hard to erase them.
On top of basic sexuality and the extremely strident rules that now apply, the racial identity of everyone in the movie is always scrutinized. There has to be representation everywhere but none of the jokes can make fun of that fact. They have to completely avoid the obvious reality of what they’ve done, how they’ve cast the movie. All of that is off limits.
Thus, what can actually be funny is a very narrow scope. It reminds me of why humor was never something the Right was very good at. That was because they were devout Christians, most of them, which meant there were so many things they could not depict or suggest or talk about. But that was why Sam Kinison was so funny — because he poked at those rules so well (albeit in a way Christians would find offensive):
Sam Kinison was incredibly offensive but very funny. Again, this is the TRUTH — funny can’t be explained. It just is. You laugh and that heals the soul. But we no longer live in a culture that believes that. The strange unintended consequence is that it’s the Right that is now funny because they can poke the bear.
And even if they aren’t “on the right,” that is how they’re treated. I just wonder when this is going to end. How long are we all going to pretend that what’s happening isn’t really happening?
Hollywood is extincting itself because they have ceded all of this ground to TikTok and YouTube where comedy can live freely. Jerry Seinfeld knows this. But he feels bad, as I do, watching the collapse of a once-great empire. Grow some balls, people. Stop being such cowards. Dare to be hated. But just BE FUNNY. We need it.
Gen-Z has simply carved a path around the mainstream because they get it. They see what has happened to movies, to television and even on streaming. It is all WOKE because it has to be. It has to follow those rules and that makes it BORING. Sure, every so often something breaks free — like The Curse (still the best thing on TV) and Ripley, and other shows here or there, but for the most part, it feels like being babysat when you watch stuff now. There are always unseen hands ensuring no one who is marginalized is offended.
This is why I have been begging for the Oscars to have Ricky Gervais host because in one night, with one host, they would solve all of their problems. They show the American public that they are self-aware enough to allow someone to make fun of them for a change. The problem for Hollywood is that the people who cover Hollywood are not being honest — really honest — about what has happened to the business.
So — all of this to say, thank you, Jerry Seinfeld, for being brave enough to speak honestly about the elephant in the room.
Here is the trailer for Unfrosted, which drops May 3, I hope is good.
One thing I will be watching for are all of the puritans in media who will be overly harsh on this just because Jerry Seinfeld called them out. I see you, media, I see you.
And by the way, more of this Netflix. Bring in people who are brave enough to write truthfully.
