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Simplest rule of being a comedian, if the audience isn’t laughing, tell a different joke.
The audience isn’t wrong just because you can’t stick anything with them, and if you bomb out then you just sucked for that audience and that is also, not their fault.
Seinfeld at least had the common sense to bow out of the college circuit when he realized his material wasn’t landing anymore, even if he made a spectacle of being a crying little pansy about it.
And don’t even get me started about Bill Maher, if you ever wanna snap a Millenial or Zoomer out of a weed phase, tell them that if they don’t stop they could turn out like Bill Maher, and those youngins will be sober as mormons by the time you’ve finished the sentence.
I’m painfully out of the loop with most pop culture. I blame the isopods I live with under this rock; they only like to watch live stream gaming which bores me to tears. Because of this, I’m unaware of the Seinfeld crying like a pansy bit you reference. Mind filling me in a bit? Even if it’s just enough to give me bits to search, that would be great.
It was a few years ago, like pre-covid, he made a big statement about how he isn’t doing colleges anymore because college students are “too sensitive” and “don’t appreciate a good joke anymore.”
Yeah Jerry it’s definitely the jokes and certainly had nothing to do with you dating a 17 year old at 38.
Sure it’s the college that is blowing things out of proportion…
From an episode of Animaniacs.
Bernadette Peters was playing a cat.
“The worst sin in life is playing too hip for the room.”
I would say that the audience can be “wrong”, where I mostly mean “inappropriate for the specific comedian” at least.
One example that comes to mind is this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M4ckxcHx1q4 (Which unfortunately is in Italian). This monologue is an incredible piece on feminism, and the audience was extremely silent and unresponsive, probably because they were a “TV crowd” with a stand-up comedian (the best Italy has ever had IMHO) who was totally out of their league. In this case, the comedian ended up “rebuking” the audience and I think he was right at that.
The guy might have had a noble cause but the second he started talking at them instead of trying to change up the set or whatever it broke with being a comedy act and became a public speech, and you and I may agree that some people need to hear that shit, but what I don’t imagine is that this guy went into that speech expecting the audience to be doing much more laughing before he left the stage.
That’s what I mean when I talk about the audience isn’t wrong, calling out bullshit is fine, lecturing from the stand is a bit self righteous but fine, but throwing a fit because you think you’re entitled to the audience finding you funny is what I’m raising the point against. Not calling out crowd misogyny, but telling them they’re all backwards hicks because your theory heavy set that doubles as a thesis statement on the works of Andrea Dworken sailed over all their heads.
Yeah, I can see your point and I would say I generally agree.
Stand up comedy though I think is quite a gray area. Ultimately cannot be seen as pure entertainment as that’s exactly what it distanced from when it was born. Laughing ultimately is just the mean but not the goal of this particular form of comedy.
But I agree about not being entitled to a crowd that finds you funny and throwing a fit about that.
Except for the fact that there are audiences that laugh at jokes like those, but those jokes cannot be made anymore. Some of the most recognizable comedy songs for people in Poland in the noughties were like this. They just wouldn’t be accepted nowadays. There is a band called “Big Cyc” which translates to “large tit” (as in breast, a singular one). They parodied everything around . So they had an extremely racist anti-racism song. They had “Every man is a pig”. They had songs taking a piss out of the typical old conservative, comparing them to a military army.
None of those are played in the radio despite most Poles knowing the lyrics and loving those songs. Songs like those, like “Little tiny mustache” can’t be sung anymore.
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Or how about focus on actually being funny instead of telling your audience they’re violating the sacrosanctity of da funniez by not laughing by the 3rd time you’ve dropped an N bomb like it’s the funniest shit ever conceived.
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In comedy, things are funny if your audience thinks they’re funny. If your material isn’t received well, you’re targeting the wrong audience. If your material isn’t received well by anybody, the problem is you.
Everything can be funny, but that doesn’t mean any joke is funny. You still have to approach difficult subject matters with a certain art.
Tell me you don’t understand the concept of an audience without saying the word “audience”.
Its practically routine and obvious that if you have a joke that makes fun of a sports team it will not always land as well in that teams home town. That’s not “censorship” that’s fucking knowing your audience.
If you don’t know your audience you can bomb pretty hard.
Bullshit. Utter bullshit. There are and always have been topics that are not socially acceptable. That’s not PC gone mad, that’s being a functioning human being in a society
And it has always been a job of comedians to stretch the limits of social acceptance. It’s not the only way to do comedy, but it’s one of them.
Tell me a funny joke about kids starving to death
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Yeah it’s subjective but you also have to read the room. Punching down has to have a narrative behind it that makes it seem like it’s not for it to be funny. Comedy, to me at least, is the art of bringing a truth to light.
Edit: Your joke is a decent platitude but it’s only funny with respect to “tell me a joke about starving kids”.
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I don’t think it’s funny, but it definitely does happen.
The term “political correctness” is horribly outdated, considering being a hateful bigot will let you do very well politically in red states.
She knows.
She was on one of the most politically incorrect shows, in which the funniest character on the the show was the most politically correct.
I haven’t seen much Seinfeld, who are you referring to as the most politically correct character? is it even Seinfeld you’re referring to?
I believe they are referring to Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ character on Seinfeld, Elaine, who was the most overtly progressive of the main cast.
Pretty sure it’s Veep and referring to her bagman.
Also Jonah
“I’m eating so much pussy I’m shitting clits”
Similar to what others have said, comedy is a form of communication (or artform if you’re reading the other comments; I’m riffing on this motif though).
If you can’t convey your message (joke) properly, your audience is going to be pissed. There is a difference in saying 'carrots are a plague on humanity" and ‘i just don’t like carrots’. As tastes and sensitivities change, so too must the writer. literature, for instance, evolved in its composition. Earlier works from even the mid-20th century are wildly different in their writing style than modern stuff from the end of the 20th century; all due to reader preferences.
The same happens with comedy.
Translation: don’t criticize Israel or Zionists. Everything else is fine.
Is she funny.
Yes. Veep, SNL, Curb, 30 Rock etc.
