Bad Comedy Exists Because People With No Sense Of Humour Keep It Going

in Let's Be Cynical / on February 18, 2013 at 12:06 am /

Adam Lovejoy writes from London: Would you be able to name a couple of good comedy acts these days? Or at least one decent or even fairly decent stand-up comedian or a comedy series on the box? Come on, I dare you to give me a name of just one comedian who does proper comedy. That is when routines contain funny material and not some vulgar and stupid drivel that is peppered with F-words for no apparent reason. Or a comedy series that has a funny plot and some good jokes. Go on, try coming up with at least one name or title.

You won’t be able to, that’s the whole thing. Modern comedy, and by that I mean comedy of the past 50 years at least, has been lacking talent. Average and below average acts, who cling to political correctness as if their lives depended on it, ruled the comedy circuit all that time, coming up with such abysmal stuff that it was a miracle really that they actually managed to survive.

And that’s where we come to crux of the problem. The thing is that there are people out there who actually go for this rubbish. They laugh hysterically at bad jokes and go berserk every time they hear an F-word thrown in. These people have no sense of humour because you need to be bright and intelligent to understand good comedy, not to mention create it. And lots of people these days are not very bright and intelligent and, as a result, lack a sense of humour. That is why you get situations when live studio audiences and even full stadiums roll with laughter at dismal jokes, thinking that this sort of stuff represents ‘edgy comedy’ because it’s got loads of swearing in it and pulling of silly faces and talking in silly voices. Remarkably, there are lots of comedians out there, mainstream ones, who have built their whole careers around F-words and C-words and talking in silly voices and pulling silly faces. The list is quite substantial actually.

So what we have, ladies and gents, is a situation when lots of people are prepared to pay good money to go sit through an appalling routine of some odd looking bloke or a revolting bird, listening to rubbish about relationships, shagging, sitting on the bog and all that other stuff that constitutes observational comedy. And laugh hysterically, along with similarly easily pleased people. Simple souls with unpretentious tastes having a bit of fun. What’s the harm in that?

Well, the harm is pretty obvious actually. By giving politically correct non-entities a chance to carry on regardless we create a whole culture of bad comedy that gets worse and worse with time. And as a result abysmal comedy series and stand-up routines on the box, appearing in their hundreds – compliments of the American TV industry – make people immune to proper humour and succumb to all that PC trash that is like poison to the mind. And once mankind stops having a proper sense of humour the end is not far away.

Every dictatorship, so that you know, wants its people to have no sense of humour. Because then they become easily manageable. And considering that we live in a time of liberal tyrannies that have sprung up all over the world, pretending to be democracies, that is exactly what the political rulers of today want. To have masses of humourless individuals ready to buy anything they are told, no questions asked. And that is what is happening now.

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