Jerry Seinfeld sparked a serious debate about the state of comedy in a new podcast interview.
The sitcom legend shared his thoughts about how television has changed during a recent episode of the New Yorker’s Radio Hour, where he blamed “the extreme left and PC crap” for the lack of quality laughs on the small screen.
Asked how he handles “serious aspects of the world weighing on you,” Seinfeld told journalist David Remnick, “Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly and they don’t get it.”
“It used to be, you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, ’Oh, ‘Cheers’ is on. Oh, ‘MASH’ is on. Oh, ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ is on. ‘All in the Family’ is on,’” he reasoned. “You just expected, ‘There’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight.’ Well, guess what — where is it?”
Ignoring the impact streaming has had on broadcast TV, the comic explained, “This is the result of the extreme left and PC crap and people worrying so much about offending other people.”
Seinfeld said he saw endless input from producers and studio higher-ups, as well as risk-averse writers, as a death sentence for sitcoms.
“When you write a script, and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups — ‘Here’s our thought about this joke’ — well, that’s the end of your comedy,” he said.
But asked if he had ever personally “had that experience,” he admitted, “Um. No.”
When Remnick pointed out how his “Seinfeld” co-creator Larry David just wrapped the final season of the decidedly indelicate “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Seinfeld said, “Larry was grandfathered in. He’s old enough so that — ‘I don’t have to observe those rules, because I started before you made those rules.’”
Online, opinions were split on the “Bee Movie” auteur’s comments.
Some agreed, saying cultural shifts have made studios gun shy about offending people. Others called Seinfeld just another rich guy whining about “woke.”
Later in the interview, the comic acknowledged that taste in comedy is always in flux, comparing cultural mores to the gates in slalom skiing.
“The gates are moving,” he told Remnick. “Your job is to be agile and clever enough that, wherever they put the gates, I’m going to make the gate.”
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