Joe Rogan and his guest, comedian Tom Papa, tried to come up with the name of the “last really good comedy movie” and discovered they couldn’t — at least not at first.
“What was the last really good comedy movie?” Rogan asked. While Papa mulled the question, Rogan went on: “It used to be you would be able to *snap* There’s Something About Mary, Kingpin. You just snap ’em off. You knew what they were. It’s like wokeness killed the comedy movie in a lot of ways.”
Rogan, who is also a comedian, and Papa tossed around some titles — Step Brothers (2008), This Is the End (2013), Project X (2012)…
“Do woke people make comedies?” Rogan asked. “Is there a woke comedy movie? Is there even an attempt at a politically correct comedy movie? They just stopped making comedy movies.”
Rogan and Papa went on to diagnose what they see as the problem. A comedy that laughs at unapproved behavior is seen as endorsing that behavior, which means anyone who made that comedy would be canceled and blacklisted.
“They’re not afraid of whether or not they would have a market,” Rogan explained. “They would definitely have a market” for non-PC, non-woke comedy. “But how many people would get canceled because of it?”
Going back to the original question — What was the last huge (adult) comedy movie everyone had to see? — they came up with the correct answer: The Hangover all the way back in 2009, 13 whole years ago.
This is something I’ve been writing about for the better part of a decade. Political correctness is the New Production Code—the internal guidelines that censor art. Just like the original Hollywood Production Code did. But at least with the original Production Code, you could work around the restrictions on sex and violence, or anything else forbidden, by using subtlety. Unfortunately, there’s just no workaround for the PC Production Code, and the results have decimated the art of the motion picture, most especially the comedy — a now-dead genre.
You go back and watch any great comedy, from Abbott and Costello to the Marx Brothers to the Peter Sellers Pink Panther movies to the teen movies of the 80s, and none of them could be produced today. Too much ethnic humor (even though it’s all well-intentioned and aimed at everyone), too much girl-chasing, too much that is now considered inappropriate.
Go back and watch Robert Altman’s irreverent masterpiece MASH (1970). If it were made today, Frank Burns would be the hero, and Hawkeye and Trapper John would be portrayed as the sexist villains and predators.
You can’t make a woke comedy because wokesters are the uptight squares, the scolds, the prudes, the bossypants-es, the fascists, the villains, and you can’t rewire human nature. We are programmed to laugh at those people, not side with them. This is why all woke movies fail. Even if it’s not a comedy, a woke protagonist is unappealing.
Thank heaven for DVD. I own hundreds of comedies that are actually funny, that point and laugh at the uptight squares.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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