Monty Python’s John Cleese has once again blasted wokeness as a destructive force, saying it has a “disastrous effect” on comedy and serves as the enemy of artistic creativity.
The British performer was speaking in an interview with Fox News during the FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas.
When asked if comedians have the freedom to be funny in the year 2022, Cleese responded, “No.”
“There’s always been limitations on what they’re allowed to say,” Cleese said, citing government censors in centuries past.
“But I think it’s particularly worrying at the moment because you can only create in an atmosphere of freedom, where you’re not checking everything you say critically before you move on. What you have to be able to do is to build without knowing where you’re going because you’ve never been there before.”
He continued: “That’s what creativity is — you have to be allowed to build. And a lot of comedians now are sitting there and when they think of something, they say something like, ‘Can I get away with it? I don’t think so. So and so got into trouble, and he said that, oh, she said that.’ You see what I mean? And that’s the death of creativity.”
Cleese said wokeness and creativity are by nature antagonistic to each other.
“You can do the creation and then criticize it, but you can’t do them at the same time. So if you’re worried about offending people and constantly thinking of that, you are not going to be very creative. So I think it has a disastrous effect.”
Cleese said late-night comedy shows in the U.S. are now over-politicized.
The in-studio audiences are “more obviously politically aligned than it used to be,” he said.
When asked to name the last great comedy he has seen, Cleese named two Steve Martin movies from the 80s — Roxanne and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
As Breitbart News reported, Cleese has repeatedly blasted woke cancel culture as anathema to comedy.
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