Has Inclusion Killed Comedy?

From what I remember comedy used to be pretty much, ‘Make fun of whoever’s not in the room (for better or worse) while not being afraid to laugh at yourself too.’ If it’s a black comedy, parody yourself while making fun of white people. If it’s a women’s comedy, parody yourself while making fun of men. So on and so forth but this gets old & the true classic comedies are those that take risks, pretty much the movies that couldn’t be made in 2023 Hollywood without getting cancelled today. I’m looking at you ‘Tropic Thunder’ (one of my all time favorite comedies). 

Now that everyone has entered the chat via the internet, it seems comedy will almost always offend someone. The question is, is that the only way & also is it worth it?

When I think of intentionally offensive comedy the first people I immediately think of are Ricky Gervais & Louis CK. They go WAY out of their way through their stand up to intentionally offend people in a way that gets them to burst out laughing. This brings me back to ‘Tropic Thunder’ with one of the ridiculous premises being Robert Downey Jr. playing an Australian actor who undergoes a procedure to make his skin darker so he could play an African American man in a movie that’s about making a movie. It’s MEANT to be offensive, it’s MEANT to be ridiculous, & I gotta admit the result is straight up hilarious. 

Looking at current times there definitely would have been a protest for a movie like that. Just look at Dave Chappelle’s comedy special ‘The Closer’ which honors his relationship with a transgender friend he used to have who tragically ended up killing herself. As he tells her story, you can really see Dave’s heart in the whole thing. & what do you know, people gather in front of the Netflix building to protest this comedy special & label it as ‘transphobic’ which is the antithesis of what the special actually is. My biggest question to the protestors would be, did they even watch it? Was there a specific quote from the special that offended them or did they just wake up as offended people? When you label everything as wrong, don’t forget to label yourself as well. 

Looking at comedy movies today I saw that Jonah Hill & Eddie Murphy recently did a movie together called, ‘You People.’ The reviews aren’t great but reviews are unreliable for comedies as seen with ‘The Closer’ which currently has a 40% on Rotten Tomatoes. ‘You People’ looks like a super familiar formula with an interracial couple coming together with their parents opposing the relationship because of race, yada, yada, yada. In 2023 this feels a bit outdated especially with duplicates we’ve all seen before like ‘The Week Of,’ ‘Guess Who,’ & a ton of other movies with similar settings. All of that said I’m still gonna watch it, in support of comedy with the hope that more views will inspire others to make more comedies in general & riskier one’s as well. More movies that make us laugh are needed nowadays especially with the world being as dark as it is: being surrounded by a 24 hours news cycle of the worst stuff happening around the world & getting notifications the second anything bad happens. We all need a laugh, not to to forget the bad, but to endure it, and come out stronger. 

So this is me standing up for stand up (see what I did there 👀) & for the comedy industry. Comedy can still exist even with everyone in the room now, we just have to be smarter about it. Comedy shows that have made me laugh in recent years would be ‘This Fool,’ ‘Saturday Night Live,’ (it’s still going) ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine,’ & ‘The Other Two.’ Comedy looks different than it did 10 years ago & WAY different than 20 years ago, but as long as we can laugh at our differences while not being afraid to laugh at ourselves, I think we’ll be okay. Y’all have a good one. 

Peace ✌️