this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
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Things weren't really more racist in the early 90's. People were just much less "PC".
I think we've swung too far the other way, really. Now everything is "offensive", no matter how mundane, and in turn, everyone feels offended over the most petty of stuff. Things don't seem to be better from it since more people are depressed, medicated, and diagnosed with mental health issues, but with all the other variables it's impossible to really tell.
There's a self-compounding nature to racist/sexist humor. When you teach everyone "this is what comedy is" - which bear in mind the filters through which mainstream entertainment passes are also power structures created by privilege and money - then that shapes what comedy will be.
It's as much an effort to make things less PC as it is to make things more PC.
There's a reason why The Dead Parrot Sketch, The Knights of Ni and The Ministry of Funny Walks are Monty Python's most famous sketches and Mrs >!N Word!< (yes, really), "No Poofters" (British equivalent of "no fags") and "Attila the Hun's Uncle Tom" (replete with blackface) aren't.
Same reason Robin Williams is well remembered for Aladdin and Mrs Doubtfire and not for his racially insensitive stand up bits.
I think that's a good thing. Comedy has always operated "at the speed of fun" and in a society what is fun will always change. They used to hold bear baiting before Shakespeare's plays - something that even the most anti-woke pundit would truly be shocked by - if I tortured a bear to death for fun in front of a paying audience.
And why should you grin and bear rape jokes, racist jokes etc especially when most of them really aren't very funny beyond "thing different." And... all of them have already been made! It's hard to write a new racist joke (and please don't try in the replies) because they're not really that clever.
You say that, but in the same leg, Richard Pryor's stand up is still considered to be S tier stuff, and it was filled with very non PC comedy. Same of the Chapelle show and in the "funny because it's so wrong" category, but still very much funny, the longest running live action sitcom ever in the US, "It's always Sunny in Philadelphia".
Also, comedy has never been a "rich and powerful" trickle down art for as long as I can recall. It's been the complete opposite of that.
Richard Pryor was early to mid 80s, not 90s-00s; and certainly you couldn't do the same material today. Without doing a deep dive IASIP is very different in many ways to Pryor's and Chapelle's material - tone, content, format, delivery, context... in almost every way.
What also a lot of people don't want to countenance is that Pryor and Chapplle are African-American, McElhenney and Howerton are not. Who are the edgy black american comedians that are being "cancelled" today? And more crucially - some of the issues that formed Pryors stand up - ghettos, brothels and kids drug use - are much less prevalent today
Pryor's first special was released by the same publisher as Hard Days Night by the Beatles (MPI), so absolutely there was money involved there.
Chappelle's first TV appearance was on Def Comedy Jam, owned by $100MM record company Def Jam (it would sell for 150 mil a few years later - so that's a guess but I think a fair one)
You're talking about the labels or venue's instead of talking about the comedians. Chappelle didn't get that gig because he was made of money. He got it because all of his stand up shows leading up to that were liked and he got their attention. That's how becoming a famous comedian works. You're popular enough to get someone to notice you. It's how most bands work, too. Motley Cru started off as nobody's before getting noticed from a small venue where they were getting popular.
I'm not saying comedians are rich, I'm saying that the structures that support mainstream comedy are similar to those in all large organizations such as movies, music, Broadway...
Thats not really the relevant point anyway.
Here's my pet hypothesis (that has zero backing that I'm aware of) regarding the increase* in mental health issues:
When our parents, their grandparents, etc, grew up, they all broke a metaphorical bone (the metaphor being some sort of trauma). Maybe their parents beat them or ignored them, maybe they had undiagnosed conditions, etc. And this has been the norm for no one knows how long. And part of that norm was never treating it. It was the norm. So like an untreated broken bone, it was really obvious that something's busted, but since literally everyone had a fucked up bone sticking out, no one thought it strange.
Along comes some mental healthcare. Some few people embraced it and had the bone broken and reset. Hoo buddy did it suck, but was ultimately a good thing. Now they can reach the box of cereal on top of the fridge with either hand. More, they could do things they had completely ignored because their previously broken bone prevented them from doing so. And so these people realize that the norm of broken bones is shit. They go on to encourage others to have their bones fixed, though that's a bit of a non-starter. Now they are the weird ones for not having broken bones.
More effective is this message with the younger generation. "Don't accept broken bones, get treated immediately". And they listen to their elders as they are taught and they get treatment. Now, this is kinda new, actually addressing issues as they come up instead of just walking it off. There is some calibration space that needs to happen (looks at the rise and over prescription of ADHD meds when I was a kid). But less than you think, because broken bones are so common that everyone in history has had at least one.
Now, when the older generation tells them to walk it off, they balk and say that that's dumb because, largely, it is. And there isn't a nice measure of severity that exists. You only know how painful your broken bone is and it doesn't happen enough to give perspective on the variety in general. To say nothing of some people's broken bone affecting how they feel said bone (I experience alexithymia). So the younger generation does their best at assessing their broken bone because mental healthcare is pretty garbage since (among a lot of other things) it hasn't scaled to a population that all wants it. And the older generation controls the purse strings and mental healthcare can't expand because the people with the money think we should all walk it off (glad I could work this into a low-grade indictment of capitalism).
Obviously there are many other factors (lead poisoning, microplastics, looming environmental apocalypse for starters), but this is my extremely poorly sourced hypothesis. Not a theory, hypothesis.
I think this is probably still happening today in a lot of ways that we will look very ignorant to future generations.
Stress (work, money, social), loneliness, the whole "gig-economy" that's become so ubiquitous that we stopped using the term even though people are still working three jobs to survive. Constant news of violence around the globe, school shootings. The worsening commodification of our attention through social media. Shit's still fucked.
Definitely. A bit of a curse of progression. The older generation will be totally ok with things that will be found abominable in the future. My money is on eating non-lab grown meat will be a big one as well as the ones you mentioned. Not saying that the older generation is right here, I'll take my licks in the future for being in a state that is less than open revolt over the state of things now. Shit is indeed fucked.