There is something seriously wrong with comedy these days: It's just not funny.
Growing up I was weaned on the comedy records of Bill Cosby, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, Woody Allen and Bob Newhart. When I lived in New York City in the 1980s, I was a denizen of comedy clubs. On any given weekend I'd be at places like Catch a Rising Star or Caroline's at the South Street Seaport to see Robert Klein, Sam Kinison, Emo Philips or some group of unknowns who would just floor you with their talent. I knew to wear waterproof mascara because inevitably I'd be laughing so hard I'd be crying.
But no more. Comedy has gotten sidetracked. It is too obsessed with sex and the quick, easy laughs that come with graphic routines. Comedy has gone from an exploration of childhood mishaps, biting political humor and insights into human foibles, to a contest over who can be dirtier. It's boorish and uncreative.
Here's the first rule of comedy according to me: A curse word doesn't constitute a punch line. Lazy comics who don't have any imagination rely on obscenities to provoke laughter. The "shock" of those words reflexively cause a laugh. But this has as much to do with real humor as cotton candy has to do with real food.
Along these lines, comics more and more rely on sexual references as the basis for a routine. Here's the second rule of comedy according to me: Talking about sex or suggesting that sex is the only thing on men's minds, is about as clever and funny as Moe poking Curly in the eye. Some people laugh at that, but not smart people. It's the easiest laugh out there.
My husband will no longer go to places like the local Improv unless he knows the featured comic. I've dragged him to too many terrible shows. He says - and he's right - that the bulk of comics spend most of their routine telling unfunny sex jokes that the whole audience laughs at, not because the jokes are intrinsically funny, but because they want their friends to know they get the joke.
Here's what the average patron is thinking: "Yeah, I know about gerbils up the bum, so I better laugh to make sure the people around me know I know." Here's what the comic is thinking: "Man, that joke killed." See the disconnect?
Sex no longer pushes the envelope. Maybe when Mae West talked about guns in men's pockets or when Lenny Bruce laced his work with obscenities, trails were being blazed and social norms challenged. But that time is over.
I made the mistake of going to Tampa's Improv with friends last weekend only to have my husband proved right again. John Morgan, the headliner, had a routine that was so dull, Nixon's White House tapes could have given him a run for it. He talked about sex, of course. Then discussed his wife walking in on him while he was on the toilet. Scatological references are the second easiest laugh in comedy. He also relied on the third staple of the floundering comic: the gender wars.
Enough already with this subject.
Okay, I concede that clever prospecting in this minefield can still yield some nuggets. But Morgan's best shot was suggesting that women start planning their weddings at birth. As I remember the joke, he said: "Look at all the bride magazines. Do you want to know a groom's magazine? Guns & Ammo."
And he was the weekend headliner.
Where are the new comics who can tell a story like Cosby's remembrances of Fat Albert? Where are those who can envision the advice given Abraham Lincoln by his public relations manager, like Newhart? Where are the comics who can encapsulate the crazy state of the world, like Kinison? (Yes, I know he was dirty too, but that wasn't all he was.)
Maybe one day comedy clubs will start insisting that their stable of comics strive to provide more than bathroom humor for adolescent males. If comedians were barred by these houses from using their crutches - referring to sex or using obscenities - they would have to push themselves to write real material. I bet a new comedy renaissance would emerge.
