Jerry Seinfeld, the fantastically successful comedian, told a radio interviewer last week that he didn’t like performing his comedy at universities because, in his experience, young people no longer know how to laugh.
University-aged young people – or, to be more specific, university-aged American young people – seem to have left their senses of humour at the college gates. The prevailing culture of political correctness, it seems, has turned college kids into grim-faced humour police, monitoring every textbook or lecture or visiting performer for politically unacceptable forms of discourse.
Unfortunately for comedians, “politically unacceptable forms of discourse” is a pretty accurate description of what they do for a living, which explains why so many of all races and stripes – not just the super-rich, white and Jewish Jerry Seinfeld, but the hip, urban and black Chris Rock – are avoiding colleges and universities altogether. What possible upside could there be for a comedian, someone who makes his (or her! Thought you got me there, didn’t you?) money by telling jokes about subjects that most people find off-limits, in performing for an audience of young people for whom ferreting out and denouncing every form of “ism” and “phobia” – real or imagined – is a favourite indoor sport?
Put it this way: married male comedians tell a lot of jokes about their wives. (Sexism!) Comedians with children tell a lot of jokes about their children. (Child abuse!) Comedians with cats tell a lot of jokes about their pets. (Animal rights!) Whichever subject you choose, as a comedian performing in front of modern and evolved university students, you’d better be prepared for protests.
If Jerry Seinfeld – one of the most middle-of-the-road, polite and basically inoffensive comics around – has a hard time finding suitable material, it’s safe to say that he’s correct in his diagnosis: young people no longer know how to laugh.
Of course, you can’t forget how to laugh. Laughter, as anyone who has ever laughed uncontrollably in an embarrassing and inappropriate location can tell you, is pretty much an involuntary response. It’s something that happens deep in the brain. Laughter erupts from a mysterious place, grabs hold of your breathing apparatus and temporarily takes over your body. That’s why a full-on, unrestrained belly laugh is so satisfying – it’s a little bit of a surrender, you’ve given up a part of your self-control to someone on stage (or on screen) and let him (or her! You’re not going to catch me up!) take over for a second.
Young people these days, steeped in a brew of politically correct and highly elaborate sensitivity training, haven’t forgotten how to laugh. They’ve just become frightened of it. Because laughter is essentially a non-intellectual activity – you laugh first; think second – it’s entirely possible that you might end up in the audience of a Jerry Seinfeld show, hear him tell a joke, laugh uproariously and only then discover that you weren’t supposed to, that the joke was “offensive” to some group or organisation, that by laughing at it you’ve become complicit in the dominant hegemonic paradigm of … well, I’m too old to really know how to talk this way, but if you know any young people you can ask them to finish that sentence. They’ll know how.
What university audiences are afraid of, then, isn’t being offended by the politically incorrect humour of a visiting comedian, it’s that they might be entertained, involuntarily, instead. Imagine the stress for the typically humourless college kid – sensitivity antennae poised for outrage – at a comedy show, terrified of hearing something hilariously incorrect, laughing and then being the object of protests himself. (I won’t bother to add “or herself” here, because, let’s face it, it’s almost always a “himself” who is the object of protests.)
It’s a strange generational switch. In years past – ask anyone 50 or older – it’s been the thankless task of old people to tell young people to pipe down and stop laughing at everything. “Everything is not a joke,” I can remember some ancient – probably 50-year old – teacher shouting at me when, like all 11-year-old boys, I couldn’t contain my laughter at some awkward pratfall or embarrassing event.
“Show some respect!” old people – probably 50 or so – would bark at university-aged kids when they reflexively and irrepressibly made fun of social conventions, decent values, religion, marriage and good taste in general. Until very recently, at least as far as the rules of humour were concerned, the world was divided between young and brash jokesters and ancient, decrepit 50- year-old scowlers.
It must be odd for the 61-year-old Jerry Seinfeld, or the 50-year-old Chris Rock, or the 50-year-old me for that matter, to face a generation of young people and say, essentially: “Lighten up, kids.” But for those of us in the comedy business – or, to be more precise, for those of us who want to stay in the comedy business – there really isn’t much choice. If the young people don’t learn how to laugh again, how’s a guy supposed to earn a living?
Or girl.
Rob Long is a writer and producer in Hollywood
On Twitter: @rcbl
