Stand-Up Activism
Stand-up comedy really changed, huh?
In 1982 it was okay to stand up on a stage and just tell jokes, but there's been a cultural shift, and now I think it's seen more as a forum to discuss issues. I think we have to blame Jon Stewart for that. I would like to point out that I think Jon Stewart has made me laugh many a time, but the success of his old TV show is probably what helped killed stand-up. He made a name for himself calling politicians on their bullshit by intertwining jokes and playground insults with (sometimes) fake outrage. Funny for sure, but I think hard to sustain the tongue-in-cheek for too long. It's funny to make a bunch of jokes around a politician caught contradicting themselves on video, but after you've seen that a couple dozen times the joke wears a little thin (it was funny until you realized it happens all the time.) So where do they go with it? They ended up digging a little deeper and some of the topics started to get pretty heavy. Eventually the show kind of just turned into Jon acting outraged at all the hypocrisy. People were still okay with it because now the point of the show wasn't so much to make jokes but to show you what a joke the political scene was. I think that's about where comedy fell off the rails.
I don't know when he left that show but there have been so many sobering issues brought to light since, it's become a very rough climate to make casual observations in. If Mark Twain took to the stage today and said "Golf is a good walk ruined" Someone might heckle him with "Why - did they finally let black people in your Country Club?"
Or... I don't know. Maybe not. The point is, now things have evolved (devolved?) to a place where almost anything can be a trigger word for real, actual, and important issues.
Observational humor basically challenges people to look at a subject in a different way, but today there's an entire culture of people who pride themselves on already having a more enlightened viewpoint. It's not a game you want to play.
