Jerry Seinfeld, in an interview with The New Yorker promoting his feature directorial effort “Unfrosted”, said that “PC bullshit” and the “extreme left” are making television comedy extinct. Seinfeld is a sitcom icon thanks to his eponymous NBC sitcom, which ran between 1989 and 1998, but he says audiences no longer flock to their television sets for their comedy fix as they have for decades .
“Nothing really affects the comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly and they don’t get it,” Seinfeld said. “It used to be, you’d go home at the end of the day, most people would say, ‘Oh, “Cheers” is on. Oh, “MASH” is on. Oh, “Mary Tyler Moore” is on.’ Everyone in the family ‘On.’ You just hoped, ‘We can watch some fun stuff on TV tonight.’ Well, guess what? It’s a result of extreme leftism and PC bullshit, and people worrying so much about offending other people.”
Seinfeld said that comedy fans “are going to watch stand-up comics now because no one controls us. The audience polices us. We know when we go off the rails. We know right away and We adjust to that immediately. But when you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups – ‘Here’s our idea of this joke.’ Well, that’s the end of your comedy.
“We did an episode of (‘Seinfeld’) in the nineties where Kramer decided to start a business driving rickshaws to homeless people, because, as he says, ‘They’re on the outside anyway,'” he adds. “Do you think I can air that episode today?… We’ll write a different joke with Kramer and Rickshaw today. We won’t make that joke. We will come up with another joke. They move the gates like slalom. Culture gates are running. Your job is to be so agile and clever that wherever they put a gate, I build a gate.
Seinfeld emphasized that stand-up “really has the freedom” to push the boundaries when it comes to comedy these days, further suggesting that television networks are no longer interested in doing anything like that. Due to which controversy may arise and people may get hurt. PC crowd.
With his Netflix film “Unfrosted” set to stream in May, Seinfeld has been making the press rounds for a few weeks and giving his candid thoughts on the state of Hollywood. In a recent interview with GQ magazine he declared that “the movie business is over”.
He said, “Film does not occupy the same pinnacle of the social, cultural hierarchy as it has for most of our lives.” “Whenever a film came, if it was good, we all went to watch it. We all discussed it. We quoted the lines and scenes of our choice. Now we’re walking through a fire hose of water, just trying to see.
So what, if anything, has replaced film? “Depression? Malaise? I’d say delusion. Disorientation has taken over the movie business,” Seinfeld replied. “Everyone I know in show business says every day, ‘What’s going on? how do you do this? What should we do now?”
“Unfrosted” streams on Netflix starting May 3. To read Seinfeld’s latest interview in full, visit The New Yorker’s website.
