Is Comedy Dead?

Or are jokes today just not funny?

Much has been made of late about a supposed “Death of Comedy” in the mainstream. This is often stated, with great certainty, by an older white man who has made a career out of jokes about women drivers, bad airline food and racial stereotypes. Their reasoning is often something along the lines of “you can’t make a joke about anything anymore or you’ll offend someone and get ‘cancelled’” often as part of an interview on a press tour for their latest internationally released comedy special on Netflix called ‘Trigger Warning’ or something . While it’s easy to laugh at this facile argument, the stats do seem to bear out the opinion that mainstream comedy — partly at least — is on the decline. Box office revenue for outright comedy movies went from 2.5 billion in 2009 to less than a billion in 2019, while in 2018 comedies accounted for just 7.2% of overall ticket sales. Combine this with the apparent career collapse of ‘old-guard’ comedians like Louis CK for their various gross treatments of others and it can be argued that comedy as it was once defined has, indeed, died. And, in a lot of ways, I don’t actually disagree with the sentiment.

Comedy as it was once understood IS dead. The things that once made me laugh are not made anymore, meanwhile most people get their funnies from social media and the mountain of comedy shows on TV and streaming services. Except I don’t particularly find any of that funny either. More often than not this form of comedy relies either on insulting, belittling, pranking or bullying someone, or the de rigueur ‘awkward’ comedy of the likes of Peep Show, The Office, Curb your Enthusiasm and so on. I realise my dislike of these wildly popular trends and projects is the contrarian point of view, but I am fascinated by how the very basis of humour itself has transferred wholesale from one form of delivery and presentation to another. It has gone from jokes, one-liners and skits to the relatable humour, observational stories and absurdist caricatures of the current the mainstream form that gets the biggest laugh. Why is that? Well…

Humour serves a greater function than you think.

Firstly it’s worth clarifying what humour is. Humour is not necessarily laughter and laughter is not necessarily humorous. Humour is a…