Mel Brooks is back in the news. At age 95 he recently released a memoir entitled “All About Me!”, which chronicles his long and illustrious career. The book has gotten good reviews, and is on my list of books to eventually read (along with hundreds of others). You can count on Brooks to be irreverent, funny and shamelessly self-promoting. While he has had hits and misses, Mel has never done anything that was dull.
The publication of this book has also brought a regurgitation of Brooks’ comments regarding political correctness. Mel is not a fan, to put it mildly. He has gone so far as to say that political correctness is the death of comedy. As Brooks put it, “Comedy has to walk a thin line, take risks. Comedy is the lecherous little elf whispering in the king’s ear, always telling the truth about human behavior”. Other comedic legends, such as Jerry Seinfeld and Dave Chappelle, have echoed those sentiments.
It is hard to argue with Brooks generalizations about comedy. Much of the best comedy is subversive of pretentions and biases. Where would we be without Monty Python’s Upper Class Twit of the Year, or Richard Pryor’s Black and White Lifestyles standup routine. Or, for that matter, Brooks’ Blazing Saddles. We need comedians to burst the balloons we inflate justifying our, often absurd, behavior.
But are there limits? Brooks himself has said “I personally would never touch gas chambers or the death of children or Jews at the hands of the Nazis”. Is he suggesting that he would be OK if others did, or that this topic should be verboten for all? Does it matter who is doing the bit, or their intent? Are we, the audience, prohibited from crying foul if we think a comedian has gone too far towards promoting stereotypes, rather than deflating them?
Political correctness has become a catchall defense for anyone who wants to deflect criticism from nasty, derogatory generalizations. Rather than justify controversial pronouncements, it is easier to blanket naysayers with this meaningless cliché and act as if the critics are the ones being offensive. It is a shallow, but all too often effective, defense.
That being said, I don’t think that is what Brooks was talking about. Mel was not trying to justify anyone’s misogynistic or ethnic slurs. From everything we know about him, he is probably just as appalled as anyone else by statements from those in power, or seeking power, that denigrate people based on race, gender or sexual preferences. He just wants to carve out a niche for comedy to use those stereotypes to deflate those that embrace them.
It is not as easy as Brooks suggests to put comedy into its own category, as evidenced by the fact that most of those who lauded his comments were political pundits who could care less about comedy. Whether he likes it or not, some people are going to use comedic bon mots to justify their own prejudices. And those justifications have real life consequences.
For instance, hiring decisions have all too often been made not on personal qualifications, but on broad ethnic and gender generalizations. The jokes that are told around the proverbial watercooler turn into the bases for decisions regarding suitability for employment. Biases are reinforced and become part of the covert decision-making process.
Political correctness, for all of the baggage that it has acquired, is nothing more than an effort to make us stop to realize those consequences. It is not an endeavor to protect people’s feelings, but to bury the societal assumptions that have kept certain groups from gaining equal access to opportunities. Isn’t that what this country is supposed to be about?
By the way, comedy is doing just fine. For example, the movie Don’t Look Up was a biting satire, that managed to “tell the truth about human behavior” without stereotyping any specific group. In fact, the movie was probably stronger because it played off our universal inclination to take almost any issue, generalize it without full understanding, and then proclaim our beliefs.
Stand-up comedians like Amy Schumer and Tim Heidecker have no problem mining our daily foibles without crossing political correctness lines, whatever they may be. They, and many comedians like them, have found a wide array of outlets, whether it’s through traditional mediums like movies and TV, or through alternative platforms like podcasts, Instagram or YouTube, to practice their craft. We probably have more opportunity to laugh now than we ever have.
That doesn’t mean that these comedians do not have to walk the thin line that Brooks has drawn in the sand. Yes, today’s comedians have to be more adept at avoiding casual insult than Brooks generation had to be. But they do not seem to be unduly hampered by having to take that stroll.
At the end of the day, it is up to us, the audience, to determine what we will tolerate and what we will not. There will be those we turn away from either because their “humor” does nothing more than denigrate those that are not like them (the Andrew Dice Clay’s of the world), or because their personal behavior makes laughter impossible (hello, Louis C.K.). But hasn’t that always been the way?
Maybe Brooks is right and some of his movies could not be made today, though I am not so sure. We still long to laugh at ourselves and the silly things we do. But if people want to use the guise of comedy to disparage, diminish and deprecate, we have every right to call them on it. That’s not political correctness. It’s the power of the peanut gallery, and long may it reign.
Tom, two comments. First, Mel Brooks is a genius. People think it’s easy to write the kind of comedy he wrote for so many decades, but it is not. Though some dismiss his work as juvenile slapstick, it is the choices he made within that realm that make his affectations, insults and punchlines work.
Second, while I occasionally also believe that political correctness goes too far, comedy like any other medium must evolve with the times. If we shake our heads in shame at the black face caricature crows in Disney’s movie Dumbo, we must also do the same when viewing the “Camptown Ladies“ scene in Blazing Saddles. The true genius of comedy is to poke fun at our current mores and beliefs in a way that is funny, self-deprecating and illustrative of clever contrasts. In other words, don’t look back and lament, look forward and laugh.
I agree with you about Mel. He is no doubt one of the funniest people of all time.
Your second point is exactly how I view it. I am not sure what comedians like Brooks, Seinfeld and Chappelle think they no longer can do, but I’m not sure that I want to know.
You sound awfully woke Tom – lol. Comedy like everything else does have to evolve. PC and wokeness are just the latest in a long line of name-calling by folks unable to evolve. I loved Don Rickles and he’s still a guilty pleasure for me on YouTube. But it was of a time when you could stereotype and be casually cruel and demeaning of people based on their ethnic and racial backgrounds which served to cement these lazy tropes. The fact is that the non-pc stuff out there now is probably beyond our comprehension because we’re too old to get it. Looking back I now cringe at some of this stuff. What’s ‘funny’ is often dependent on time and place and jokes from the 60s and 70s no longer resonate in the same way as they did when we were all little tykes. I watched Blazing Saddles recently which I used to adore. You know what, it’s dated. It wouldn’t work today, and that’s the moral of the story. Everything changes with time and what was once funny can now be not funny or even offensive. Bill Maher has turned into one of the most winey babies I’ve ver heard and I used to love him. He’s now a hero of reactionaries. His politically incorrect schtick is really getting old. He’s the one who can’t seem to change with the times. As for Mel, I’ve heard tons of Hitler jokes over the years – they were never funny but many people thought they were which says more about them than the jokes themselves.
Really good point Jon. Comedy is almost always time and place. I have to admit that I don’t find much of the newer comedy all that funny. There is no doubt that is because I am somewhat stuck when I grew up. But, then again, I really can’t go back to the comedy of the 60’s and 70’s either. As you say, much of it seems dated. Still, I will always love Mel. I am not sure there has ever been anyone who made me laugh as hard and so often as he has, except maybe the Marx Brothers.