{"id":24507,"date":"2014-03-04T08:41:29","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T13:41:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24507"},"modified":"2014-03-04T08:41:29","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T13:41:29","slug":"comedy-turned-inward-and-became-domesticated-and-smaller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/03\/04\/comedy-turned-inward-and-became-domesticated-and-smaller\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Comedy turned inward and became domesticated [and] smaller&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the <em>New York Post<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/nypost.com\/2014\/03\/01\/wheres-their-nerve-todays-comics-mock-poop-not-the-powerful\/\" target=\"_blank\">Kyle Smith<\/a> discusses the comedians of the 1970s and their modern day successors:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As Chevy Chase might have put it on <em>Saturday Night Live<\/em>, Harold Ramis is still dead. And with him has gone the finest era of comedy: The \u201970s kind.<\/p>\n<p>Ramis was as close to the king of comedy as it gets, as a writer, director and occasional sidekick for <em>Animal House<\/em>, <em>Meatballs<\/em>, <em>Caddyshack<\/em>, <em>Stripes<\/em>, <em>Ghostbusters<\/em>, <em>Back to School<\/em>, <em>National Lampoon\u2019s Vacation<\/em> and <em>Groundhog Day<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Taking off with the movie <em>M*A*S*H<\/em> in 1970 \u2014 a huge hit that grossed $450 million in today\u2019s dollars \u2014 and its spinoff sitcom, \u201970s comedy ruled from an anti-throne of contempt for authority in all shapes. College deans, student body presidents, Army sergeants and officers, country-club swells, snooty professors and the EPA: Anyone who made it his life\u2019s work to lord it over others got taken down with wit.<\/p>\n<p>When the smoke bombs cleared and the anarchy died, comedy turned inward and became domesticated. It also became smaller.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Cosby Show<\/em> and Jerry Seinfeld didn\u2019t seek to ridicule those in power. Instead they gave us comfy couch comedy \u2014 riffs on family and etiquette and people\u2019s odd little habits.<\/p>\n<p>Now, in the Judd Apatow era, comedy is increasingly marked by two worrying trends: One is a knee-jerk belief, held even by many of the most brilliant comedy writers, that coming up with the biggest, most outlandish gross-out gags is their highest calling.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>H\/T to Kathy Shaidle for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the New York Post, Kyle Smith discusses the comedians of the 1970s and their modern day successors: As Chevy Chase might have put it on Saturday Night Live, Harold Ramis is still dead. And with him has gone the finest era of comedy: The \u201970s kind. Ramis was as close to the king of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,28,13],"tags":[263,122,293,101],"class_list":["post-24507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-media","category-usa","tag-1970s","tag-movies","tag-obituary","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6nh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24508,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24507\/revisions\/24508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}