Here’s a running theory of mine:
There’s a strong relationship between the social unraveling of the past decade and the disappearance of funny movies.
Think about it for a second. When did the world start to become as divided, hostile, and on-edge?
Okay… that’s a pretty loaded question.
Was it the pandemic? The rise of authoritarian movements around the world? 2016? Did the Cubs winning that World Series actually open up some portal to some dark timeline?
There’s a decent percentage of people out there who would probably respond with: what are you talking about? Things have never been better!
And if that’s you, well we probably don’t agree on much. Thanks for reading, but we’ll probably have a tough time connecting over my writing.
Another chunk of people would respond with: things have always been pretty bad for a lot of us. Privilege just has you distracted!
And if that’s you… you’re not wrong.
But still, there’s been something about these past few years that’s just… let me put it this way:
Every now and then this clip goes around from the 2012 presidential debates. One of them took place during Mitt Romney’s anniversary, and Barack Obama teases him about having to spend his anniversary with the president. It was lighthearted and a longshot from anything you expect to see on that stage any time soon.
So something’s shifted since 2012.
That shift just so happens to line up with another shift that’s taken place over the same timeframe… the fact that comedies don’t really get produced anymore.
My teen years were a great time for comedies.
The Y2K era rom-coms like Miss Congeniality and Meet the Parents were making way for Will Ferrell’s monster run of character-driven classics. That gave way to the crude but weirdly sweet Judd Apatow entries of Knocked Up, Superbad, and so on.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when these started to fade. But as the 2010s progressed, the laughs slowed way down.
When I look up best comedies of the past decade, I get entries like The Farewell and The Big Sick. Excellent movies, but not exactly true true gut-busters.
(For what it’s worth, I think the best true-comedy of the past few years was Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. It’s quiet release and elusive presence of streamers also speaks to how sidelined comedies have been.)
Now it’s like the genre doesn’t even exist anymore. Don’t people want to laugh? We still have a bunch of comedians around, don’t they wanna work?
Back in the day, it was like a third of the shelves at Blockbuster. Who saw that coming?
Well, the entirety of Blockbuster did disappear, so there’s that.
There are plenty of logistical explanations for why this happened. Comedy doesn’t translate as well as adventure to an international market. Things got expensive and studios try to play it safe. It’s hard to be funny when you can’t take risks. Streaming took over.
And sure, these all probably played a role, but the explanation that feels truest to me is: we started taking ourselves too seriously.
We forgot how to laugh at ourselves.
A few years ago, I started taking improv classes so I could make the world laugh again and fix everything that was wrong in the world.
Okay, not exactly. I did it for me.
My day job in climate activism often had me on stage talking about some pretty heavy things, and while I enjoyed the meaningful work, I realized the more lighthearted and goofy side of me wanted to get on stage too.
I loved improv back in high school and college, and as soon as I started getting back into it, I started questioning why I ever stopped. I loved my teammates. I loved the challenge.
Improv is this weird activity. Because on one hand, what you’re doing is pretty ridiculous. You’re playing silly games to warm up and create silly scenes that don’t always go the way you expected. They’re not supposed to! At the same time, all this is weirdly good for you. A lot of people note how improv gives them some confidence, interesting insights, and muscle memory for life skills that are valuable off the stage.
At the same time, it can also be a bit like a drug. When you have a real good improv performance, it’s an incredible high. You want to get to that again, keep chasing that dragon. On the other hand, not all your shows are like that. Even if you’re very good, some of your shows end up being duds, in which case, you end up wanting to get back out there again soon to chase it down.
Either way, you find that you keep coming back to the stage.
I’ve been coming back over and over for a couple of years now.
I made it on to a house team at my local theatre, which means I perform at least every other week, but often more.
I also started taking up freestyle rap improv, which is a totally different animal. Tough but fun.
And I’m happy to report that I’ve solved the world’s problems by being funny.
Okay, not exactly. But I have met some really great people. I enjoy getting together with improv friends and being silly together.
And that’s something.
What, with all this talk of loneliness epidemics and third spaces and community and isolation.
That’s something.
A funny thing happens when you have a bunch of friends in the comedy world. You catch yourself paying attention to the craft, be it standup, sketch, or improv.
You start to pick apart scenes and jokes, trying to figure out what works. You try and engineer humor. Of course, this kind of kills the joke.
But it’s like that frog you dissected in seventh grade. A sacrifice in the name of science.
We’ve been living in an unfunny era for quite a while… despite what people who leave comments with a dozen 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 emojis might think.
But I’ve realized a few things.
I’ve learned that you can’t laugh if you aren’t feeling safe.
I’ve learned that in order to share a laugh with somebody, you need to have a context that’s agreed upon. It requires some shared reality.
Safety and a shared reality are actually two things that are in short supply around the world.
A couple weeks ago, I went to see The Naked Gun in theatres. As a rare comedy in-theatres, I wanted the movie to do numbers. And it was a pretty good one. The Lonely Island and Leslie Nielsen have such distinct senses of humor, and it somehow bridged the two pretty well. A few weeks later Freakier Friday also came out.
Maybe these are safe picks for movie studios, with a built-in nostalgic audience to prevent a hard loss.
Or maybe it’s a start. A bridge back to some shared reality we can make light of.
Maybe, I’m not the only one ready to loosen up and laugh again.
At the risk of hyperbole, I think the environment that allows humor to thrive overlaps with a world I’d rather live in. A world we need to keep building.
One where we can see different points of view, to see the humor and humanity.
One where we aren’t taking ourselves too seriously. One where we aren’t punching down, knowing that ego gets in the way.
At the very least, we’ll share a few laughs.