Jerry Seinfeld said in an interview with The New Yorker while touting his feature directorial effort “Unfrosted” that “P.C. crap” and the “extreme left” is making television comedy go extinct. Seinfeld is a sitcom icon thanks to his eponymous NBC sitcom that ran between 1989 and 1998, but he says viewers no longer flock to their television sets in order to get their comedy fix like they did for decades.
“Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly and they don’t get it,” Seinfeld said. “It used to be, you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, ‘Oh, “Cheers” is on. Oh, “MASH” is on. Oh, “Mary Tyler Moore” is on. “All in the Family” is on.’ You just expected, ‘There’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight.’ Well, guess what—where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people.”
Seinfeld noted that comedy fans are “now going to see stand-up comics because we are not policed by anyone. The audience polices us. We know when we’re off track. We know instantly and we adjust to it instantly. But when you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups—’Here’s our thought about this joke.’ Well, that’s the end of your comedy.”
“We did an episode of the [‘Seinfeld’] in the nineties where Kramer decides to start a business of having homeless people pull rickshaws because, as he says, ‘They’re outside anyway,’” he continued. “Do you think I could get that episode on the air today?…We would write a different joke with Kramer and the rickshaw today. We wouldn’t do that joke. We’d come up with another joke. They move the gates like in the slalom. Culture—the gates are moving. Your job is to be agile and clever enough that, wherever they put the gates, I’m going to make the gate.”
Seinfeld went on to stress that it’s the “stand-ups” who “really have the freedom” to cross the line when it comes to comedy nowadays, further suggesting that television networks are no longer interested in doing anything that will ruffle feathers and offend the P.C. crowd.
With his Netflix movie “Unfrosted” set to stream in May, Seinfeld has been making the press rounds for a few weeks and giving his blunt thoughts on the state of Hollywood. He proclaimed “the movie business is over” in a recent interview with GQ magazine.
“Film doesn’t occupy the pinnacle in the social, cultural hierarchy that it did for most of our lives,” he said. “When a movie came out, if it was good, we all went to see it. We all discussed it. We quoted lines and scenes we liked. Now we’re walking through a fire hose of water, just trying to see.”
So what, if anything, has replaced film? “Depression? Malaise? I would say confusion. Disorientation replaced the movie business,” Seinfeld answered. “Everyone I know in show business, every day, is going, ‘What’s going on? How do you do this? What are we supposed to do now?’”
“Unfrosted” streams on Netflix beginning May 3. Head over to The New Yorker’s website to read Seinfeld’s latest interview in its entirety.
