Julia Louis-Dreyfus Doubles Down on ‘Bulls---’ Narrative That Wokeness Ruined Comedy, Says Humor Has Never Been Better
When Jerry Seinfeld claimed that “the extreme left and PC crap” killed comedy on television, he didn’t realize he would awaken the beast within Elaine Benes that hates lazy, cop-out comedy complaints even more than The English Patient.
As opposed to her former co-star, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ post-Seinfeld career has been a series of consecutive successes that have kept her in the center of the zeitgeist, including at this very moment when she’s promoting her recently released project, the A24 fantasy drama film Tuesday, in which her character deals with just about the most unfunny topic imaginable in her terminally ill daughter’s impending passing. But according to too many of Louis-Dreyfus’ colleagues, the modern comedy scene is as drearily depressing as the subject of Tuesday, thanks to the woke mob’s successful campaign to cancel any comedian whose humor doesn’t meet their draconian standards of political correctness.
However, unlike the comics who complain about cancel culture more often than they actually perform comedy, Louis-Dreyfus spent most of the last decade, during which social issues grew to become a prominent part of the cultural dialogue surrounding comedy, working at the forefront of American humor through her critically acclaimed and politically incorrect political comedy series Veep. On the press tour for Tuesday, Louis-Dreyfus doubled down on her recent side-eyed criticisms of comics such as Seinfeld, in which she called a comic complaining about wokeness a major “red flag,” this time expressing a more explicit criticism of the common gripe in a recent episode of the On With Kara Swisher podcast.
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“I think there’s a lot of talk about how comics can’t be funny now,” Louis-Dreyfus said during the interview. “I think that’s bullshit."
Louis-Dreyfus went on to explain that, in her opinion, comedy has never been more exciting and innovative than it is in our modern era of ultra-woke PC thought-policing. “Physical comedy and intellectual comedy and political comedy, I think, has never been more interesting, because there’s so much to do,” said Dreyfus of the state of modern humor, having been a major contributor to the medium since the rise of so-called "wokeness” instead of spending the last 10 years drinking coffee and driving vintage Volkswagens.
“It’s a ripe time," argued Louis-Dreyfus of the current state of humor in American society. “Comedy is risky and it can be offensive, but that’s what makes it so enjoyable.”
Her stance that the state of society has made humor even more potent is certainly a novel one for someone who has been at the top of the comedy game since the 1990s, and she pulled no punches when addressing those with opposite arguments. “I personally don’t buy the conceit that this is an impossible time to be funny,” Louis-Dreyfus continued. “Maybe some people aren’t laughing at your jokes, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be made.”
So make your little Pop-Tarts jokes, Jerry — there's no statutory penalties for breakfast bits.
