‘That’s not true. It’s not true’
Jerry Seinfeld is taking back remarks he made earlier this year in which he claimed political correctness and “P.C. crap” has ruined comedy.
In an interview with The New Yorker to plug his new Netflix film Unfrosted in April, Seinfeld, 70, predicted that sitcoms were going to become extinct because comedians are too concerned that they’ll offend viewers at home.
But the comedian is now saying he regrets blaming the “extreme left” for ruining humour.
“I did an interview with The New Yorker, and I said that the extreme left has suppressed the art of comedy,” Seinfeld said on Breaking Bread with Tom Papa. “I did say that. That’s not true. It’s not true.”
Seinfeld told Papa there “were two things that I have to say I regret saying and that I have to take back.”
“One of them, I didn’t say but people think I did so just the same. I said I don’t play colleges because the kids are too PC and you can’t do comedy for them,” he said.
Seinfeld maintained he never said that and assured Papa’s audience that he plays colleges “all the time.”
Earlier this year, Seinfeld said that audiences seeking a laugh are “now going to see standup 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,” he said.
Seinfeld expanded on his comments in his chat with Papa. “If you’re Lindsey Vonn, if you’re a champion skier, you can put the gates anywhere you want on the mountain. She’s going to make the gate. That’s comedy,” he said.
“Whatever the culture is, we make the gate. You don’t make the gate, you’re out of the game. The game is where is the gate and how do I make the gate to get down the hill the way I want to?”
Seinfeld acknowledged that times change and what was funny a decade ago may not be funny now, but it’s the job of a comedian to see that and adjust their act accordingly.
“Does culture change and are there things I used to say that I can’t say that everybody is always moving? Yeah, but that’s the biggest, easiest target. You can’t say certain words, you know, whatever they are, about groups — so what? The accuracy of your observation has to be 100 times finer than that just to be a comedian…So I don’t think, as I said, the ‘extreme left’ has done anything to inhibit the art of comedy. I’m taking that back now officially. They have not.”
“That was another thing I said, that I missed dominant masculinity, which is probably not the greatest phrase for what I was really saying was I miss big personalities,” he clarified to Papa. “That’s what I missed, and I mentioned Muhammad Ali and Sean Connery and Howard Cosell. You know. I mean, because these were all the people I wanted to be like as a kid. I wanted to be, I wanted to have that kind of authority and style. It was really a style thing.”
“If you look back on comedy and drama both, let’s say 30 years ago, through the lens of today, you might find bits and pieces that don’t age well. And I think to have an antenna about sensitivities is not a bad thing,” Louis-Dreyfus, 63, said in an interview with the New York Times. “I believe being aware of certain sensitivities is not a bad thing, I don’t know how else to say it.”