A Look At Comedy; Baby Booming Hilarity

There was a show on this afternoon that captured my interest; it was called The Baby Boomer’s Guide to Great Comedy Shows. Or something like that, I can’t recall the exact title as I only caught the second half. Nearly all of the ‘great’ comedies I had never even heard of and so it was quite an educational experience to learn of all the things my parents supposedly found funny. Oddly enough my Mum hadn’t heard of most of them either. The host claimed that the countdown (for it was a countdown from 20-1) was compiled by a nationwide survey. I thought it was quite funny that so many of the comedy shows were made by either the British or the Americans. Only a shining few stood out as Aussies such as the hugely popular Kath and Kim, for which my family has been bragging about since forever because the actor for Kath is my Dad’s second cousin, but not twice removed so forget the cliché.

The only Aussie ‘comedy’ show that I ever watch is called ‘The Chaser’s’ These guys do a bunch of satirical stunts all over the place, perhaps one of their most famous acts was when they managed to breach the heavy security at the APEC summit. But really other then that show, there really isn’t anything funny on television any more. Even from countries other then Australia. So many of our sitcoms come from America and the amount of canned laughter is outrageous. And I do understand that many of these shows put it in so as to give an indication of when a joke has been told or something funny has been said, but still, give us a break.

The problem with comedy these days is there is only so much you can shock someone with. Years and years ago people were living in little bubbles and so it was very easy to break the mold and utter something that would shock the world and plummet them into stardom. In fact that was one of the examples on the countdown show where this old man said ‘bum’ and earned himself the 13^th spot. (Give or take) Kinda reminds me of Gordon Ramsey’s attitude. Except in this case it was meant to be funny.

But nowadays all people know about comedy is to shock and offend people to bring up the stun factor where people will tune in, however unwillingly, to watch with hands held protectively over their eyes. Clean comedy is almost non-existent except for the puke-producing kid’s shows such as Hannah Montana, and even that should be banned for encouraging kid’s to think that those jokes are funny. How strange would it be to have an adult comedy without excessive swearing and sexual references? I wonder how popular it would be and how much media hype over it.