It has been a strange ride for Hollywood in recent years. Woke themes, forced diversity, and rampant cancel culture have all but neutered comedy. Raunchy, inappropriate humor has been replaced with virtue signaling and leftist ideology, essentially killing real comedy in theaters and on the small screen.
However, the Summer of 2023 has been a small-scale revival toward blue humor, and audiences are taking notice. Even though Disney and others continue to push out woke, stale content, most of which audiences have ignored, theaters have been alive with laughter and swear words as naughty comedy has made a comeback.
Sandwiched between the stunning failure of Indiana Jones and the shocking success of the woke Barbie Movie are several unexpected hits. It isn’t as if these movies didn’t have star power attached to them, but considering the graphic content and themes, it is still shocking that they are successful.
The Summer led off with a Jennifer Lawrence film that dealt with somewhat of a taboo subject. Lawrence played a single, 31-year-old woman hired by the rich parents of an introverted 19-year-old to bring him out of his shell, among other things.
The film, titled “No Hard Feelings,” featured full frontal nudity from Lawrence, and while the plot was flimsy, the jokes were raunchy, and the performances were excellent. In a recent interview, Lawrence addressed the risk involved in the making of such a tawdry flick: “You’re aware that you’re making something that’s so offensive and so wrong. And you have it in your mind like, ‘God, I haven’t seen a movie like this in a long time,’ but more, ‘Oh, no. Is this going to be OK?’”
The movie’s producer also addressed the taboo, even “creepy” aspect of the movie and the age difference between the two main characters. He said: “If you feel that way when you come out of the movie, I would be surprised. We took great pains to be careful about the ick factor because it could go that way.… We took a humanist approach and I think that’s all you can ask for.”
While the movie had a happy ending, no pun intended, it did deal with some scurrilous themes, even by past standards. Rob Weiner, a popular culture librarian at Texas Tech University, weighed in with his thoughts as to why the movie was successful: “That kind of humor still has a wide appeal and the fact that it might be something ‘transgressive’ makes it that much more attractive. Some people just want to watch something funny without being given a heavy message about anything.”
Weiner, indeed, is correct in his assertion that people just want to laugh. It doesn’t matter if the content is a bit racy, so long as it isn’t shoving overtly woke themes at the audience. Recent box office numbers have proven as much.
More recent films like Will Ferrell’s animated comedy “Strays” and the all-Asian-led “Joy Ride” have also pushed the envelope as to what is acceptable in Hollywood in 2023. It is a welcome back to comedy for an industry that has been dying for laughs.
Todd Phillips, who produced the classic raunchy comedies “Old School” and “The Hangover,” talks of how he abandoned the genre because of the current climate: “Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture. There were articles written about why comedies don’t work anymore – I’ll tell you why, because all the f—ing funny guys are like, ‘F— this s—, because I don’t want to offend you.’”
Phillips is stating the obvious, but if current trends are any indication, perhaps the pendulum is beginning to swing back towards actual comedy. If that is the case, as course corrections go, maybe we are in for a new golden age of raunchy humor. For the sake of Hollywood and comedy, we hope so.
Featured image screen grab from embedded YouTube video
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