Risk-averse network fat cats greater danger to comedy than political correctness

Australia’s leading comedians are divided on whether political correctness is killing comedy, but they agree with Jerry Seinfeld that television executives are getting in the way of a good laugh.

Jerry Seinfeld says not only political correctness is killing comedy, pointing the finger at risk-averse network fat cats who are massacring the art form. Picture: Getty Images

Australia’s leading comedians and talent managers are divided on whether political correctness is killing comedy, but there’s one thing they’re backing Jerry Seinfeld on: television executives are getting in the way of a good laugh.

Nina Oyama, star of two of this country’s biggest comedies of recent years – ABC sitcom Utopia and the hit (and decidedly non-woke) Prime Video comedy Deadloch – says she has never felt the need to censor her material.

Oyama, a writer and stand-up comedian whose material is often deliciously lewd or mischievously tackles race, tells The Weekend Australian: “I can joke about whatever I want to. Obviously, there is a time and a place for certain jokes or certain language … but if I come up with a great joke, I won’t think, ‘oh, I can’t write this because of PC culture’.”

While she might not see eye-to-eye with Seinfeld on extreme lefties ruining comedy, she agrees with his comments that it’s risk-averse network fat cats who are massacring the art form.

“He’s talking about sending a script to executives that give him bad notes. Executives have bad taste; they are people who don’t write comedy and aren’t funny. They’re people who want to make money,” she says. “I think it’s rude to blame the woke on killing comedy … no, you just work for people who don’t understand comedy.”

Oyama, who has written for shows such as Latecomers, Class of ’07, and Tonightly with Tom Ballard, adds that it’s not older legacy comedians getting stitched up by networks, because it’s them who TV executives favour. “Executives are risk-averse. They’re less likely to take a chance on a young, fresher, upcoming voice.

“In Australia, we don’t always support young voices; we always prefer the safe bet over a newer, more exciting, risky bet.”

Oyama does not think it’s political correctness affecting the careers of legacy comedians; it’s their inability, or perhaps unwillingness, to keep up with modern comedy palettes.

“Every old man is complaining about the state of comedy, but times change, people’s flavours change,” Oyama says. “A lot of the time when men complain about not being able to make jokes about anything anymore it’s because they want to make jokes about domestic violence or cliche jokes about their wife, and it’s just not that interesting, or new, or funny – they’re not really saying anything.”

Comedian Nina Oyama. Picture: Richard Dobson

She says Seinfeld creator Larry David, who wore both a MAGA hat and a swastika in the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm – which has just ended after 24 years on the air and was beloved by everyone, no matter their political inclination – is evidence that audiences are not hungry for woke material. “He does the most un-PC stuff, and it is the most funny.”

Andrew Taylor, founder of More Talent agency, agrees comedy suffers from lack of support from television. “We are the only country in the world that doesn’t have stand-up on television,” he says. “We do need broader avenues for comedians to be seen.”

Asked if he thinks woke culture has made audiences hesitant to see comedy, Taylor says: “Political correctness could never kill comedy because audiences will always find what they want.”

Taylor, who represents foul-mouthed, stadium-filling comedian Jim Jefferies, says apart from a few angry emails and unflattering articles, PC culture’s impact on comedy has been negligible.

“There is definitely a cohort of Australians who don’t want their comedy sanitised. I’m sure there’s a cohort who want it to be edgier; they don’t want it to be bound up in the rules the vocal left want to set for comedians as to what they can or can’t talk about,” he says. “Comedy is not a form that you should ever tell people what they can and can’t say. The audiences can work it out for themselves. If they don’t like it, they can vote with their feet. It’s as simple as that.”