Seth Rogen — Balancing Wokeness & Comedy Not Working

Everybody with a sense of humor knows that political correctness, or the more virulent and lethally boring mutation now known as wokeness, is an enemy of comedy. We’ve heard variations of this complaint from Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock and, most recently, Billy Crystal. This month Crystal — one of the last living links to prehistoric Vegas-style comedy and about as close to the bleeding edge of his profession as Tony Bennett is to hip-hop — suggested in his typically mild way that maybe we should all be a little less sensitive. The most cutting comment he could muster on the state of the industry was, “It’s becoming a minefield. . . . It’s a totally different world [now] and it doesn’t mean you have to like it.” For this he was promptly savaged by social-media twerps like so many demented terriers with a squirrel-scented throw pillow. Crystal’s remark inspired this dry martini of a rejoinder:

Yet there’s one very notable exception to the dissident-comedy movement, one leading figure who loudly and repeatedly swears total loyalty to the new regime like a Cambodian peasant in 1975, who bows daily to the framed poster of Pol Pot he lovingly keeps on the wall of his hut. Others may fall under the scythe of the Comedy Khmer Rouge, but Seth Rogen is determined to survive.

About the Author

Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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Everybody with a sense of humor knows that political correctness, or the more virulent and lethally boring mutation now known as wokeness, is an enemy of comedy. We’ve heard variations of this complaint from Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock and, most recently, Billy Crystal. This month Crystal — one of the last living links to prehistoric Vegas-style comedy and about as close to the bleeding edge of his profession as Tony Bennett is to hip-hop — suggested in his typically mild way that maybe we should all be a little less sensitive. The most cutting comment he could muster on the state of the industry was, “It’s becoming a minefield. . . . It’s a totally different world [now] and it doesn’t mean you have to like it.” For this he was promptly savaged by social-media twerps like so many demented terriers with a squirrel-scented throw pillow. Crystal’s remark inspired this dry martini of a rejoinder:

Yet there’s one very notable exception to the dissident-comedy movement, one leading figure who loudly and repeatedly swears total loyalty to the new regime like a Cambodian peasant in 1975, who bows daily to the framed poster of Pol Pot he lovingly keeps on the wall of his hut. Others may fall under the scythe of the Comedy Khmer Rouge, but Seth Rogen is determined to survive.