Word: humors
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...reason for all the talk is that the nature, quality and targets of American humor are undergoing considerable change. Bob Hope and Columnist Russell Baker both believe that the change is for the better, and Carol Burnett proclaims: "Humor has gotten braver; we're doing nuttier, wilder things." S. J. Perelman, on the other hand, says unequivocally: "I have never seen so much ghastly work, even in television, as this year." And as far as Playwright (Cactus Flower} Abe Burrows is concerned, "there is nothing to kid any more. This is the age of consensus...
Twain had his circuit circus, Allen a large radio audience. But TV has exposed more Americans than ever before to a steady, if often unsatisfactory, diet of humor. It offers dozens of stand-up comics a month (on such as the Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson shows), and some 30 situation comedies every week. As the word fun becomes more and more an adjective, the comic is also spilling over into the commercials; where once the pitchman raved supreme, he now adds a light or whimsical touch to ads-in Buster Keaton's Ford-truck plugs, for example...
Today's humor may not be much rougher than it was on the American frontier, but it has shed its inhibitions in full public view. Sex is no longer a taboo topic; it is, in fact, one of the commonest. Humor has not only been firmly entrenched in the bedroom, but is increasingly being brought into the bathroom. Even caustic Cartoonist Jules Feiffer says: "It's astounding what's allowable today." The gentle comedies that once titillated the town have been replaced by such farces as What's New Pussycat? and Kiss Me, Stupid, in which...
Another type of inhibition has been banished by the considerable Yiddishization of American comedy. Before the Tonight show, the only Jewish comics most of America knew were simply comedians who happened to be Jews, few of whom would risk their inside Yiddish humor on a general audience. But as the funnymen limbered and loosened up on late-night TV, they began to use Jewish words, phrases and jokes, many of which made Bloomington laugh as hard as The Bronx. Jewish humor has penetrated strongly into print as well. How to Be a Jewish Mother became a big seller, bought...
...Bruce Jay Friedman deflates the American concept of the hero by making his anti-hero a round-shouldered, wide-hipped urban Jew helpless to handle his neighbors, his job or even his flirtatious wife ("I saw a kiss. I saw tongues"). Jews, of course, have no priority on black humor. One of its darkest stars, Terry Southern, a Texas gentile, has been operating successfully in the black for years with ham-handed satires on pornography (Candy), nuclear war (Dr. Strangelove) and money and morality (The Magic Christian...