John Cleese Says 'Cancel Culture' Is Having A 'Disastrous' Impact On Comedy
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV
Joe Harker
Featured Image Credit: Fox News
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV
Comedy legend John Cleese has slammed cancel culture for having a 'disastrous' impact on modern comedy.
The actor and comedian has long been an outspoken critic of cancel culture and the impact he believes it's having on comedy both on stage and on TV.
He's even working on a documentary for Channel 4 which will explore the impact cancel culture has had on some comedians who have been 'cancelled' by public backlash.
Speaking at the FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas last week, the 82-year-old was adamant that comedians now don't have the freedom to be funny for fear of being cancelled over their jokes.
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Cleese said he felt a 'great sadness' over the future of comedy if the 'critical mind' overtook the creative instinct as comedians 'worried about offending people' wouldn't be very creative with their material.
In an interview with Fox News, Cleese said he believed comedians could only be creative in an 'atmosphere of freedom' which would be restricted by checking every joke.
He said: "What you have to be able to do is to build without knowing where you're going because you've never been there before.
"That's what creativity is - you have to be allowed to build. And a lot of comedians now are sitting there and when they think of something, they say something like, 'Can I get away with it? I don't think so. I don't think so. So and so got into trouble, and he said that, oh, she said that.' You see what I mean? And that's the death of creativity."
"So I would say at the moment, this is a difficult time, particularly for young comedians, but you see, my audience is much older, and they're simply not interested in most of the woke attitudes. I mean, they just think that you should try and be kind to people and that's no need to complicate it, you know?"
Cleese has suggested no comedian should be targeted by cancel culture over their jokes and it should just be up to audiences to decide what's funny.
He said a comedian gets the biggest laughs 'if you get into areas that are a little bit taboo'
He suggested comedians should 'fit your material to some extent to your audience', using the example that when you're visiting your grandma 'you don't start telling her sex jokes'.
The Monty Python legend lamented how when it comes to comedy 'everything is more politicised now', and said 'it wasn't like this when I first got to America'.
Cleese pointed towards The Late Show With Stephen Colbert as an example of a show where the audience is 'more obviously politically aligned than it used to be' while also noting that he 'adores' Colbert.
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