I feel like comedy as an art form is basically dead outside of small clubs. To be a real authentic comedian is to be a critic of society, but the general consciousness to how fucked we are has reached a much higher degree than the 1990s (I personally blame the crumbling of "respectability" in politics). So any comedy that doesn't have pretty radical undercurrents ends up feelings stale and tone-deaf, but those kinds of acts/movies aren't appreciated by ad-driven execs.
(One solution to this might be to just default to the hyper exaggerated comedy formula of the 90s the author talks about, like Happy Guilmore. if you can't say anything meaningful, at least say something just make everything as chaotic as possible.)
> To be a real authentic comedian is to be a critic of society
I don't think that the comedy masterpiece 'Airplane' (1982) was very critical of society.
There are certainly political comedies out there (Team America), but it's certainly not a requirement of comedy.
I dont even think that most comedies are critical. See Carbot Animation's StarCraft Brood War cartoons and it's more of a celebration of the glitches as opposed to pointed criticism.
Ya, that's a really good example of exaggeration comedy. Also Airplane! was directly made as a reaction to the overly serious action/drama films of the time (literally a shot for shot remake of Zero Hour!) And those films definitely were a product of the 70s, but honestly that analytical line is just overwhelming.
But still, direct parody movies are a mostly dead genre on mainstream delivery channels, for reasons described in the article.
(One solution to this might be to just default to the hyper exaggerated comedy formula of the 90s the author talks about, like Happy Guilmore. if you can't say anything meaningful, at least say something just make everything as chaotic as possible.)