Data is Beautiful

Let me just say, I have found that my barometer is, "does it perpetuate the issue or does it highlight it." I find that IASIP does a gold job highlighting issues, and if people choose to ignore that that says a lot more about them than the show. In regards to the Jerry and Dreyfus commentary about comedy today, IASIP is a perfect example of a show reframing how they talk about _____. I think we can look to Dennis for this example, as a creepy, high libido man who wears a whole different face and manipulates women into sex, in early seasons (after it's established), his character in 2007 says things like, "you want to see real girls going wild*" and in 2023 he has a whole monologue about learning how to sleep with leftist vs. rightwinger women. His dynamic has stayed the same, how the show uses comedy around the situation has evolved. To put it frankly, Jerry Seinfeld doesn't like his stuff to be grown up, hence his issues with the evolution of comedy.

In the case of Drawn Together, when the pig straight up said "I just don't like black people!" And wiggles his eyes and smiles, to me it comes off less as highlighting an issue and more just being crass and edgy because it can. You're right that at no point does it try to present any of these characters as good in the first episode, but I would argue that it doesn't really try and make any point with any of them either. It seems to exist just to take existing characters and put them in a reality TV style situation. The link character is a gay twink just to be funny, not to highlight anything.

Not everything needs to have a point, but it certainly helps when your content is dealing with terrible characters who are actively perpetuating a very poor way of acting. For example, if The Gang rarely has actual consequences in IASIP, but the way the characters are written makes it clear that they are aiming to highlight certain social issues and use these characters as a way to frame perspectives of each side of the issue. Them being awful is a way to deliver the commentary.

Again this is just from the first episode and so I'm not going to speak for the entirety of the show, that would just be wrong. But from the research I did after the fact and comparing it as a pilot episode from the early 2000's to others, if we simply look at "The Gang Gets Racist" (episode 1 of IASIP, 2005) and Episode 1 of Drawn Together (2004} the former makes clear statements about culture and character, that people will give up thing that make them uncomfortable for money, and that people who say they will support a cause might stop when they don't get recognition (and money). Just an example as this is just 1 of a hundred possible reads, because the show does a good job at framing the awfulness of the characters and the situation. This dynamic is one that they'll come to revisit, as you have 2 sets of characters on one side, 2 on the other, and then they meet in the middle (or blow right past each other per the Gun Fever episode)

Now, the pilot of Drawn Together on the other hand is a direct to video, which from my understanding the show was picked up by Comedy Central after the fact. The focus of the episode seems to be a lot more shock factor, which for a show that wasn't initially intended to be aired, I can't really fault it. But, watch Betty Boop and Cinderella become lesbian, watch a smoking Pikachu say Toyota and Hyundai, there's a lot of stuff happening but not a lot of stuff that I personally could easily point to and say, "now that's good social commentary!". And it's okay for the show to not be created with the intent of highlighting these issues, it just means that rewatching it is watching something that has aged very poorly. The actual content of the episode is just playing with the idea of what reality TV is like, making fun of behind the scenes style footage while playing up the drama.

I think they definitely were able to highlight some issues, such as how some characters used sex to deal with avoidance and how people do certain actions to cope, but I wouldn't say that my takeaway was that Betty Boop was being used to highlight these things. The show and the characters were treating her as the joke, in my opinion thus perpetuating this problem. For me it just didn't do a good enough job at making the distinction, so each component fell apart. The reality TV set is a great medium, the... extremeness of each character sets a very strong stage and expectation, but the end result turned out to be saying and doing edgy things to make the audience gasp. Which, after 20 years, doesn't give a lot of room for any sort of social commentary with staying power.

I'm sure that season 2 and 3 do a better job at attempting to have some social commentary, however I do have my doubts that there was ever a point that Ling Ling the racist Pikachu could really make. In regards to liking it back then, comedy changing, racism existing... I think all I need to really say is that a show succeeds by making it clear to the audience what the joke is. In IASIP, every single character is the butt of the joke because they are an idiot that thinks they are smart, so we laugh at them.

In what I saw from Drawn Together, every single character is the joke, because they are an extreme stereotype or caricature. We're supposed to be laughing at Betty Boop cutting after being fat shamed and for being emo. We're supposed to laugh at Ling Ling saying the names of asian cars as his language. We're supposed to laugh at the pig explicitly saying he is racist. At no point did the episode even attempt to give these characters consequences or make a setup for why they are the way they are. They simply exist to be a stereotype to laugh through, and I say this because the show gave no reasoning to believe otherwise. As in, what is the point of Ling Ling? To be an Asian stereotype. Because at no point does the show try to make him be anything else.

Finally, I should say that comedy is an ever-evolving medium and that rarely does comedy age well, almost inherently due to the nature of it being so strongly linked to a specific cultural era. That is nearly the sole reason that comedy doesn't age well. However, there's a huge nuance in this, because there can be more than 1 reason why comedy doesn't age well. If we look to analyze comedy in American cinema, we would have to look at blackslpoitation films which dominated the 1920's. We would almost universally say that none of these are funny today for a litany of reasons. But even when you go to actually study the writing, that sucked too! The jokes were bad and not funny. Because these were written for white people to point and laugh at the funny black people. The humor back then was racism. So not only was the writing shit, but the reasons for it as well.

So, to say that "racism exists" - yeah, obviously which is why comedy should work extra hard to utilize that and make it humorous. It's Always Sunny does this nearly perfectly in its very first aired episode, having a gay black actor in Philly dating Dee and Mac saying things like "so you people actually are related!" You can make fun of anything, that doesn't mean it will be funny. Sometimes, people aren't laughing because it's funny but because they're uncomfortable. Sometimes, people are laughing because it's how they feel.

That last bit is important, because if you're going "oh man it's so true it's so true!" And you're reacting to Spanky Ham talking about Foxxy Love.. well, let's just say it's probably the same type of person unhappy about The Boys S3 and S4, or IASIP past season 12. They don't like it because they finally realized it's making fun of them.

Tl;Dr does comedy perpetuate an issue or highlight it?