Here’s something we’ve been seeing a lot: A celebrity sends out a stupid tweet and quickly deletes it minutes after posting. Most recently, one of Conan O’Brien’s writers, Andrés du Bouchet, sent out a string of tweets about the state of late-night comedy.

“Comedy in 2015 needs a severe motherf*cking shakeup,” du Bouchet, wrote. “No celebrities, no parodies, no pranks, no mash-ups or hashtag wars.” Du Bouchet was obviously talking about the other shows near Conan’s time slot that play games, lip sync, dance or pretty much do anything silly they can get a 6-minute clip out of for their YouTube channels.

“Prom King Comedy. That’s what I call all this sh*t. You’ve let the popular kids appropriate the very art form that helped you deal. F*ck,” du Bouchet wrote. I don’t share his self-righteous attitude about comedy, especially not late-night comedy. I don’t think ownership of comedy is a thing. I also think that it’s awfully high and mighty for one of the historically whitest, straightest and male-centric forms of comedy to talk about “appropriation.” In this tweet, du Bouchet effectively dampens his otherwise sound criticism. But the thing about it is, du Bouchet’s not that wrong.
These kinds of frivolous, celebrity games can’t be the future of late-night.

He got a lot of heat for his comments, including some from his boss, O’Brien himself, who tweeted, “I wish one of my writers would focus on making my show funnier instead of tweeting stupid things about the state of late-night comedy.”

And increasingly, the state of late night comedy is recurring bits like Jimmy Kimmel’s Mean Tweets where celebrities read scathing tweets aimed at them into a camera, or Jimmy Fallon’s Lip Sync Battle, where celebrities lip sync to pop songs to see who can out perform the other, are being made so audiences can share them furiously, but not that night. In fact, entertainment news websites depend on these silly videos from the night’s shows to kick-start that day’s web traffic. Industry experts and late-night producers have dubbed it the “morning after effect.”

These bits can often times be formulaic: James Corden plus car plus random pop diva plus 45 minutes driving in LA makes for a great video every time. Corden, who has a background in British theater, has said that he isn’t a comedian, and so he and his staff focus on “fun, before funny.” Rob Crabbe, a former producer for Fallon, says recurring routines “give you some structure so you’re not trying to reinvent the wheel every day.”

I don’t want late-night to turn into a back and forth YouTube battle to see who can make celebrities look sillier. The first lady dancing with Fallon can only hold my attention for so long. Yeah, it’s funny for a little while, you send the link to your mom but then you leave the video feeling inexplicably empty.

Du Bouchet was right, 2015 comedy needs a shakeup. We don’t need to ban lip syncing, mash-ups or karaoke, because they might end up being late-nights saving grace. Let’s at least agree to use comedy, not celebrity, to focus on funny, before fun.

Eric King is a sophomore magazine journalism major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @erickingdavid.

Published on April 20, 2015 at 11:06 pm