Saying he was warned not to take his stand-up routine onto university campuses, Monty Python star and comedy legend John Cleese says political correctness is killing comedy and creating a dystopian society.
“If you start to think ‘ooh, we mustn’t criticise or offend them’, humour is gone, with humour goes a sense of proportion, and then as far as I’m concerned we’re living in 1984,” Cleese said in a reference to the George Orwell book.
In the outburst, made in a video for Big Think, Cleese said people don’t have a right to be “protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion”.
John Cleese in his hit comedy Fawlty Towers, filmed in the 1970s
Cleese quoted psychologist Robin Skynner, saying: “If people can’t control their own emotions then they need to start controlling other people’s behaviour.”
“When you’re around people who are super-sensitive, you can’t relax, be spontaneous as you have no idea what is going to upset them next.
“I’ve been warned recently not to go to university campuses because political correctness has been taken from being a good idea, from ‘let’s not be mean particularly to people who are not able to look after themselves very well’, to the point where any kind of criticism of any kind of individual or group can be labelled cruel,” he said.
“And the whole point about humour, the whole point about comedy, and believe you me I’ve thought about this, is that all comedy is critical.”
And now for something completely different:
SEE ALSO: AFL STAR SAYS GETTING SACKED THE BEST THING THAT HAPPENED TO HIM
SEE ALSO: THIS BAD HABIT ACTUALLY MEANS YOU’RE HIGHLY INTELLIGENT
