I am haunted by the question of whether our ancestors (who were every bit as smart as us) were naïve when it came to humor, or have we lost something?
Were Caesar and Henry IV's jesters as hip as Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce? Did Dave Chapelle-level humor exist in earlier centuries? Charlie Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy etc. were clearly the pinnacle of humor in their day, yet I find their acts trite and boring. Only "Who's on first?" still works.
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were hip in the 50's. Today they are passé. Is our humor evolving? Are we developing an irreversible, ratcheting level of sophistication? Or was there some ineffable zeitgeist, a quality to the context that we can never recreate?
Humor and fashion are more interesting when they're more unfamiliar, and the audience has the feeling they're from territory that's not fully explored yet by anyone. Humor and fashion in new mostly-unexplored territory is interesting because it makes the audience feel like they can learn to explore that new territory themselves and come up with new stuff others will find interesting. Old humor and fashion is usually less interesting because there's the understanding that its territory has probably been well explored and mined for content in the past by others, regardless of whether the territory is familiar to a current audience.
Some does, some doesn't. The Marx Brothers movies still work, while Bob Hope does not.
To pick two TV shows that were popular at the exact same time: the original Bob Newhart Show still totally works, while The Mary Tyler Show is wearing kinda thin.
Newhart deliberately avoided any topical humor in his shows, just for that reason.
Were Caesar and Henry IV's jesters as hip as Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce? Did Dave Chapelle-level humor exist in earlier centuries? Charlie Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy etc. were clearly the pinnacle of humor in their day, yet I find their acts trite and boring. Only "Who's on first?" still works.
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were hip in the 50's. Today they are passé. Is our humor evolving? Are we developing an irreversible, ratcheting level of sophistication? Or was there some ineffable zeitgeist, a quality to the context that we can never recreate?