The Emmys Don’t Get Modern TV
The Television Academy still define shows as comedies or dramas. Creators and networks don’t.
In July, the comedian and Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” anchor Michael Che took to Instagram Stories with some opinions. First of all, Che explained, he hadn’t watched , Hannah Gadsby’s about (among other things) the limitations of comedy as a vehicle for exploring trauma. Second, despite having not seen , Che firmly believed that it and similar shows should not, in fact, be classified as comedy. This was all of a piece with Che’s Instagram about “anti-comedy comedy,” or a kind of art he creatively labeled “standup tragedy.” “I dont [sic] wanna have to ‘survive’ a comedy special,” Che wrote. “I wanna laugh. lets not make this what its [sic] not.”
