India, April 13 -- Hollywood has never shied away from self-lampooning humour. One of the earliest examples is The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), directed by Vincente Minnelli, in which Kirk Douglas plays a scheming, ruthless producer with relish, while the director and writer remain entirely at his mercy. But watching it after laughing through four episodes of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's The Studio-one of the latest entries in the comedy genre-was a bit of a pain. No humour or irony here; just contemptuous cynicism about bad, bad money and poor, poor artists.

In this post-truth, woke world, satire and absurd humour agree with audiences better - only if there's a sub-text of empathic concern about the need to correct, improve and heal....