View image Sarah Silverman in "Jesus Is Magic." Her Comedy Central sitcom, "The Sarah Silverman Program," begins Thursday at 10:30 p.m. (9:30 Central).
I love Sarah Silverman and A.O. Scott all the more for this, from today's New York Times:
While most actors are reluctant to discuss critics’ opinions of them, Ms. Silverman addresses them head on, particularly a 2005 review of “Jesus Is Magic” by A. O. Scott, a film critic for The New York Times.I've been arguing for several years now that, especially since 9/11, "political correctness" has evolved into a mostly reactionary phenomenon. The lefty PC that began as a way of showing sensitivity to minorities and those who had been discriminated against for years (women, the disabled, etc.) eventually turned into a form of monolithic, euphemistic denial of reality, where questioning was verboten and anything that could be interpreted as doubt or dissent was denounced as "fascist." Now we see the same thing coming from the right. The terminology has changed but the brainwashed thinking hasn't.“It totally hurt my feelings and was like a kick in the stomach,” but, she said, she found it fascinating.
In the review Mr. Scott said her act was “the latest evidence that mocking political correctness has become a form of political correctness in its own right.”
“She depends on the assumption that only someone secure in his or her own lack of racism would dare to make, or to laugh at, a racist joke, the telling of which thus becomes a way of making fun simultaneously of racism and of racial hypersensitivity,” he wrote. In short, he added, “naughty as she may seem, she’s playing it safe.”
Ms. Silverman said the review articulated a point that she had felt, but had been struggling to express. “That was something that always festered in the back of my mind that I never talked about,” she said. Her crowds are usually liberal ones, “and we know we’re not racist,” she said. “But the whiter the crowd, the more that kind of voice in the back of my head comes toward the front, and I feel grosser doing that kind of stuff.”
“At the very least, it’s made me assess the choir,” she continued. “Context is everything, and I don’t think he would be pondering all that stuff if I was doing the material in front of an all-black crowd or a very mixed crowd,” which, she said, she regularly does.
Still, she added, she is reassessing at least part of her work.
“It was rebellious to be politically incorrect now and in the past couple of years,” she said. “But I don’t know how rebellious it will be when everybody has that point of view. It becomes hackneyed and it becomes irrelevant and it turns into something else.”
The inevitable backlash to liberal PC came in the form of the right-wing, talk-radio rebellion, in which uppity women were "feminazis" and liberals were "terrorist sympathizers" (even when they were too timid and spineless to oppose the administration's foreign policy blunders, which, ironically, flagrantly violated traditional conservative principles). Fox News took the talk-radio attitude mainstream, appealing to its viewers' PC biases so that it appeared, at least to the network's partisans, "fair and balanced." (If somebody already sees the world in black and white, and you show them a black and white image, they won't notice it's not in color.)
Anyway, even though I was a fan of Silverman's "Jesus Is Magic," I appreciate Scott's warning about where this is all going in the era of so-called "'South Park' Republicans." And I admire Silverman for questioning her own (and her audiences') underlying assumptions, as well.
Preaching to the converted has always been an unfortunate crutch for performers and other artists, including filmmakers and film critics. But especially for performing artists, it seems to me that it breeds the kind of complacency and brittle defensiveness that has led to creeping irrelevance in a lot of previous potent work, and in Michael Richards' case a dangerous detachment from not only the effect of the work but from the audience as well.
I look forward to Silverman’s new Comedy Central show, especially in light of these comments. It’s going to be interesting to see how her material will develop over the next few years, and I suspect the awareness and intelligence and openness she brings not only to her comedy but to the consideration of her comedy and its effects will go a long way toward ensuring she stays at the forefront of important comic voices. Thanks for pointing us all toward this one, Jim. I too have admired Silverman for a long time— it’s nice to have yet another reason. And it's nice to hear a performer react to honest, smart criticism in the spirit in which the criticism was intended, with something more than a belligerent "F-U!"
Thanks for the post. I recently rewatched Jesus is Magic, which I loved, with a friend. Her reaction was similar to Scott's, but the maybe she's just a plagiarist.
I'm glad people are talking about this. For the past few years, whenever I watch comedians on specials or talk shows, they would always preempt their acts by stating how much they hate this overt PC culture we all live in, and I'd always ask "What PC culture?" Nobody's been politically correct in the media for years, it's become very uncool. I think a lot of comedians felt (and feel) that if they aren't decidedly anti-pc, they aren't funny. But I rarely found these acts funny - not because I was offended, but because it served as an easy replacement for actual humor.
I think the audience feels that if they don't laugh at every anti-PC joke, they'll be uncool as well. (I just watched Lisa Lampanelli's special last weekend, and I didn't crack a smile)
I haven't really enjoyed Sarah Silverman in the past, but I admire the fact that she's that conscious about her profession.
I'm not sure I fully understand A.O. Scott's point. And I'm not totally comfortable with Silverman's material either (though I think she's a genius, like Sacha Baron Cohen or Colbert), but afterall maybe the disturbing laughter is a sign that the issue is not totally trivialized.
Apparently, from her reaction, the only thing that makes her think twice is to make laugh an all-white audience, not that she's perceived as "safe" like Scott says. And I agree with that.
"If somebody already sees the world in black and white, and you show them a black and white image, they won't notice it's not in color"
That's the only part that bothers me in Borat or Silverman's comedy. Sometimes I wonder if the parody doesn't get so "real" that racists would eventually find it funny as well, for the wrong reasons.
There is no PC culture in the (mainstream) media, Eric? I seriously doubt that.
Doing scatological humor might not be PC, but it has little political pertience, unlike "racist" humor.
What's important in "racist" humor is not so much the anti-PC war, but it's to address and expose the taboo of our society. Maybe it's easy material to a liberal crowd, but instead of an underlaying, unspoken consensus on racism, the issue is at least spoken up as a moral reminder to stay vigilant about this kind of attitude.
The issues she deals with (xenophobia, antisemitism, child abuse, rape...) concern real victims but because of the social taboo are largely overlooked. She's outrageously provocative, but she tackles a touchy area society would rather ignore (PC or not).
I think this post also relates to Jim's post about Sundance and "independent" films that claim to buck mainstream trends but in fact adhere very closely to a certain mainstream ideology. They usually come from the perspective of "sticking it to the man", but many times simply form their own institutions that inevitably must protect its own messages and goals. Rather than truly being subversive or progressive, they just act contrary to whatever they view as "mainstream". Ultimately, these movies and comics fade away as their initial shock diminishes, and upon looking back years later they seem dated and often humorously pretentious (actually, many independent movie's have a "dated" feel the moment they are released). It is nice to see in Silverman someone who is willing to recognize these tendancies.
HarryTuttle:
I think there are different 'shades' of comedians in this anti-PC backlash wave, and although I don't personally laugh at Silverman's material, I think she's at the more cerebral end of the spectrum, where she actually believes she's "making fun of racism and taboos." On the other end of the spectrum would be comedians like Carlos Mencia, who probably don't analyze their careers at all, and base their entire act around what they see to be working: shock-value bigotry getting big laughs.
Comics of the anti-PC backlash, or at least the smarter ones, are banking on the assumption that everything they're saying is poking fun at taboos, or at racism itself, right? According to this assumption, the comedians, and we the audience, are NEVER DIRECTLY laughing at holocaust victims, or the disabled, etc.
But I don't think this is very true. I think a lot of it masks real racist humor, the kind that two white kids in the comfort of their home might make about a black person for instance, and brings it into the mainstream. When I see a black comedian making a joke about how asians can't drive because they're eyes can't open wide enough, followed by a shot of a mostly white audience laughing hysterically, I really wonder. Most comedians don't want us to ask questions, because that's not what comedy is about. And we certainly can't disapprove, because then we're being too sensitive, or perhaps closet racists ourselves.
I think "racist humor" and anti-PC humor are being thrown into the mainstream melting pot together and becoming safe (acceptable and popular) - which ironically could be dangerous.
HarryTuttle said:
"Sometimes I wonder if the parody doesn't get so "real" that racists would eventually find it funny as well, for the wrong reasons."
I think it's more complicated than that. Racists and non-racists can't be separated into two easy piles. The danger is in the mostly progressive audience that Scott talked about, confident that they're not racists at all, who are in danger of losing sight of the line between parody and actual racism.
But back to the main point, I think that anti-PC humor, or "racist humor," or what ever you want to call it, is not inherently funny. It's shocking, which confuses some comedians and audiences into thinking it's successful comedy. In the hands of skillfully funny people like Dave Chappelle or the South Park writers, it can be used to articulate an actual opinion and to effectively mock/satirize an aspect of society. I think Silverman is smart enough to be part of the latter group, but Scott is arguing that she's blurring the line slightly, putting "funny" and "introspective" on the back burner to dote more attention to the "shocking. "
Everybody:
Really interesting points here -- and I'd relate them to some of the stuff we talked about with "Borat" and what the targets of the humor really are.
In "Jesus Is Magic," Silverman sings a lyric: "I love you more than black people don't tip." It's shocking, it's racist (or, at least, based on a racial stereotype), and it's funny. As Silverman says, context is everything, and the funniest thing about it (to me) is the incongruous quantitative relationship between "love" and black people not tipping. (Reminds me of the "Team America" love song: "I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark when he made the movie 'Pearl Harbor.'")
But I think what Scott is questioning is what makes us feel it's OK to laugh. Is it because we look down on black people because they're supposedly tightwads? (I don't think Scott is suggesting that.) Or because we're laughing AT the baldness (or incongruity) of the stereotype? Or to show that we're not so uptight that we would be offended? Or because we know some people would be offended and our laughter demonstrates that we know that Silverman doesn't mean it (and neither do we)? Depending on the individual, I think any or all of those things could be at play. But humor, by nature, pushes taboos, and that (as Freud acknowledged) has a lot to do with why we laugh. (Would the same joke have been funny if Richard Pryor told it? I think so, but for different reasons. The same words would have become a very different joke.) I read that Silverman played the Apollo and bombed. I'd love to see how she'd come across on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. Would they "get" her? Would they just laugh at her blatant racial shtick and fart jokes without any sense of ironic detachment? Would they reject her because she's Jewish and female? Or because she's pretty and they assume women (especially beautiful women) can't be funny? And why would one assume any of these things?
I see the point that some people may take Silverman's material at "face value," and not understand the attitude behind the words. Some people honestly thought Randy Newman's song "Short People" was an attack on persons of diminutive stature. What're you gonna do with people like that? Smart comedy is always going to go over some people's heads (is that shortist?) -- especially morons who are dumb enough to cling to Neanderthal beliefs like racism, sexism, etc. I wouldn't worry too much that they don't get the joke because, after all, how many jokes DO they really get? (See "Idiocracy" for a depiction of the lowest-common-denominator "comedy" of the future -- not so different from the present, just more prevalent.)
Delivery (like context) is everything. Silverman does some dumb jokes -- some that only smart people with a certain level of political and cultural awareness are going to fully understand. Same goes for some of the stuff in "Borat" and on "South Park." Comedy is always going to take delight in saying the unsayable -- until, as Silverman says, the "rebellious" becomes hackneyed.
As Jim notes, comedians base their act on exploitation of stereotypes, and they do it at their own risks. The audience follows or not.
For instance, Michael Richards' meltdown had no comical satire in it, and the audience could feel it. The boundery is between humor and ethics.
And the question we should ask ourselves is whether anything and everything is an ok material to laugh at.
Comedians only define what is funny regardless for taste. Humor is not necessarily morally acceptable, and that is another concern, one for society in general.
The taboos aren't necessarily immoral, they are subjects uncomfortable to be spoken up in public places.
Comedians can deal with taboos (to shake social consciousness) and immorality (to open a debate from the silly side), just like court jesters had the priviledge to criticize the king. If their approach is tasteless or talentless it's their problem.
The question of complacency or intolerance is the public's problem. Silencing or censoring a comedian doesn't make taboos go away, or fix problems. The audience and the the media should question themselves why such joke gets popular, why PC renders racism invisible (not absent), and why laughing at racist jokes becomes so liberating?
Tasteless humor like Silverman, Borat or South Park are good indicators to expose radical fundamentalists hidden behind a PC facade.
P.S. Did you see Sarah Silverman in The Most Extraordinary Space Investigations?