Modified On January 30, 2007
It’s our new catchphrase around SHECKYmagazine HQ– “Adding hatefulness to emptiness!” Don’t you just adore that? It’s just one of the semantic highlights of this bundle of high-minded speculation on Sarah Silverman by Brendan Bernhard in the New York Sun (“See Sarah Swear”)
Has there been more ink spilled on a comic in the last 13 months or so (with the possible exception of Dane Cook)? The folks at Rolling Stone, Slate, the NY Sun, New Yorker, et al, are in a quandary. On the one hand, they all have monster crushes on her (We dare you to cite one article that doesn’t lead off mentioning Silverman’s “wholesome good looks” or describing her as “beguiling” or “sexy.” It’s all rather unseemly!); on the other hand, they are alarmed that they find her funny. They invariably go on to try to analyze Silverman’s humor in such a way as to assuage their guilt at having a good laugh at her vicious, sometimes racist, sometimes “ugly” (their word, not ours) humor.
In the Sun piece, we’re treated to the spectacle of one critic (Bernhard) quoting another critic (an unnamed Slate critic) merely to mock his conclusions and go on to diss any critic who has ever said anything nice!
“Silverman is a prototypical ironist– someone who says things she doesn’t mean and (through more or-less subtle contextual winks) expects us to intuit an unstated, smarter message underneath. But what is that message? Does she, like Socrates, play dumb in order to make us smart? Or just to experience the cheap thrill of public racism? Every ironic statement, should, in theory….” Etc., etc.
Ms. Silverman has been called “the funniest woman alive” by Rolling Stone, which is enough to make one weep for women. But perhaps it would be more to the point to weep for critics.
Ouch!
Throughout his critique, Bernhard asks more questions than he answers. But he eventually decides that her approach is flawed… we think.
Ms. Silverman’s specialty is to take false problems, like overdeveloped racial or gender sensitivities, and then make inhuman, “daring” little jokes about them — fake humor about fake dilemmas.
Now we’re starting to feel sorry for the man.
Why all the ideological gymnastics over a bunch of jokes? When Slate speculates on whether there is an “unstated, smarter message” underlying Silverman’s gags, we’re astounded– of course, there is! It’s a joke! These folks are trying way too hard and it’s because they’ve all been inculcated, at various institutions throughout their lives, with the P.C. message. They desparately want to/actually do find Silverman hysterical, but they’ve been led to believe that her jokes cannot possibly be funny. (And, of course, they would never use the term “hysterical,” as its root derives from a time when we all thought the womb caused insanity in the weaker sex!)
So, they cook up clever catchphrases like “prototypical ironist” and “contextual wink” in order to find a way to proclaim her not just funny, but wickedly so… and politically correct in the bargain. It’s a win-win!
Of course, we would argue that there is no greater example of a prototypical ironist out there than one Dan Whitney (aka, Larry the Cable Guy). But, for some strange reason, his contextual winks and his unstated, smarter message never sees the light of day in these august journals. Instead he, and his fans, are painfully literal– such things as contextual winks are as utterly foreign to them as, say, bathing or the proper use of a fork.
Of course, they’re startlingly similar, it’s just that Larry chose to work flyover country, whereas Silverman took her humor to the streets of Los Angeles and New York.
The only reason either of these comics stands out, in a positive way or a negative way, is because many of their jokes, their approach, and in some cases, their subject matter have been virtually banned. By Political Correctness. The fancy folks at the colleges and the newspapers have declared them “outlaws,” yet each has found a way to do the material in an acceptable way.