Sarah Silverman; Love her or Hate her

 "I once gave a Mexican a blow-job.......I had diarrhea for 3 months."

I told this joke as a sophomore to my mostly White friends at my mostly white, upper-middle class, private high school in my de facto segregated hometown. I liked it because it had shock value, because it dared to have shock value, because it was told by a little Jewish chick who dared to have shock value, and because...well....it was funny. Insensitive, mean,  and racist--yes, but also ridiculous and therefore a racism worth laughing at. It'd be three years before I came across some literature and an academic setting that would validate and better articulate this opinion that my 16 year old mind was forming and struggling to defend. 

Now I don't mean to bog you down with academia but this is "my mind brought to you by the speed of my fingertips". Recently I was assigned this webessay to read for my media crit class. It's called "Awkward Conversations About Uncomfortable Laughter" and is about the precious Sarah Silverman and her offensive jokes. No, it's not a bunch of offended Mexicans demanding Silverman be tarred and feathered. Instead, it's a critical look at how and why Silverman's comedy functions, and why it should be examined with more of an open mind ready to discuss instead of a closed mind ready to finger point and protest. I wrote a little response which I'll post here, but I invite you to read this essay for it's full of lovely good points and enjoyable video clips.  In a time where anyone with a microphone and a stage who says the wrong thing gets virtually stoned, it's important that we think twice before we criticize; question before we shrink back in pain and hurl counter attacks. 

The essay can be found here: http://flowtv.org/?p=1201

    As a fan of Sarah Silverman, I enjoyed Henry Jenkins's essay "Awkward Conversation About Uncomfortable Laughter" that recognizes and analyses the causes and effects of Silverman's jokes, which are usually very funny and highly "offensive".  Jenkins notes that Silverman's humor is effective and worthy of discussion in the way that it "map[s]  the border between what can and can not be said," about race and ethnicity in an America that's becoming increasingly diverse and ethnically fragmented simultaneously (Jenkins).  Many of Silverman's jokes depend on an America,particularly White America, that hasn't figured out how to create new racial relationships and discourses despite the breakdown of older racial rhetoric. As a result of this national context, Silverman's stage persona is a over-exaggerated/dramatized version of a confident, innocent, well-intended yet horribly ignorant White American who falls on her face when trying to deal with issues of race by radiating blatant "enlightened racism" instead of the tolerant speech she aimed for, although she remains blind to this fumble (Jenkins).

What makes Jenkins's argument and Silverman's work so important can be summed up in this quote: "There are no words to describe whiteness which have the same sting as 'chink' or 'nigger' and so she has to perform whiteness, against a backdrop of other racial identites, so that it can recognize itself in all of its insensitivity and self-centerdness," (Jenkins). This quote brings up an important question that is central to Jenkins's argument: how do Whites, who traditionally have been seen as the racial majority and therefore void of racist discrimination, enter into a conversation that has been closed off or taboo for them? Where is this space? In the realm of joke relations, comedians set the boundaries for who could tell jokes about whom: Blacks tell jokes about Blacks (and sometimes Whites), Asians about Asians, etc., leaving Whites with no platform to make jokes about other races and for conversations about racism to be carried out only by minorities. But this is not the way to have an open and effective discourse on race policies, especially if one is preaching to the choir. Silverman is forcing Whites (and everyone else) to stare these mishandled issues in the face in a time that calls for such a task to be done if we are to operate as a cohesive society (Jenkins notes that Silverman's joke would never work had it not been for the great changes in the American ethnic and cultural landscape). For me, I equate Silverman's work to that of another favorite comedian Margaret Cho, who once explained her lewd and brash humor (most notably about sexuality and body image) as her way of getting hush-hush topics out in the open because if they're not talked about it is as if they don't exist.  Slippery race relations still exist in the US, and Sarah Silverman is just creating the space, perhaps a bit forcefully, for us to discuss them.