Sarah Silverman is a comic who has refined Jerry Seinfeld's Hobbesian view of man into an entirely more concentrated form. Where Seinfeld saw people as self-interested and annoying, Silverman suggests that they have no good qualities at all. She is not an ironist, except in the Schlegelian sense of "absolute, infinite negativity."
I think that originally, comedy was meant to humble the proud, and, secondarily, to uplift the humble. Aristophanes takes shots at his audience for being litigious, for being gossipy, for being arrogant. But he always assumes that they have a better nature that can be appealed to. Silverman makes no such assumption. She mistakes human dignity for pride, and attacks it. The scene from her film, Jesus is Magic, where she sings, "You're going to die soon" to the nursing home residents, sounds a hell of a lot funnier than it is.
That doesn't sound funny to me at all, actually. I dislike humor at the expense of others, probably because I've been on the receiving end of it my entire life.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2007-02-02 02:41 pm (UTC)Silverman
Date: 2007-02-03 02:24 am (UTC)I think that originally, comedy was meant to humble the proud, and, secondarily, to uplift the humble. Aristophanes takes shots at his audience for being litigious, for being gossipy, for being arrogant. But he always assumes that they have a better nature that can be appealed to. Silverman makes no such assumption. She mistakes human dignity for pride, and attacks it. The scene from her film, Jesus is Magic, where she sings, "You're going to die soon" to the nursing home residents, sounds a hell of a lot funnier than it is.
Re: Silverman
Date: 2007-02-03 03:10 pm (UTC)