Sarah Silverman's idea of a joke:

[Deja Q]

"If we can put a man on the moon..."
(camera cut)

"We can put a man with AIDS on the moon..."
(announcer of show)

"Then we can put every man with AIDS on the moon."

Feces jokes are worthy of "Family Guy" but if Comedy Central has nothing better to do than real shit like the above...

What next?

Right. And now it's time for me to make a movie denouncing the evils of pornography by showing people having uncensored, clever camera angle sex... x(

[petronius]

1. I laughed out loud at that one...

And may you be devoured by rabid buck-toothed weasels for your swipe at Family Guy...

[Deja Q]

2. Are they showing that clip of hers out of context?

I just don't see the humor in that segment. Maybe I'm missing something.

Of course, some people laughed at the Rodney King tape too (not me), which only proves humor is not universal despite the media's attempt to make it so... :(

[jberryhill]

6. Probably...

The "airhead" tone of the delivery seems like a poke at the fatuousness of the:

If we can put a man on the moon, then we can... (fill in large unsolved problem here)

As if it was an exceptionally dumb person trying to say "If we can put a man on the moon, then we should be able to find a cure for aids" but fracturing it in a Bushism sort of way.

Maybe she's just trying to put food on her family.

Fool me once, shame on, uh...

[Deja Q]

9. That makes sense...

In which case it's Comedy Central either trying to get her show off the air, or has no clue as to how to properly advertise; which in turn leads to little tirades like mine.

That's the problem with comedy. I have discovered it can be easily misunderstood.

[jberryhill]

15. Absolutely

Picking apart humor is like opening Schrodinger's box.

Are the Three Stooges funny?

What the hell is so funny about a guy who pokes people in the eyes, a guy who has some kind of severe seizure disorder, a guy who hits himself in the head with a hammer, and so on? There's nothing "funny" about that.

Babies laugh as a defense mechanism against some sort of perceived harm - "that person is scaring me, but laughing seems to make them smile at me".

Why do we call the end of a joke a "punch" line?

Humor usually involves some sort of cognitive dissonance or discomfort. We respond to it by laughing.

[WindRavenX]

3. she's hillarious.

My favorite comic.

[Deja Q]

4. What if I made the same joke? The one mentioned above?

Would I get the same support?

[idgiehkt]

5. my first thought when I read it was

"what a stupid fucking bitch".

So I guess you could say I agree with you.

[Deja Q]

7. And maybe she usually is funny... but if the adverts show her best work,

she's limited and in the aforementioned case, very unfunny indeed.

(Indeed, I could make a "joke" in the same context as hers and it'd piss off any number of people. Maybe I should send comedy central an e-mail, doing a parody of said joke, replacing "AIDS" with (I'm not saying it because it has affected many peoples' lives and sure as hell is nothing to joke about either...)

[A-Schwarzenegger]

13. Anybody can say anything they want, the more outrageous the better, as long as

they don't "really" "mean" it.

Seriously, it's not "really" "humor", it's outraging.
The point isnt to make anybody "laugh", it's to make people
get, well, outraged. Sign o' the times. And then, if you do get outraged,
you're just not "really" "cool".

[jberryhill]

24. What humor is "really meant"?

If I tell you the "world's shortest joke":

-
A man walks into a bar and says, "Ouch".
--

Am I supposed to mean that a guy bumped into a bar and says "ouch"? There's nothing funny about that. It's only marginally funny as a lead-in to what is expected to be a "a man walks into a bar..." joke, but it ends abruptly.

One example that comes to mind is a "racist" joke where the humor turns on the stupidity of the racists' reaction to the situation. It's not a joke that would be appropriate for posting to an audience with unknown "it getting" capacity. The punchline is a statement made by a white sheriff in a hick town assessing a crime scene. His conclusion about what happened is absolutely incorrect, and the point is to laugh at him because his racism blinds him to the obvious truth.

Now, is there something funny about a racist making a racist statement? No, not really.

But by the same token, quite a large audience who does not like the present administration find a lot of humor in Jon Stewart's daily, and sometimes straightforward, recounting of awful things that this administration is doing.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

37. Very interesting & thoughtful post.

I dont disagree with any of it. Thank you.

For some reason I started
thinking of Dave Chapelle's reaction to seeing some redneck
tech guy on his show yukking it up after Dave told some joke
involving "nigger." I'm sorry I dont remember the exact joke.

(This was on the Bravo show where the guy interviews people
for the whole hour, amazing show with Chappelle, ending with
him talking seriously, contemplatively about his humor in a very
mature and almost spiritual way).

So, Chapelle says he looks at this guy
yukking it up and he sees his own joke in a new light. He
sees it as funny to a racist, and it moves him, Chappelle,
and makes him rethink his humor. Of course he didnt mean it as
racist himself, but he sees how it brings pleasure and laughs
to a guy he knows or figures is a racist, and it changes him.
That is one of the things that led him to leave the show and
go to Africa.

That is the kind of growth & awakening that comes from questioning
one's own responsibility, seeing what I say not as "it's your
problem what you do with it," but maybe as "it's my responsibility
to be aware of how my outrageousness might really be having the
exact opposite effect of what I intend. I intend to belittle the
bigot, but I might be bringing the bigot pleasure." Of course,
we cant control people's responses to what we say, especially in
the art of humor, but I was
very moved by Chappelle's thoughts on transformation, as I was
with Richard Pryor and his reversal of "nigger."

It's very complex, subtle, paradoxical, but thank you for your
response. It made me think deeper, and to mean more what I'm
trying to say.

[jberryhill]

43. That must have been a shock

I gotta wonder about those guys (the racist Chappelle viewers)... I mean not to realize that there they are, sitting on their couch doing nothing, while the talented performer they are watching is making more in 15 minutes than they make in a year... it must take a whole lot of non-reflectiveness.

I'll have to see if I can catch that Bravo show, because my reaction to Chappelle's stuff was a mix of feelings. The same sort of thing seemed to be at work in The Jeffersons, Good Times, and Sanford & Son - "if Hollywood can get African Americans to do it, then it's okay to perceive them that way".

It was one thing to have Eddie Murphy occasionally spoof the "Buckwheat" character... Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood... or the Velvet Jones School of Technology... but that sort of "parody of the sterotype" wasn't such a central focus of the things he did.

That said, I watched a lot of Burns & Allen when I was younger, and thought that Gracie Allen must really be an airhead. Only later did it dawn on me what a brilliant performer she had to be to portray the character that she did. She was a very funny woman.

Racking my brain to think of "Where is the white guy who makes fun of white guys"... now there IS Jeff Foxworthy with the whole "redneck" thing. Do rednecks think he's funny too?

[A-Schwarzenegger]

47. Have you seen this thread?...

... in which I certainly meant every word ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=624815

[idgiehkt]

20. From what I've seen of

her, and I've said this before, she has a good delivery, but she's like Lisa Lampinelli; people laugh at them out of being uncomfortable. That is not the same as funny. I think they are like the comedic versions of Ann Coulter and Michele Malkin; there is money to be made by being the girl that says what the establishment wants them to say to negate what all the other oppressed people are saying is wrong. It's lame and boring but for people who have no morals or standards it can be a pretty decent living.

[jberryhill]

25. Yeah but Ann Coulter

...thinks she IS the comedic version of Ann Coulter.

That's not funny. That's horribly tragic.

[WCGreen]

49. I think she will just say anything to shock and get a rise out of people...

It's not funny to me...

It's just "Look at Me"....

[Hissyspit]

38. Yes. "When you read it." Not when you watched it within the context of the show

and her absurd self-absorbed character, a character satirizing the self-absorption of Americans today.

Absurdity on absurdity, satire, irony. The joke is that she thinks that sending all people with AIDS to the moon would be a great honor for them, but she doesn't get what she is saying because she is a self-absorbed idiot.

She may end up like Joan Rivers someday, but right now, she is someone willing to take chances to make comedy that matters, not that makes everyone happy. I think she's hilarious.

[idgiehkt]

45. I think Joan Rivers is hysterical

I think Silverman is a racist.

:shrug:

[WindRavenX]

11. no, because it's different context--she doesn't mean what she says

She says things to be offensive as possible to draw out the actual ridiculousness of those statements and bigotry.

I realize she isn't everyone's cup of tea, but she isn't bigoted.

[jberryhill]

12. Delivery...

You know the old story about the prisoners in jail who would pass the time telling jokes...

after a while, they'd told all of their jokes so many times that they just gave them numbers.

A new guy came to the cellblock and the other prisoners were telling jokes. One guy would say "32" and everyone would laugh. Another guy would say "58" and everyone would laugh. So the new guy says "24" and nobody laughs. After an awkward silence, someone says, "It's all in how you tell it."

Written down, it's not even funny. With the airhead tone of her delivery, the reaction is more along the lines of "Good golly that woman is dense".

[WindRavenX]

14. and a lot of the humor is that she's an innocent looking jewish girl

as in "how on EARTH could SHE say that??"

[jberryhill]

16. Which leads to "surely you must be joking"

Richard Pryor got a lot of mileage out of calling himself a "crazy n-----"

[WindRavenX]

18. while I certainly wouldn't compare her to Richard Pryor or Lenny Bruce...

...her type of humor does operate in many ways similar to them--she says outrageous things often o outrageous that it exposes the actual prejudice that many people use. Humor is a great social tool for pointing that out.

[jberryhill]

26. I agree with that...

...but there are always going to be those who are too close the prejudice to see it that way.

[WindRavenX]

29. yup, and it's also why humor is so dangerous

Many people use humor as a vehicle for actual hate-- many people miss the often subtle jabs that some comedians take through their humor.

Take Dave Chappelle. Too many white people where laughing AT the sterotypes rather than laughing at the absurdity OF the racial sterotypes he used to make a point. And he quit.

[jberryhill]

32. I wondered about that....

I could only take Chappelle in low doses because he would do those outrageous things, I would laugh, and then I would feel bad about laughing.

[WindRavenX]

35. that's because you're smart and realize what he's doing

I got tired of hearing smarmy middle school kids scream "I'm rich james bitch!" and use "nigger" because they heard it on the Chapelle show :eyes:

[MonkeyFunk]

21. it would depend on your delivery

topics themselves aren't funny or unfunny. It's about the joke and the teller.

[Shell Beau]

23. It is also about delivery and personality. I couldn't do that joke and it be funny.

[philosophie_en_rose]

8. The shock value is supposed to be funny.

It's not to me, though.

But maybe she's just playing a Stephen-Colbert/Cartman-type idiot?

[Deja Q]

10. See #9, that is a logical possibility I had overlooked.

(again, Comedy Central's editors need to do a better job of delivering something that grabs - not annoys.)

[GoneOffShore]

17. Have you seen "The Aristocrats"?

She totally personalizes the joke - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZTfzQvJh3Y
She's completely outrageous.

[WindRavenX]

19. "and then he raped me"

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[GoneOffShore]

27. That is so completely unexepected

And the bit about her brother? Oh hah!

:rofl:

And the way she delivers it - no affect, no outrage, just a deadpan statement - makes it all the more bizarre and funny, in that road accident sort of way.

[WindRavenX]

28. exactly--she's not witty AT ALL yet she still tickles my funny bone like none other

Then again, I am a very sick puppy sometimes with humor...

[GoneOffShore]

30. I think that's why I like her

She says these completely off the wall things with a seriously angelic face.

Of course, I'm pretty sick as well when it comes to humor. Monty Python, Red Dwarf, Kids In The Hall, The Young Ones, Father Ted (feck) et al.

[WindRavenX]

31. OMG "The Young Ones" is HILLARIOUS

Vivyn...:rofl:

[Chomskyite]

46. Vivian!

Eat the telly!

"Right!"

[Deja Q]

22. So I'm watching this... 2 things...

But, sheesh, she's like Archie Bunker but with a flat affect. She is not funny. Maybe she doesn't like doing her own jokes?

But she's got a nice rack, of which the cameras like to notice...

[ghostsofgiants]

42. Umm...

If you don't find her funny, why are you watching her? Seriously, if you're not a fan, you're not a fan, it's useless to keep watching in the hopes of understanding and then maybe finding her funny. Just find something else to watch.

[bridgit]

33. Sarah is having fun right now...

i hope she continues to do so

[sasquatch]

34. She makes me want to free the Manson family and do the following

Place the whole Manson family in a armored car and play the Beatles "Helter Skelter" on an endless loop for four hours and then drop them off in front of her house. The reason I've been pushed to this drastic action is because I've come to the conclusion that this little turd will not flush not matter how many times we drain the bowl. She's an obvious sign that the Peter Principle is also in affect in Hollywood as well, as it is in the government and corporate world. I can't stand looking at her always being given chance, after chance, huge oppurtunity, after huge oppurtunity and always climbing her way up the stardom ladder while people with actual creativity and talent are passed over and forgotten until they're passed their prime or dead and buried.

[mitchum]

36. "I work that Jew angle more than Elie Weisel"...

has been my patented "Sarah Silverman joke" for the past couple of years.

[peekaloo]

39. HA!

that made my chest hurt!

:D

[mitchum]

40. And THAT is better than applause...

or having that beery-breathed Jimmy Kimmel pawing ya

Thanks :)

[dysfunctional press]

41. i found it to be one of her better jokes, actually.

i had been looking forward to her show, but the first one sucked so bad that i haven't been back...but they ran that particular bit in the promos all week. it almost got me to watch...and it looks like the i can still catch the west coast feed...but i won't.

[Katherine Brengle]

44. I apologize in advance...

I laughed heartily at that one. I am not generally a fan of her though, she annoys the shit out of me.

She just says things she knows will be shocking - I highly doubt there is anything close to seriousness in any of it.

[chknltl]

48. hmmm I didn't get her humor either.

I watched her first show last week...did not care for most of it and decided not to watch it anymore...just not my cup of tea I guess. Pretty young lady though

[Zookeeper]

50. Hypnotoad honey, you're driving me nuts....

Just watch her damn show! You keep speculating on what it's like based on the commercial clips.

There have been three episodes. The first was questionable, the other two have been funny. I think she's great. I think lots of men, and some women, will hate her. She plays a very self-absorbed, selfish, perky, shallow character who happens to be pretty. Most pretty, perky female characters can be shallow, but aren't supposed to be selfish or self-absorbed unless they are being selfish in pursuit of a man. Or self-absorbed by worrying about whether they are skinny or pretty enough.

Her humor is satire. Her character does awful things because her character isn't a particularly nice person. However, most of us share at least some little bit of the same flaws as her character.

I don't think anyone who hasn't actually watched the show, should be judging it.

[ThaSickness1979]

51. She's not that funny

Just weird. The writers must be on some serious drugs when they write that stuff. I saw it a couple weeks ago. Figured give it a chance.. and it was just dumb.

[Writer]

52. I watched it.

She's trying that well-intentioned idiot schtick a la Stephen Colbert and BOMBS. It just wasn't funny. One of the show's "rules" is that you like Sarah Silverman... that you really, really LIKE Sarah Silverman, and think it's cute that she steals $17,000 (dysfunctional cruelty - HILARIOUS! :eyes:) from her sister and starts an ego-driven pursuit to promote herself by using her not-yet-diagnosed HIV positive-ness (which you can guess, from the very beginning, is false.)

Look, if you like her off-color humor you have her stand-up. But her jokes don't translate well into a half-hour program. It leaves you cringing and asking yourself, "Now WHAT am I supposed to find funny about this?"

I think Sarah Silverman is the new Olive Garden. :P

[BulletproofLandshark]

53. I think she's more mean than funny.

But we're supposed to ignore that because of the way she says it and because she's cute.

[Orsino]

54. I thought that was one of the better jokes in the episode.

Her character's total self-absorption is grating, but that gag summed it up well, with devastating timing.