Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic
With Sarah Silverman, Laura Silverman, Brian Posehn, and Bob Odenkirk
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I have the opposite problem with Jesus Is Magic, the big coming-out party for radically witty comedian Sarah Silverman: it’s the most exciting stand-up performance I’ve seen in years, yet in all honesty I can’t say it made me laugh that much. I probably laughed more at an insipid Ellen DeGeneres monologue I stumbled across on TV the previous night. But I’d be hard-pressed to recall anything DeGeneres said; Silverman’s booby-trapped gags are still with me. The Los Angeles Times has compared Silverman to Bruce, a critical cliche but in this case highly appropriate: much like the patron saint of dangerous comedy, Silverman lures liberal audiences into a kind of moral jujitsu. In one bit she describes a gemstone that grows from the spines of Ethiopian babies, who must be killed to harvest it. She’s coveted one for years, she admits, but she’s ethically opposed because the baby-rendering factories “treat the unions really bad.”
Jokes like these are even more shocking coming from the mouth of a pretty, petite young woman, and Silverman clearly relishes the incongruity. In print she comes off like any aspiring young actress, guarded and narcissistic, but in Jesus Is Magic she ruthlessly parodies her own vanity: “I don’t care if you think I’m racist,” she says. “I just want you to think I’m thin.” On the subject of personal grooming, she insists she’s never had her anus hair waxed but admits that she has had it styled. Her willingness to come across as mean, greedy, and self-absorbed is the biggest difference between her and social satirists like Bruce, George Carlin, and Bill Hicks, who justified their treatment of taboo subjects with homilies to free speech. Her copious self-regard would be repulsive if she weren’t seriously repulsed by it herself.
Price: $7-$9.50
