The Animatrix The Animatrix
Sep
09
2005

TIFF Report: Sarah Silverman - Jesus is Magic

Posted by Kurt Halfyard at 10:56am.

Posted in Film & DVD Reviews , Comedy, USA & Canada, Toronto Film Festival 2005.

sarah_silverman.jpg

My familiarity with Sarah Silverman pretty much starts and stops with her subversive and sublime segment in the recent documentary: The Aristocrats. While the bulk of the comedians there are taking scatological humour to the breaking point, Silverman turns the joke into an awkward confessional with herself as a charmingly naïve rape victim (Hey, it’s all in the delivery).  It is funny on its own, but also because it is 180 degrees from everyone else.

For her one-woman show, Jesus is Magic, she capitalizes on her own good looks, building a persona which is both Jewish spoiled-brat-princess and ditzy young starlet, not unlike the one Ana Farris played in Sophia Coppola’s Lost In Translation. Her deadpan in-character delivery implodes the entire notion of starfucking, as popular culture and media look to pseudo-celebrities to comment on racism, religion, and global tragedy.

Not only that, she gets a lot of mileage out of “I can say this because I’m beautiful and white,” which is sure to rub at whatever is left of the veneer of political correctness and offend those unwilling to see these hypocrisies repeated again and again within America (and back-patting ‘aren’t we great’ Canadian culture which is amusingly represented by the the self-congratulatory circle-wank, complete with a multiude of black&white hands, of this years Toronto Film Festival promo-bumper shown prior to each TIFF screening). Silverman wittily deconstructs ‘degrees of racism’, and runs with the notion of: If I can make fun of Jews because I’m Jewish, why can’t I make fun of any other minority out there. Remember that scene from Office Space where Michael Bolton is loudly signing to gangster rap while stuck in traffic, only to turn it down and go rigid when a black guy pulls up in the car next to him? Silverman nails that feeling again and again in fresh and interesting ways. She drags phoniness into the limelight by being as blissfully phony as she can.

There are sketches and musical bits in between interspersed which break up the simple flow filming her live stage-act. The opening sketch where she listens to the success of a couple of her friends, while simmering with awkward jealousy is winning in a Christopher Guest sort of way. Likewise, the opening “I want to be a star” musical number (complete with 1950’s bad-bluescreen matteing) and eschewing hiring Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman or Sandra Bullock for her show, because she is “better than those twats!” perfectly set up her tone. But later sketch material cuts away from the stage and only undermines the sophistication of her style by too (painfully) obviously underlining some of her best material.

After the show, during the Q&A someone asked why after Mocking blacks, Asians, Handicapped, Midgets and the Elderly, did she not go after fat people. Her response “Oh, they’re sensitive.” It’s all in the delivery.

Somebody ought to hook up Sarah and Todd Solondz. That would be something.

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Reader Comments

  1. tracy 09/09/2005 @ 1:19pm

    I’ve always loved Sarah Silverman - she was probably my favorite thing about Mr. Show besides Bob & David themselves. Even though she’s not really in a ton of stuff, I just love her style. She’s like the bitchy sister I never had.

    Oh wait, I do have a bitchy sister. OK, she’s like the other bitchy sister I never had.

  2. chris 09/10/2005 @ 10:59pm

    Just for clarification: Michael Bolton in Office Space, sees a black man panhandling on the corner. The man wasn’t in a car.

    Never seen Sarah Silverman’s solo work. This sounds really interesting. Maybe a touch like David Cross.

  3. dave/web-monkey 09/11/2005 @ 1:40am

    For even furthur clarification, the guy was selling flowers, not pan-handling.. raspberry Wheeee!  later.

  4. Freebasedog 09/13/2005 @ 12:55pm

    This is one of the fucking funniest things I’ve ever seen. If you don’t watch and love this movie you should die.

  5. Freebasedog 09/13/2005 @ 12:57pm

    This is one of the fucking funniest things I’ve ever seen. If you don’t watch and love this movie you should die.

  6. Freebasedog 09/13/2005 @ 12:57pm

    This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. If you don’t watch and love this movie you should die.

  7. Freebasedog 09/13/2005 @ 1:01pm

    Hmm, this site doesn’t post so good. I thought it kept giving me errors from writing fuck. Anyway, this movie seriously is the fuckin ruler of all comedy movies. I realize that the reason so few women are legitimately funny is cuz Sarah Silverman got 90% of the female joke matter in the universe.

  8. rocio 07/04/2006 @ 2:15pm

    holaa

    esta re buena la pelicula que actua ella que es : escuela de rock

    esta muy buena

    chau chau

  9. Anonymous 07/16/2006 @ 12:58pm

    Jesus Is Magic aka how to be racist and boring but have it seem okay because i’m a pretty white girl playing infront of a upperclass white audience who’s too polite to boo me

  10. MIke Schwarz 12/31/2006 @ 12:52pm

    you are an asshole. that picture is anti-semetic, and you need to wise up.

  11. Perc 01/25/2007 @ 8:18am

    This comment is really to TOTALLY and ENTHUSIASTICALLY second that last line of hooking up Silverman and Solondz.

    Or even Todd Haynes… imagine Silverman directed in the style of Superstar: the Karen Carpenter Story.

    This is at the top of my queue right now because I keep getting ridiculous snippets of the routine in print, and losing my shit over remarks like “I think the best time to have a baby is as a black teenager.&” and “I was raped by my therapist, which can be such a poignant thing for a young Jewish girl.&” (She was my 2nd fave Aristocrat, after the unexpected brilliance of the usually deeply despised Mario Cantone.)

  12. Lisa 06/01/2007 @ 12:40am

    She is a cunt. Trying to get a laugh out of serious terminal diseases and 911 is fucked up. She should rot in hell.

  13. Kurt 06/03/2007 @ 9:13am

    Obviously Lisa, you do not grasp that fact that different folks find different things funny, and sometimes laughter is cathartic. Where Silverman is usually funniest is the added layer on which she mocks the reactionary/head-in-the-sand mentality of a lot of folks who live in first world countries...and are cocooned in sensational media - from People Magazine and ‘entertainment-news shows’ to CNN/FoxNews which frankly isn’t far off the former…
    -----

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