I watched a Woody Allen film for the first time last week, it’s a recent release called Whatever Works. Larry David played some old cynical guy. I’m not interested in giving a review but I found it hilarious. Over the weekend I began to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm which is damn funny. But what is it with Jewish comedians in the states? It’s a strange question for me to ask because I don’t really understand American society but I’m aware that the Jewish are quite infamous in comedy - why is that?
Because when you have a history like ours you learn to laugh to stay sane, especially at oneself, and as most great Jewish comedians know, and do, at one’s parents and siblings. This, as I saw in a recent interview of a famous Jewish comic recently, his name I do not recall at the moment, is where they draw on for “inspiration.” You must also understand, Woody Allen – a genius – is not the real Woody Allen that you would meet in life; the characters he plays, are just that, characters. Perhaps it is true for Larry David as well, though they all draw from life, as all great artists do.
But that’s not a really great answer. I was wondering about it myself fairly recently, and I’m not sure what exactly we Jews have when it comes to comedy. Jewish theatre from the twenties and thirties into the fifties was notorious for comedy, and a lot of actors, directors of later eras, got their start there (learned a lot of techniques, what worked and what didn’t, etc.). Perhaps, given such a miserable state that most Jews live in (the common myth is that we are rich, but this is not true, the majority of Jews are, actually, very poor) comedy was a source of catharsis, an escapism from the hardships of life. This would have been especially true in early theatre. As Jewish culture became more and more assimilated in American culture, less religious – religion used to provide an outlet for emotions as there are holidays and rituals were all Jews are commanded to be happy, to laugh – I would suspect that comedy became an outlet for those that left behind religion.
It is true that their are a lot of Jews in comedy, I don’t want to make it seem like there aren’t great comedians of other cultures, I love English comedy, Italian, George Carlin, etc., though mainstream Adam Sandler culture I do not really appreciate (is he Jewish?), but there does seem to be a prevalent current of Jewish comedians. Maybe it’s the pessimism in our comedy, jokes directed at philosophical and religious concerns, socially awkward humor, humor about sex, but different than say in your face dirty-jokes. I don’t know, it’s an interesting question, and if I think and read about it more I’ll come back and attempt a more adequate response.
I am alarmed by an idea that humor can be used as a social engineering tool. I see a lot of (jewish) humor in the mainstream media that is base and vulgar. SouthPark, and Sarah Silverman are some that come to mind. What vulgar humor essentially does is train you to enjoy and accept these things, over time. Judging from the ratings of these shows, the American people seem to gobble it right up. 
It’s a two-sided thing; you’ve always got Lenny Bruces and Bill Hickses to make people think a bit. There are racist motormouths making a quick buck off being “shocking” and “daring to say things the PC brigade don’t want you to hear” and there are people like Dick Gregory doing their bit for what they think is right.
Sarah Silverman does a lot of stuff that is just as edgy these days as Lenny Bruce was in his. Some of it is vulgar, as was some of Bruce’s stuff, and most of it is actually rather smart and polemical in a good way.
I call Silverman to the stand.
I saw an interview with Michael Erik Dyson, in which he was asked to comment on some of Silverman’s jokes about black people. The man interviewing him, a black professor from Princeton, said that he often felt very uneasy when Sarah pushed the limit. Dyson agreed with him. What they miss is that racial humor that plays on stereotypes is powerful, if only to bring to the surface what the bourgeois and the intelligentsia believe best to repress.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgHHX9R4Qtk[/youtube]
Now here one might argue is a vulgar skit. But these people would be missing the genius behind what Silverman is doing. There is a strong social commentary, which Silverman brilliantly raises to the surface through a host of different comic and stage techniques. In the beginning, she is working directly out of early Jewish theatre, so already we have a historical narrative. There are elements of irony, allusion, satire, hyperbole, which combine to create a very potent psychological power–this is an anti-porn, anti-prostitution skit. To experience these jokes as vulgar, is to miss the irony, the allusions, is to miss the latent intention behind the manifest presentation.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_lUu_RyFpI[/youtube]
If you were a genius you wouldn’t need to descend into all manner filth to make a point.
And by filth I mean this kind of stuff:
youtube.com/watch?v=jd7MleO114A
1080 5-star ratings?! Seriously?!
Sarah’s take
youtube.com/watch?v=T_L3dhFgark
You think that’s bad, listen to Gilbert Gottfried’s version of it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGA0dIz9-Wk Does this make him any less of a comedic genius? The Aristocrats joke is supposed to be the dirtiest joke a comedian can make, told for shock-value. It goes all the way back to the Vaudeville days. By comparison to Gottfried, Silverman’s version is tame and almost Puritan.
Here is the full wiki article on the aristocrats joke, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aristocrats_(joke)
As for South Park, I’m sorry but the last line, “I don’t get it,” makes the whole joke. It is a great postmodern commentary on dirty jokes themselves, passed around by teenagers that, through their dirt and shock-value, seem like they should be funny, but at the end of the day, the writers leave the good viewer with the notion that these kids are passing around filth that they themselves do not understand. It’s like a dada poem, criticism of poetry through poetry . . . criticism of purely dirty joke told for shock value, through telling the joke.
Funny? Sure. (Edit: Actually no.)
Meaningful? Uh, no.
Personally, I think there’s a fine line between funny and offensive, and I mean a FINE LINE 
As a British-Caribbean I can take the piss out of myself till the cows come home, but if another nationality does it for me then I ain’t laffing 
even if that person happens to be native Caribbean 
My motto is ‘Take the piss out of yourself if you so feel like/wish to, but it should start and end with YOU!’ 
I’m gonna withdraw the comment that Gottfried is a comedic genius, simply because I haven’t seen enough of his stand-up–a genius of voice-acting for sure, of course.
Fine-line, yes, perhaps, if you’re gonna be all politically correct about it.
I have no idea who Gottfried is 
Not so much ‘politically correct’ as ‘I ain’t no fucking joke, so go joke about your peeps/yourself, ya get me’ Damn my savage Carib blood
I actually like racist humor, because judging by the crowd reactions you can get some genuine sociological insights. Jokes reveal a lot about what is ‘not supposed to be talked about.’ Sometimes, that’s the only outlet for things. For example, before Enron went down, it was reported that common water-cooler humor was how corrupt the whole organization was. Ding Ding Ding.
Imagine a comic makes a really racist joke, but not only racist, violent and threatening as well, and the whole audience erupts with laughter. That worries me. Yet, I would like to know that an audience will laugh at this type of joke, that that filth is there, beneath the surface, in order to combat it. Which is far better, don’t you agree, than to see the same filth manifest itself at a political rally? When we have sociological knowledge, we have information on which we can act . . . when everything is spoken in secret, in a time of crisis, it all may erupt and people will look around and go: where the hell did that come from?
Or maybe they’re just laughing at that racist joke because they’re all amateur sociologists too.