2008 Woodie Awards
Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic
Christopher Erat
Issue date: 11/14/05 Section: Entertainment
- Page 1 of 1
"I'll tell you why we make fun of midgets: We're not afraid of them," says Sarah Silverman in Jesus Is Magic, maybe the smartest and definitely the funniest movie of the year.
Do not let the title fool you: Not one second of the profane, provocative Jesus Is Magic is appropriate for Sunday school. In a surreal stand-up routine that ruthlessly makes fun of all the things we are afraid of, Silverman does not just slaughter sacred cows. She sticks dynamite in sacred cows' mouths, blows them up and then fingerpaints with their entrails.
Silverman adopts a self-involved point of view that makes fun of complacency. With topics ranging from 9-11 ("It was devastating, especially for me") to her grandmother's death to the titular Jesus ("He turned water into wine and, um, I think he made the Statue of Liberty disappear in the '80s"), Silverman unleashes an inventive assault of cracked insights.
All her jokes get at the idea in her comment about midgets: If we stop being afraid of topics, we can begin to discuss and understand them. Silverman begins by making fun of herself ("I don't care if you think I'm racist. I just want you to think I'm thin.") and moves on to a million other topics. "Yeah," she seems to be saying, "the things I'm saying are outrageous but not as outrageous as the stereotypes and stupid behavior I'm talking about."
I do not mean to make the movie sound like a lecture. More like a play than a stand-up act, the material is woven together so skillfully, it is not until you get to the end that you realize it all had a progression and a theme. Even the jokes are intricately structured: You experience a moment of discomfort before you laugh, and that moment is crucial, because it is in that moment that Silverman forces you to think.
As the discomfort and laughs mount, Jesus Is Magic builds to a climactic and, typically, offensive joke that implies we all have tiny, built-in pieces of racism, ageism or homophobia, and the only way to recognize them is to bump up against a different point of view. Or, possibly, to bump into a midget.
Do not let the title fool you: Not one second of the profane, provocative Jesus Is Magic is appropriate for Sunday school. In a surreal stand-up routine that ruthlessly makes fun of all the things we are afraid of, Silverman does not just slaughter sacred cows. She sticks dynamite in sacred cows' mouths, blows them up and then fingerpaints with their entrails.
Silverman adopts a self-involved point of view that makes fun of complacency. With topics ranging from 9-11 ("It was devastating, especially for me") to her grandmother's death to the titular Jesus ("He turned water into wine and, um, I think he made the Statue of Liberty disappear in the '80s"), Silverman unleashes an inventive assault of cracked insights.
All her jokes get at the idea in her comment about midgets: If we stop being afraid of topics, we can begin to discuss and understand them. Silverman begins by making fun of herself ("I don't care if you think I'm racist. I just want you to think I'm thin.") and moves on to a million other topics. "Yeah," she seems to be saying, "the things I'm saying are outrageous but not as outrageous as the stereotypes and stupid behavior I'm talking about."
I do not mean to make the movie sound like a lecture. More like a play than a stand-up act, the material is woven together so skillfully, it is not until you get to the end that you realize it all had a progression and a theme. Even the jokes are intricately structured: You experience a moment of discomfort before you laugh, and that moment is crucial, because it is in that moment that Silverman forces you to think.
As the discomfort and laughs mount, Jesus Is Magic builds to a climactic and, typically, offensive joke that implies we all have tiny, built-in pieces of racism, ageism or homophobia, and the only way to recognize them is to bump up against a different point of view. Or, possibly, to bump into a midget.