OPENING ACT

Sarah Silverman celebrates the Golden Globes - Jan. 2014 her style !!!!

When I heard Sarah Silverman's humor I needed to pay attention. She is sharp and intelligent. I could hear in her voice a white American woman. When I did see her on television spots here and there nothing jumped out that distinguished her. In short, she became part of a cultural landscape that did not include me and my kind. Apparently, there is and has been a dismissive notion that women are not funny. I didn't know this until last year watching a provocative documentary about women comediennes talking about their craft. Their words were stories awakened by a sense of being tagged by a dominate group. I know that group. In some way male privilege affords me partial entry into a club held by white men. So, I have to take some of the backlash from women in their lots in life they don't belong to. It is a touchy subject, but one needing to be touched. 

Earlier this year I saw Sarah Silverman's stand up comedy on cable. It was her own show. It started out with her bouncing a ball against a wall in the evening hours wearing an outfit that captured my breath and my attention. Her back to the street a souped up classic car with three macho Hispanic thugs pulled up and called to her because she looked so good in her black thigh high leggings from behind. I was curious too. When she turned around their was a collective gasp of air quickly exhaled because she was tough, obviously unafraid, and sharp of tongue. An immediate turn on. The trio took the bait and conversation ensued. It was short. She was memorable if you like the look of white women wearing black clothes drawing attention to either the whiteness, or the dark cloth. Either way a confident good-looking white woman pulls it off when she is sharp herself as steel. 

This is how I got into her humor. I've seen this show three, no four times. It gave me insights into the way crude white boy humor comes out of an intelligent good-looking white woman. Sarah Silverman deliberately bent perceptions squeezing humor out of what could easily be bizarre. It is something white men (famous or not) who are funny can do so well. I am making these assessments from a place of a Black man and an Indian man (African and Muskogee) view. White humor keeps 'us' on guard because it is physical and leers into the dark vestiges of violence at times with a thin membrane keeping one from the other. It isn't true for all white comics professionally, or not, but it is a fact we've learned to guard against with keen vigilance. 

In the audience of a beautiful white comedienne a Black man has to be careful of his senses because her appeal will justify letting his guard down, and escort his good sense out the door, in a comedy venue dominated by white Americans. The tendency to laugh in their presence in the hope they will like you better is a demeaning force of energies with one purpose: to tear integrity down. These are subtle things, but important in the context of navigation in America's social structure. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 8.28.14 


Sarah's fashion

Sarah Silverman holding her crotch !!!!