The Comedy of Offense

Sam Anderson's recent Slate piece on Sarah Silverman contains perhaps the most precise, concise definition of the comedy of offense that has risen to notoriety with shows like South Park and The Family Guy.

Through her stand-up, however, Silverman has become an important member of a guerrilla vanguard in the culture wars that we might call the "meta-bigots"—other members include the South Park kids, Sacha Baron Cohen's "Ali G", and the now-AWOL Dave Chappelle. The meta-bigots work at social problems indirectly; instead of discussing race, rape, abortion, incest, or mass starvation, they parody our discussions of them. They manipulate stereotypes about stereotypes.

Unlike Matthew Yglesias, I can't say I'm particularly excited about Silverman's new movie, Jesus is Magic. I too have seen the trailers running at E-Street, but I remain skeptical. Anderson's article correctly points out Silverman's shaky track record in films like School of Rock, and the trailer I saw seemed to miss the part "meta-bigot" comedy where the ultimate end was, well, comedy. Silverman's approach to stand-up seems pretty much to be to find the most offensive thing possible, and then... well, that's it. It doesn't go any further than that.

And, partly due to the nature of stand-up, it seems like that's the formula for every joke. Find a cultural taboo and expose it in whatever way is most likely to offend, daring people to be shocked, and then leave it hanging out in the public square for all to gawk at. It's not so much humor as it is confrontation; it's not a bad thing--but it's not always all that funny.

South Park and its ilk, while not always on the money, are more than a repackaged collection of awkward offenses, and they're willing to move outside the bounds of obscenity and taboo in order to make their jokes. They use clever dialog, brilliantly constructed characters and narrative structure tp bring some actual wit to the proceedings. The songs in South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, for example, aren't just funny because of their outrageous lyrics, they're funny because they're perfect parodies of formulaic musical tunes. Team America didn't just parody the indeterminate racial issues in the war on terrorism (or global Islamist extremism, or whatever WH speechwriting is calling it these days), it also included a lot of very amusing self-referential jabs at the absurdity of the puppet medium itself.

Sure, the most memorable gags were about sex and vomit, but they weren't the only gags. Silverman, on the other hand, seems to screen out most everything but un-P.C. skewering, and the result is far more monotonous than her fellows in form.