Sign in with FacebookMatthew's Reviews > The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee
The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee
by Sarah Silverman
by Sarah Silverman
What's good:
-She sprinkles funny lines throughout.
-Her childhood and her bouts with bedwetting and depression are interesting, however they feel ghostwritten.
-The stories of the writer's room throughout the years and early years in the Boston and New York stand-up comedy scenes.
-She has led a resilient career overcoming a failed stint at Saturday Night Live and countless controversies over her style of button-pushing comedic style.
Not so good:
-She has a habit of victimizing herself throughout the controversies she has stirred. There are multiple sections in which she reads hate mail that commonly feature racist and sexist slurs to detract credibility from her critics. She ultimately is ignorant or refuses to understand that there is a fundamental difference between jokes directed towards of a societal division in which she is included (women, Jews, etc.) and divisions of which she is not (Asians, black people, Catholics, etc). In the final sections she assumes she is exempt of criticism from Catholics over an edgy bit about the Church because she frequently makes fun of Jews. That's just not the way the game is played. Backlash is inevitable. She has done well eventually weathering these PR storms, but she contradicts her own sensitivities by minimizing the sensitivities of others.
-She is a bit naive and irresponsible in her subtle Steve Perry story. She is upset that Perry likes the wrong parts of her racial jokes. One joke of hers that comes to mind,
'The best time to get pregnant is when you're a black teenager.'
This jokes has an academic value, part of the value is its edginess. But this is the problem with race jokes. It's not that everyone that likes that joke is racist. Far from it. It's more that most racists will probably like the joke. So if jokes like this one are to be included in a stand-up show, take responsibility for the demographics of which it might appeal.
I know I've clearly detailed what I disliked more substantially than what I liked. But that's because the enjoyable parts are face value and its faults are a bit more below the surface. This is an enjoyable read, particularly if the reader is Jewish.
-She sprinkles funny lines throughout.
-Her childhood and her bouts with bedwetting and depression are interesting, however they feel ghostwritten.
-The stories of the writer's room throughout the years and early years in the Boston and New York stand-up comedy scenes.
-She has led a resilient career overcoming a failed stint at Saturday Night Live and countless controversies over her style of button-pushing comedic style.
Not so good:
-She has a habit of victimizing herself throughout the controversies she has stirred. There are multiple sections in which she reads hate mail that commonly feature racist and sexist slurs to detract credibility from her critics. She ultimately is ignorant or refuses to understand that there is a fundamental difference between jokes directed towards of a societal division in which she is included (women, Jews, etc.) and divisions of which she is not (Asians, black people, Catholics, etc). In the final sections she assumes she is exempt of criticism from Catholics over an edgy bit about the Church because she frequently makes fun of Jews. That's just not the way the game is played. Backlash is inevitable. She has done well eventually weathering these PR storms, but she contradicts her own sensitivities by minimizing the sensitivities of others.
-She is a bit naive and irresponsible in her subtle Steve Perry story. She is upset that Perry likes the wrong parts of her racial jokes. One joke of hers that comes to mind,
'The best time to get pregnant is when you're a black teenager.'
This jokes has an academic value, part of the value is its edginess. But this is the problem with race jokes. It's not that everyone that likes that joke is racist. Far from it. It's more that most racists will probably like the joke. So if jokes like this one are to be included in a stand-up show, take responsibility for the demographics of which it might appeal.
I know I've clearly detailed what I disliked more substantially than what I liked. But that's because the enjoyable parts are face value and its faults are a bit more below the surface. This is an enjoyable read, particularly if the reader is Jewish.
Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read The Bedwetter.
sign in »
Comments (showing 1-3 of 3) (3 new)
date
newest »
newest »
I didn't disagree with much you said. And obviously I'm a Silverman fan which is why I took the time for her book. I think she's an excellent comedian and performer and I wouldn't tell her to censor any of her material. The point I was trying to make is that if she's going to be on the edge of such difficult subject matter, she has to be able to withstand the inevitable waves of backlash that are bound to arrive when she takes jabs at groups of which she does not belong. She spends hundreds to thousands of words commenting on her critics when I wish she would have taken a "Well, they didn't get it. But you know what, fuck 'em!" stand. Here instead she appeals to PC attitudes by reading off letter after letter with racist and sexist slurs to detract from her critics. It's just a disappointing aspect of the book. I wish she wasn't so sensitive when she thrives on material that steamrolls sensitivity so effectively.
Fair enough. As I said, I haven't read the book, but I can certainly understand how that would be a disappointing response to her critics, particularly as such letters seem to beg for a satiric riposte. On the other hand, I'm not being called a racist by thousands of people, so I can understand, as I'm sure you do as well, why she might be motivated to try a less ambiguous route. It sounds like, from what you're saying, part of the problem is that she broke character and tried to be a person instead of her stage persona. I would think that the best thing for a comedian to do would be, in an Andy Kaufman kind of way, make one's persona even more impenetrable in the face of the public's misunderstanding.
Her jokes are designed to make politically correct people uncomfortable. The laugh her jokes produce, when they are understood, is usually a nervous laugh. Watch her on a talk show and you usually see the host and other guests laughing and squirming at the same time, as though they are ashamed that they find what she's saying funny. What her jokes are designed to expose is thus often a repressed racism within political correctness that persists in spite of people's goods intentions and conscious, rational beliefs.
Sadly, jokes are perhaps the only way to talk honestly about race (or any other politically loaded topic) anymore in this country. This, however, is not to say that what Silverman says in her jokes about various races is true, but rather, that the uncomfortable laughter it provokes reveals a particular truth about us and our unconscious beliefs. Consequently, when you argue that she should remove what is racially unacceptable from her material, you are acting under the aegis of the ego's polite rationality while once again trying to repress again the unconscious beliefs that her jokes were so successful in exposing.
In short, you would censor her in order to perpetuate a politically correct lie. This lie is not, as racists would have it, a lie that pretends that races are equal when they are in fact otherwise. This, of course, would be vulgar nonsense. Rather, the lie you would perpetuate is about your own character.