Comic Diplomacy: Breaking Down Barriers One Laugh at a Time
Sarah Silverman’s I Love You, America
By Jennifer Golden
Sarah Silverman — stand-up comic, actor, bedwetter, Bernie Sanders supporter — is in love. With America. All of it.
In her new show, I Love America (Hulu), Silverman ventures outside her self-described liberal bubble to parts of the U.S. her coast-dwelling friends might derisively call “flyover country.” There she meets with her fellow Americans on their own turf to find out what makes them tick.
“I’m hoping to, with this show, connect with unlike-minded people,” Silverman said during a Hulu-sponsored panel discussion in July.
With a reputation for edgy, taboo-testing humor and, more recently, vocal support of progressive political causes, it might be surprising to hear Silverman profess her love of Trump supporters, but on her publicity tour touting the new show, that’s just what’s she’s been doing.
“I fell in love with them. I had a great time with them and I felt comfortable,” she said at LA’s Vulture Festival in November.
Silverman’s approach is to meet people, quite literally, where they are. Through field segments around the country and in-studio interviews before a live audience, Silverman peppers her guests with questions about how they came to hold their worldviews.
Whereas some comedians — like Jon Stewart, for example — use comedy as a foil when pressed to engage on serious social issues, Silverman’s approach is almost the opposite. She plays the role of comic host dutifully, delivering jokes with a professional precision particularly when before a live studio audience. During the interview segments, however, she seems to take off her comedian’s hat. She is engaging and witty, for sure, but the edginess that she’s known for takes a back seat to an earnestness that may surprise fans who have followed her long comedy career.
Hug it out
When talking about issues on which she and her subjects disagree, Silverman will, on occasion, gently push back. More often than not, however, she relies on good-natured ribbing and hugs to make a connection.
“People don’t change from facts. You can throw facts in their faces and poll numbers and it doesn’t change people’s beliefs. What changes people are feelings,” Silverman told fellow comedian Bill Maher on his eponymous HBO show. “Making people feel stupid even with true things doesn’t change them. They are more changed with that first hug hello. To me, it’s more about getting people’s porcupine needles down.”
This theme of engaging with people who have different backgrounds, experiences, and ideologies is a major driver of the show. But it’s not all about changing others’ minds, Silverman notes. It’s about changing herself as well.
“I live in a bit of a bubble,” she admits at the opening of the series’ first episode. “And as a result, it’s possible I may have some unfair, preconceived notions about what people are like in the rest of America, but that’s the [expletive] part of me I’m trying to change with this show.”
Silverman carries this kind of self-awareness and self-deprecation into her interviews with her subjects, making her a more approachable interlocutor than those familiar with her acerbic wit might think.
Food for thought
Such a sincere approach to dialogue isn’t exactly laugh-out-loud stuff, and Silverman acknowledges this in her first episode.
“Sometimes [the show] is going to be totally earnest, and you’ll go into it expecting it to be funny and you’ll be like ‘he he he’ and then you’ll be like, ‘oh.’”
But Silverman, known for her irreverence and vulgarity, peppers her sociological experiments with a good dose of irony, salty language, and poop jokes.
“I like to sandwich the thoughtful stuff with aggressively stupid, ridiculous and silly bread and serve that sandwich,” she told CBS News.
In the October 19 episode, for example, Silverman speaks with conservative voters in Mineola, Texas. At the end of a wide-ranging discussion of hot-button issues like gay marriage and climate change, Silverman poses this question:
“We’ve talked about blue states, we’ve talked about red states. Let’s talk about brown states,” she said. “Have you all ever sh*t your pants?”
After each person in the segment shares his or her own embarrassing story of incontinence, Silverman comes to a happy, if not tremendously insightful, conclusion. “We all are the same, really. We all love our families. We all care about our friends. And we all have humiliating stories that involve sh*tting.”
But Silverman’s “silly bread” might be sliced too thick for some audiences. Citing her idol Mr. Rogers’ maxim, “If it’s mentionable, it’s manageable,” Silverman begins her November 2 show with a six-minute monologue describing her preferred masturbation techniques.
“We’re on episode four, and her outrageous attempts to keep pushing the envelope further and further are already getting, dare I say it, boring,” writes conservative commentator Lindsay Kornick. “That is one among many downsides to living in a ‘sex sells’ culture. Sooner or later, people will stop buying. That is unfortunately the most we can hope for when this is considered comedic material.”
The (time) limits of comedy
Silverman recognizes that her reputation both as a notoriously un-PC comic and an outspoken liberal makes her a hard sell as an ambassador capable of bridging America’s political divide.
“Listen, I obviously have very firm opinions and beliefs,” she has said. “I’m not begging Republicans to watch [the show], but I hope that if they do they’ll be able to enjoy it.
“[Because] when you get a chance to be intimate, to be one-on-one with someone whose sets of beliefs are different than your own, there’s an opportunity for our defenses to be down.”
Silverman also acknowledges that comedy is a difficult space in which to remain politically correct.
“Comedy… is not evergreen.” she told Bill Maher. “There are things that I’ve said in my comedy that I’m sure will be held against me, that I don’t stand by, that I’m embarrassed by.”
For now, however, the funnywoman seems content with building bridges one hug, laugh, and fart machine at a time. The approach seems to be working, at least on an individual level.
“It felt so great to talk to somebody with different views, to sit in a room and not be judged,” said Trump supporter Brandi Stander, who Silverman interviewed at her home in Chalmette, Louisiana, in the first episode. “We could have just kept her here forever!”
