![]() ![]() ![]() She told a bland story about starring in a TV show, but her material sharpens when returning to her deadpan awfulness. At her show at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Saturday, she glared at the audience, charging past the microphone stand to mock someone for checking a cellphone. Silverman, still lanky and loose-limbed, hasn’t mellowed much. Whereas male comedians generally tread more gently, particularly if the victim is a woman (prison jokes are a whole other matter), Ms. Facebook took down a page dedicated to ugly rape jokes last week after months of pressure, yet every night tourists guffaw at a repeated joke about raping babies as a cure for AIDS in “The Book of Mormon.” It’s startlingly rare to watch an evening of stand-up in New York without any mention of rape. Our culture sends mixed signals about this least funny of subjects. It’s no accident that her best-known jokes are about rape. To put it another way, her humor would make Johnny Carson uncomfortable. What she proved is that there are areas of aggressive, shocking comedy where women could go further than men. Silverman belongs to this tradition, under the guise of a shallow bigot. “Picture Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd,” he offered as evidence. George Carlin famously argued that rape jokes could be funny. Then came the anxious chuckles whose subtext seemed to be: I can’t believe I laughed at that joke.įor a certain strain of stand-up, dating to Lenny Bruce, it’s essential to talk about what’s taboo. When I saw Sarah Silverman deliver that signature one-liner in a downtown theater almost a decade ago, the audience exploded with laughter followed by groans. He would star in 39 more cartoons.If you had to pinpoint one joke as a breakthrough for this new generation of female comedians, it might be this one: “I was raped by a doctor, which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl.” The plucky Bosko is perhaps early animation’s least offensive black character. “Sinkin’ in the Bathtub” (1930, Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising)Ī tardy jalopy emerging from an outhouse immediately distinguishes Warner Bros.’ first Looney Tunes cartoon from its Disney counterparts. Thanks also to the Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Listener Society Facebook group). (Acknowledgment to the essential tomes: Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, by Jerry Beck & Will Friedwald Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, by Leonard Maltin and Bugs Bunny: Fifty Years and Only One Grey Hare, by Joe Adamson. Over 1,000 were produced, so I’m bound to have missed a classic or two. canon, including a top 10 of essential masterworks. On this 90th anniversary, here is a sampling of 90 of the looniest and merriest cartoons in the Warner Bros. Freleng would say, ‘Ah, bullshit! Let’s knock ’em dead.’” “There was only one guy … Chuck, at the time, had the Disney syndrome: the urge to make the most beautiful cartoons going. writer Michael Maltese recalled in an interview with Joe Adamson that appeared in Film Comment. “They never went for the cute stuff at Warners,” Warner Bros. ![]() While Walt Disney was focused on elevating the art of animation, Warner Bros.’ dream team of writers and directors were hell-bent on just making each other laugh. From the start, the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts were designed as a more iconoclastic alternative to Disney’s artistically groundbreaking Silly Symphonies. Looney Tunes cartoon, “Sinkin’ in the Bathtub,” was released. On April 17, 1930, the very first Warner Bros. ![]()
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