Sarah Silverman is mocking me with her Jewish star good looks

I tend to be a little ambivalent about Sarah Silverman. When I think of Silverman, I often think of something Dorothy Parker once said about herself,

"I was just a little Jewish girl trying to be cute."

But that thought in itself is ambivalent. I mean it, in one sense, in a desire to decrease her celebrity in reaction to the idea that she is somehow state-of-the-art in comedy. When I sometimes think that at least as much of her success is down to the fact that men like an attractive woman who is willing to talk filthy.

Yet comparing anyone who writes and can be witty (man or woman) to Dorothy Parker in any way is, inherently, a compliment. And I mean it in that sense, too. Sometimes she doesn't make me laugh as much as squirm...but sometimes that's my favorite thing that she does, as in her appearance in The Aristocrats.

All that to one side... I love this picture of her that appeared in Maxim.

I love it not just because it's a picture of a good-looking woman in her underpants (although, god knows...). But because I think it's a reference to one of the more famous scenes from the original Cabaret.

In the scene, Joel Grey as the MC of the title show in 1930s Berlin dances with an actor dressed in an oversized gorillia suit and sings lovingly "If they could see her through my eyes, maybe they'd all understand..." Originally, the last line of the song was-"If you could see her through my eyes...she wouldn't look Jewish at all."

It was meant to be chilling, and reportedly it was too much so. As happens, what was intended to be a scathing satire of anti-Semitism was taken by some to be the real thing. The creators, against their better artistic judgement, changed the line, although Grey would sometimes use the original and claim he "forgot." Bob Fosse also restored it for his film version, and I believe it is mostly used in productions today.

I should say that I don't know if that connection was intended, and if it was I don't know that it was Silverman's idea and not the photographers. But it seems so typical of Silverman that she would have things working on at least two levels even for something that's usually just as honestly sexist as Maxim photos.

I have to admire her for it.

(Photos source here. There's one or two more sexy ones, too.)