ABSTRACT
We examine the notion of obscenity in relation to constructions of Jewish sexuality in stand-up. Since Lenny Bruce, stand-up has been defined by extreme licence. Acknowledging that stand-up is reliant on the construction of performer identity, we examine the routines of Belle Barth and Pearl Williams, female Jewish contemporaries of Bruce, in contrast to Bruce, and show that Bruce used his construction of Jewish identity as a scourge to beat a wider, more general audience, whereas Barth and Williams used theirs as a way to ridicule and deflate themselves and their mainly Jewish audiences. All accused of obscenity, these comedians referred to themselves as ‘dirty’ rather than obscene, implying a contrast between dirtiness and obscenity. Exploiting this distinction, they pushed the latitudes of comic licence. Although they all attacked hypocrisy, their targets and goals were different. Some 60 years later, Bruce is generally acknowledged as the father of modern stand-up he is immortalized and beatified whereas Belle Barth and Pearl Williams are forgotten. We argue, however, that their personae persisted in Bruce’s female inheritors: Joan Rivers, and Sarah Silverman. We examine selected material from Rivers and Silverman, tracing public and domestic uses of ‘dirt’ as a means of attack in Jewish comedy. Their performances stringently interrogated social mores while simultaneously questioning and comically deflating obscenity. We conclude that, as with their forerunners, in their intensely Jewish construction of self, obscenity is licensed as simply dirtiness.
