Sarah Silverman's New Video Rivals Lily Allen's

Sarah Silverman has a new stand-up special, We Are Miracles, which is premiering on HBO this coming Saturday. And we cannot stinkin' wait for it. Her first-ever HBO special (seriously FIRST?) was shot in a 39-seat-room in the LA club Largo — an intimate setting paired with Silverman's affronting and explicit style should make for great comedy. To keep fans enticed, Silverman has just released a music video for her song "Diva."

The bright, peppy, kiddie-sing-along style tune aims her comedy daggers straight at Bravo and its dozens of Housewives. Moreso, it's a message to women who call themselves "divas" without being actual singing stars, rather just people who act like, as Silverman states about 1,000 times, "cunts."

If you're a fan of Silverman, you won't find the video all too shocking as she's known to throw the c-bomb as many times as male stand-ups talk about their own dicks. What has always remained true about Silverman's persona is that her consistently lewd, crude, and rude language spews out from a grown woman wearing pigtails, and in this case, a Renaissance-y princess dress.

The video also draws certain parallels with another recently released feminist video, Lily Allen's "Hard Out Here." Though Allen's is a more direct confrontation to the insane standards women in the music industry are held up to and Silverman's is jokey and focuses on slammin' ladies instead of men, both parodies have quite a lot to say about women and image.

Silverman's video introduces us to a young girl sat in front of her television watching The Real Housewives, reminding us of the low-brow reality garbage directed toward women. Or rather, consuming the sort of volatile culture that Lily Allen criticizes.

Later in the video we also see women of all ages and young boys also sat in front of the TV watching Silverman perform: Her childlike innocent image in direct juxtaposition with the Housewives. You know, that whole Madonna/Whore contradiction.

Both ladies also stand right in front of giant images of things women aren't supposed to say. In Silverman's case it's "Cunt" and for Allen it's "Lilly Allen Has a Baggy Pussy."

Sure it feels a bit The Vagina Monologues circa 1996 to say it, but there is something about them re-claiming words, images, and phrases meant to supress and damage women like "Cunt" and "Bitch." The tricky thing here is Silverman is straight-up calling out women on their shitty behavior. As that early image of the little girl on the television reminds us, however, the reason it happens is because women are constantly being barraged by insane images within our culture. And it all comes full circle with Ms. Allen.

I'll leave you with a few final words from Ms. Silverman:

Images: SarahSilverman/YouTube and LilyAllen/YouTube