This may be a dumb question, and I apologize beforehand if it is. I’m not really up to speed on Asian and especially Arabian literature, so I wonder: do those cultures share the Western ideas of “sarcasm” and “irony”?
This may indeed be a stupid question, but it’s caused by the recent caricatures debacle and an even more current situation where a German newspaper has published an obviously satirical comic depicting the “need” (currently debated) of the employment of the Federal Army on police duties during the upcoming Soccer World Championship. The comic shows a heavily armed Iranian team being watched by the Federal Army. Now obviously, this is a satire – the author’s intention is not to suggest that the Iranian team will be dangerous. However, this subtle intention seems to get missed by the Iranians. I can see how the whole comic was timed badly, and how even a culture cognizant of satire might not react with understanding at this time. So bear with me, it’s an honest question…
I think this is a good question, but I think your scope of “Western” culture is too broad. I had a friend in high school whose humor was almost entirely based on sarcasm. He spent his senior year in Germany (specifically, Cologne/Koeln), and found that they didn’t seem to understand sarcasm, at least not the way he was expressing it. As far as he could determine, by talking to his friends and host family, Germans (at least those he was around) don’t have sarcasm. It was a major blow to him because it made him unable to express himself as he normally did.
Weird One, thanks for the encouragement on the nature of my question . I’m gonna amend it, it may not be stupid as such, but it definitely won’t win me the 2006 Political Correctness Award.
Anyway, I’m shocked. I’m German, and I’d probably be in the same category as your friend if you asked MY friends. Individuals will frequently miss satire and irony even when their cultures do know the concept (this is why I mentioned literature in an aside – German, English/American and French literature, all of which I am acquainted with, all have significant ironic or satiric works) – but do we have to consider that entire cultures may not understand it?
(A poor guy at a party struggles to make friends. He has a speech impediment though, which causes everything he utters, even perfectly pleasant things, to sound all snide and sarcastic.)
Does the new Albert Brooks film shed any light on the subject?
Y’know it’s funny you ask that because I just made a comment in CS in a thread about “movies that piss you off” that I was disappointed to learn that this movie is not a documentary, and therefore is not well positioned to shed any light on the subject.
On the whole my experiences in the Near & Far East lead to believe that humor overall is more ‘direct.’ Prat falls and clowning around are big, as is direct mcoking. Having said that, I’ve certainly seen political cartoons from those areas which rely heavily on the irony implicit in hypocrisy & I assume that people do “get” equivalents of that sort of humor.
I once dated a French Canadian girl. In her thick, beautiful accent she said to me once “you are very sarcastic aren’t you?” Quite pleased that she recognized my humour I replied that indeed I was. Her response was “the French don’t like sarcasm” As for irony, it seems 95% of the population doesn’t understand it.
I would hesitate to draw culture-wide conclusions from people not “getting” political cartoons. Witness the recent controversy over this Tom Toles cartoon.
no specific cultures for you but alot of asia seems to fall under the no sarcasm mindset. also parts of America get it less than others, it was really weird visiting colarado where people were just nice all the time…kinda freaked me out.
It can exist, but I think a lot gets lost in the translation.
I was once in a smoky bazaar in India- the place was about as Indiana Jones as you can get with smoke and stone carvings and great piles of silk. I started talking to an obviously Muslim shopkeep who sold mysterious brass things. We talked for a while and he wanted to introduce me to his family…we go deeper and deeper into the narrow lanes of the bazaar until we met a larger older man sitting atop a great big pile of cloth.
“This is my father”, said the shopkeeper proudly, “His name is George Bush. You have to watch out for him. He is a very bad man.”
“Yes” said the father “I am a very very bad man”
Everyone around (myself included) started busting up.
It is very hard to pull off sarcasm in Japan. 99% of the time, they would not get that you meant the opposite of what you said.
That said, I have heard ONE instance of sarcasm used in an animation here, so I know that it can be done. Unfortunately, I can’t recall what it was in or I would quote it.
Sage Rat, while I’m happy those characters rendered sensibly (I presume) on my browser, I can’t read Japanese. Nor can any of the mods or admins (hint hint) that I know of. So, a translation would be much appreciated.
I got some free Persian art books left over from Tehran’s 1995 international book fair. One of them was titled Kariketabur—a portmanteau word compounded from karikatur ‘caricature, satire cartoon’ and ketab ‘book’. It was a collection from an exhibit of cartoons about books. For the international book fair. Another volume was from a photography exhibit, Ketab az negah-e ‘akkasan (The book as viewed by photographers); again, each shot had a book in it.
Both books had 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizewinners, honorable mentions, etc. All the cartoons were by Iranian cartoonists. They were all good quality cartoons, many of them remarkably witty and funny, showing books imaged in all kinds of offbeat ways. I would like to post examples online if I find it again, but my daughter borrowed the book long ago.
The Islamic world has a long history of humor and satire: Humor like the stories of Nasr al-Din, which twist people’s perceptions of reality to see from a totally different point of view. In the Arabic versions of the stories, Nasr al-Din is called Joha or Goha. The Sicilian author Leonardo Sciascia wrote the story “Giufà” which is a Sicilian dialectal form derived from the Arabic name Joha.
Satire like the Maqamat of al-Hariri, which used wordplay and irony in a series of tales about a traveling trickster. These stories poke fun at the high and mighty, like the imam who preaches piety from the pulpit but in private parties with the forbidden wine, a hypocrite. There are tons of anti-mulla jokes in the Islamic world, and I have heard anti-government jokes too. I used to work with someone from Iran who hated Islam and constantly told buttfuck jokes at the expense of mullas. According to his jokes, all mullas wanted to buttfuck boys and were always being made fools of for it. There’s a lot of bitterness in the culture that is probably better if it proceeds in the form of satire than from the barrel of a gun.
Johanna, thanks very much, that’s exactly what I was looking for. I really don’t know much about Islamic literature, and I’m glad you could enlighten me a little.
Also, the revered saint Jalal al-Din Rumi wrote several raunchy sex jokes in verse, within the lines of his great Masnavi. When R.A. Nicholson published his complete English translation of the Masnavi, he printed those parts in Latin. Just like Dr. Krafft-Ebing did with the nasty bits in his Psychopathia Sexualis. So Coleman Barks put Rumi’s sex humor into English, published in the book Delicious Laughter: Rambunctious Teaching Stories from the Mathnawi. You gotta see this stuff, man, you will not believe it. :o
Rumi takes the X-rated side of life as he does all areas of life and brings out the spiritual teaching within it, as Barks called it, a breaking open of people’s attitudes to grow spiritually.
I would also note that many Brits, though steeped in sarcasm, can’t convey it properly to Americans. Here in the US, when someone’s being sarcastic, you generally have some sort of “tell” or “give-away” to clue people in that you’re not serious.
Not so with many Brits I’ve met. Totally deadpan, saying things that sound incredibly insulting and rude … and then they say, “You Americans have no sense of humor…”
. I’m gonna amend it, it may not be stupid as such, but it definitely won’t win me the 2006 Political Correctness Award.