On Saturday Night Live, Fred Armisen plays Ferrecito, a South American comedian. Needless to say, he plays up the stereotype to the Nth degree. Part of his shtick involves telling a joke and the saying “¡O Díos Mío!” as the camera zooms in on his face.
I’m wondering if this is in any way typical of the comedy of any South American culture. Obviously Armisen is exaggerating the stereotype, but is it based in truth?
I dunno, but my Teutonic girlfriend assured me that Sprockets was in no way typical of German television.
Well I’ve seen shows on the Spanish-language TV stations that do seem to employ a pretty ham-handed approach to comedy, and I think that’s what he’s going for. It’s a pretty stale joke, though, since The Simpsons parodied that stuff at least 10 years ago. I always thought the Simpsons bit was clever, but the SNL skit kind of offends me. It’s really not funny at all, and just panders to the basest stereotypes. Besides which, it’s the EXACT same skit every time. It’s completely repetitive; he never changes a single thing no matter how many times he does that skit.
By the way, what does “¡O Díos Mío!” mean?
“Oh my god!”
Precisely what a lot of people say when watching another bad SNL character attempt to be funny.
Why do sketch comedians feel such an OVERPOWERING need to create “lousy comedian” characters? Fred Armisen seems particularly unable to resist this urge, between Fericito and that irritating Native American comedian that has appeared on Weekend Update a couple of times. NOBODY WANTS TO SEE A LOUSY COMEDIAN, Fred, so why the hell would you make a specific effort to reproduce lousiness? Your attempts at NOT being lousy are spotty enough as it is.
Isn’t it obvious? With an intentionally unfunny character, if you suck you can just lie and say you did it on purpose. Saves you the trouble of actually being good.
Are you sure they’re characters?
Argh, I hate that god forsaken Native American Comedian thing. It’s one of those skits that I’m convinced only gets applause because the audience is under thread of death.
As for the OP, I’ve watched a lot of South American TV and the “Oh Dios Mio!” thing is pretty reminiscent of stuff I’ve seen. It was pretty funny. Once. Not so much the 5th time (in the same skit! Gah!). Plus, those things always have Horatio Sanz in them, which automatically makes anything horrible.