How does comedy differ across different cultures?

Factual Questions
21

I’ll go with <b>Jovan</b> on this - Jerry Lewis is not popular with the young crowd. I lived there eight months and don’t think I heard his name mentioned once, and I watched tv every night for several hours. A lot of older or middle aged people really like Woody Allen.

They definitely like wordplay in France. I’m very proficient in French, but it’s hard watching their comedies because of the wordplay I don’t get most of the jokes. That’s probably one of the last things you learn of a culture…it takes a long time to appreciate another culture’s humor.

I was in Northern Ireland about three years ago, Belfast. It was raining and there wasn’t much to do, so I went to the movies, saw Toy Story 2. So my friend and I, the only Americans among the ten other people, were the only ones laughing through the whole movie. I’m not sure what Irish humor is like, but it’s not Toy Story.

22

I have crossed across both British, American, Iranian, and Aussie culture and hence comedy lines. Some differences (I will use American as a base here b/c I assume most of you are Americans.)

The British comedies have less ‘order’ than the American ones (with the exception of Seinfeld.) They have a lot of stuff happening all over the place. It’s random and funny, so it’s hence my favorite. But be careful, you have to shut off and turn on your brain very much during British humour-watching. You get a sudden burst of great satire or political commentary during a basically slapstick session.

Australian humour is closer to British humour, but with less sudden bursts of intelligence. It also contain more extreme violence and open sexual references. Hence, in Australia, most native comedies are broadcast after 9 pm, with American shows filling the normal primetime slot.

American humour is too ‘plotty’ for my tastes. I love Seinfeld and the 70’s Show, though and the Simpsons to a degree, because they seem to be less ordered. Many revlove around relationships and inject drama into it. Blech.

Iranian and general Irano-Pakistani-Indian humour revolves around one basic stereotype for one group. For example, the Rashtis (from the north of Iran) are victims of unscrupulous wives, the Kurds and tough, humourless, and dirty, the Turks are unhumanly stupid, and the Armenians are overly nice but porne to drinking alot. The Tehranese, of course, are a***holes, like New Yorkers.

I hope that was enough for you

23

I’ve herad that all humor is based on at least one person’s misfortune, i.e, there is always a “butt” of a joke, be it the teller or the intended object of said joke. When you think about this, one can find very few if any, jokes that have no “buttt”. It seems that people laugh only in response to an unfortunate situation that doesn’t result in death. Puns and wordplay are minimally funny when presented alone, but in context, they can be quite hilarious (granted that humor is subjective).

For instance, Ali G, a noted European satirist once posed the question “so, on the grassy knoll, who shot J.R.?” This has numerous degrees of humor, but the “butt” is the interviewer.

Comedy is a very subjective art, and those who succeed, find their niche, and go from there.
</rambling>

24

Germans are often said to lack humour, but there are some very good examples of humorous writing dating from before WWII. Getting rid of the Jews wasn’t, on balance, a good move (though not all the funniest writers were Jewish).

But take this episode from a film called Die Flambierte Frau (shown over here, I believe, as Woman in Flames:

Scene: A couple, who happen to be a male and female prostitute, are having dinner with one of the male prostitute’s clients and a respectable couple. As the client obviously can’t introduce them by saying, ‘These are a couple of prostitutes I know,’ he says that the man is a photographer and the woman is working on her doctoral thesis.

During the course of the dinner the respectable man asks the male prostitute what sort of photography he specialised in. He answered, ‘Passport photography.’

The film did have its funny moments, but this particular line brought the house down. I asked my German companion afterwards why that was so funny. She went off into paroxysms of laughter at the memory, but eventually told me that nobody specialises in passport photography - most people just get their pictures done in photo booths.

I suppose I can see why it should be funny, but I’ve never found anyone outside Germany who thought it was.

25

Here’s an interesting thing about humour:

Americans find it hilarious that the French like Jerry Lewis. Absolutely ROTFL funny and fascinating with it.

Why else is it impossible to find a thread on the SDMB on either international humour or the French that does not feature the above quoted fact???

:confused:

26

punkkid Thanks for those observations. It is interesting to hear from someone who has been exposed to a number of cultures.

dnooman Yeah, a lot of comedy is about laughing at misfortune. I suppose the difference from culture to culture is who chosen as the brunt of the joke.

AliG, like Norman Gunston is playing a fool, but it is satirical because this fool is making a fool of others. Dame Edna is similar, but much more clever.

27

Have there been other threads on this? I tried a search earlier.

28

As a person of German heritage, and one considered to have a decent sense of humor, I would like to point out that Monty Python’s Flying Circus did 3 shows for German television in the early 70’s. For Python fans, the sketches are all new material, with the notable exception of “The Lumberjack Song,” sung entirely in German. Granted, this was English humor, but Graham Chapman reported that the critics liked it. It is possible that virtually no one else in Germany saw one of the shows, as it aired opposite a soccer game.

A Google search showed surprisingly(?) little on the subject. Some urls that may get you started are: http://www.texaschapbookpress.com/magellanslog45/germanhumor/germanhumor.htm and http://www.german-way.com/german/sitemap.html.

Good luck!

29

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I remember reading about this a coupel of years ago as they were considered “lost” Python episodes and were finally getting a VHS release. For rights reasons it was an obscure company that released them and I never saw them in the shops, but apparently they were available.

30

With German humor there is the curious phenomenon that comedy from the English-speaking world, esp. Britain, seems to travel very well to Germany (i.e. is appreciated and commercially successful) but the other direction seems not to work.

The types of humor are to a large extent the same (the US “Polish” and Italian “carabinieri” jokes are much like “East Frisian” jokes), and there is a lot of contemporary hilarious material, but somehow German humor seems to be very much dependent on a shared social/intellectual context between teller and hearer of a joke. Perhaps this is why we are perhaps a bit more reticient about humor. You typically don’t crack a joke with strangers and casual acquiantances in Germany - you wait to check whether you are on the same mental wavelength.

One very much appreciated type of humor that I have not noticed much in other cultures is collections of unintentional, hilarious mistakes (or people revealing too much) in publications (including ads), signage etc. - intellectual pratfalls from real life, as it were. There is e.g. a column “Hohlspiegel” on the last page of Der Spiegel magazine (in part available online; go to Der Spiegel and input “Hohlspiegel” into the search box). My union paper and several other papers I have seen also carry this kind of material. There are also successful collections of mistakes and malapropisms in court testimony and insurance claims. All this probably doesn’t travel too well (e.g. subject/object confusion in sentences plays a large part); I’ll try to translate some pieces from the latest Hohlspiegel.

[from Main Post]: “The students impatiently waited for the state premier until he had, after spending the night in suite 505 (with view on the fortress), eaten a stack of newspapers and a fried egg for breakfast.”

[from Der Spiegel]: “His grandfather, the oil tycoon Jean Paul Getty, in the 1970s was still regarded as one of the world’s richest men - and one of the most merciless. He ignored his four sons by five wives until they were old enough to work for him.”

[from a hotel brochure]: “All recreation amenities at the Posthotel Kassl may be used at the same terms as the hotel guests”

31

I’m under the impression it greatly depends on culture

ie - someone mentioned the British are very self-depreciating. Well that’s mostly because of the Calvinist way of thinking that was brought about in the medieval ages I believe. Anyway - this promoted the idea that people were on earth to repent and were worthless in the face of God.
Therefore - go with what you know - the British have developed a sense of humour that pokes fun at themselves.

The Americans - who haven’t had the Calvinist experience- don’t tend to find this as funny (although I won’t deny they have their own brand of slapstick, which though similar is not identical)

Of course - Eddie Izzard said that middle America cannot understand irony - as a comedian who is making a great deal of money on that side of the Atlantic with his wry, ironic brand of humour - I think it just goes to show that everything’s relative

32

I think they have evolved into today’s Blonde jokes.

33

re. the Germans – I’ve read that over the past decade or so, the American-style lowbrow “frat humor”-type comedy has really taken off there. Generally these flicks are set in an international party destination like Ibiza and follow a group of friends who drink too much, get sunburned, and go clubbing and try to get laid every night. IIFC, these movies are really aimed at the domestic market (they’re just in German), are pretty low-budget, and may be next-to-impossible to find outside of Europe – and maybe even outside of German-speaking countries.

I’d like to see one of these someday, but it won’t kill me if I never find one… can anyone comment on what they’re like? Are they like a German “Animal House” on the beach? Do they harken back in spirit to the '60’s and '70’s English “Carry On” series, or some other reference point? Or have they found a unique voice of their own?

More recently, there was a very well-regarded comedy [can’t remember the title] set in the former East Germany, in which a devoted son enlists his friends to simulate the stultified culture of the communist DDR – for the benefit of his ardently communist mother, who emerges from a coma she’s been in since before the Wall was torn down. This movie is said to be very funny, with humor that’s both political and character-driven in nature. It had a very limited (art-house) release in the U.S.; I can’t wait until this comes out on DVD… :slight_smile:

34

The first joke Matchka cites is an example of an Irish Bull, a semantic device much associated with Irish humor.

Example:

A farmer woke up one night to see a ghost glimmering by his bed. Terrifed, he snatched up a pistol from his night stand and fired. The ghost dwindled into nothingness.

The next morning when he awoke, he saw that his spare night shirt was no longer langing on the wall, but was on the floor with a bullet hole in it. He just thanked God he wasn’t wearing that one instead when he fired.

Another example: a man charges by on a horse, hellbent for leather. An admiring pedestrian calls out: “boy: just get off of that horse and look at yourself ride.”

In Chan in Missing, an independent film from the 80s, the hero, a Chinatown cabdriver, observes that there are Chinese jokes Westerners won’t get, and vice-versa.

He brings this up because of a conversation he has with a young man of Chinese descent who thinks that an old Chinese man of his acquaintance has gone crazy. The young man had told the old one that he liked his new shirt. The old man then started to take the shirt off, and insisted that the young man take it. When the young man declined, the old man started to cry.

In his narration to the audience, the cabdriver later says that the old man was making a joke, but that it would have been pointless to try to explain that to the young man who, brought up in America, would not get it. He added that the Chinese don’t get Don Rickles.

Years ago Grace Murray, the inventer of Cobol and then the oldest person on active duty in the U.S. military (she was a naval officer), was a guest on David Letterman’s program. She asked him if his heritage was Scottish or English, and observed that the Irish, Scottish and British each have a fundamentally distinct style of humor. Much to my frustration, he never let her explain that; I guess he wasn’t going to bother since it wasn’t in his scripted list of questions.

35

The type of humor tschild cites is also appreciated in the United States, although perhaps not as extensively.

Noting the remarkable syntax employed by President George W. Bush has become something of a national hobby. A couple of years ago there was a book of quotations from him published entitled “Is Our Children Learning?”

A torch of sorts was passed to him from former Vice President Dan Quayle. Quayle observed that The Holocaust was a dark time in American history. Asked to clarify, he said that he meant it was a dark time in the history of the 20th Century, adding that he had not lived in the 20th Century. Comedian Jay Leno reported that Quayle said he did not consider himself to be an expert on Latin America, adding that he didn’t even speak Latin. It was widely believed at the time that this was not a joke, but something Quayle had actually said.

Back in college I had a summer job once which involved reading old army medical records. My coworkers and I found that the people who compiled these records sometimes had a knack for including oddly irrelevant information when listing the cause of an injury , and we made up a list of some of the more remarkable examples. For instance: “struck by a northbound train” and “wrenched back while picking up an interesting piece of driftwood”.

Several times I have seen a list of remarkable statements culled from insurance reports which are in a similar vein to the newpaper accounts cited, and another list taken from reports of social workers. It is something which speakers at training classes like to drag out.

Some examples I recall: “I was safely turning the corner when a cement roller darted out in front of me.” “There was nothing in the family’s refrigerator except half a loaf of bread and a jar of caviar.” Actually, there were a good many which were fairly funny (and better than these examples, anyway); I just can’t recall them readily. Sorry.

36

re The Scrivener post:

The movie that the German ‘holiday frat humour’ fad took off with was Ballermann 6. There were a few TV movies after that but if I recall correctly it got old quickly. Trends in comedy movies and TV shows seem usually not to last more than a few years lately in Germany.

The East Germany movie The Scrivener refers to is Good bye, Lenin!. It has been surprisingly successful - more than 5.5 million tickets sold with very little advertising beforehand.

BTW two classics of German comedy movies are Ödipussy and Pappa ante portas. Of course they are only available in German.

37

I think that this statement is very culture-specific. Puns might generally be considered “minimally funny” in English-language comedy, but they’re a very, very important part of French and Spanish humour for instance. Even though some word play has indeed a butt, very often they don’t.

The following is hilarious even though it’s out of context and there is no victim:
“La justice à beau suivre son cours, elle n’en est pas plus instruite.”
-Sol

38

Better not mention that the Albanians love Norman Wisdom then.