It could also have been that many Americans are preprogrammed to take the English seriously and thus take you seriously since you don’t sound like them. Coming from one of their own they might have gotten it as a joke. Although given where you lived you’d think they’d be more used to dealing with folks from different places.
Scribble, that was beautiful.
A college friend of mine told me about her semester abroad in Ireland. She and a couple other American students rented Raising Arizona to show to their friends, including Brits and Irish among others.
She and the Americans were howling with laughter at the movie, she said, but the Brits just stared at them in bafflement. It’s not that they didn’t find the jokes funny: it’s that they couldn’t see the jokes at all.
That fascinates me, that sense of humor can be so amazingly different.
Daniel
Scribble my ass… that was freakin’ [fancy nancy font]Literature[/fancy nancy font].
I think the people who say that Americans don’t have a sense of humor are the people that picture this country as only consisting of redneck idiots who laugh every time they hear “Git 'er done!” :rolleyes:
I think the best part of that story is that Dr. House saved him from getting really badly beaten.
Would he have done the same for Dr. Wilson? Hmmm?
I’m just going to come right out and say I don’t get what’s so ironic about Borat. It just seems like pretty standard “candid camera,” “jokes at the expense of unwitting straight man” fare. It’s Tom Green meets Yakov Smirnoff.
But it would be a fascinating cage match 
Thanks for the compliments, you guys! You make me blush.
As far as Americans not getting deadpan British sarcasm–I think that stems from the US being a much lower-context place than the UK is. I’ll post more on that later, but for now, my thesis calls.
I’m American and I never found anything humorous in Raising Arizona. It’s a bone of contention between myself and good friend; we share identical senses of humor in everything except this movie. Daniel, in your opinion, can you name another movie that has the same “flavor” as RA? I want to know if it’s just this movie, or perhaps a whole subgenre I don’t enjoy.
RA is hilarious in an obvious way to me. My Name is Earl isn’t all that different from RA and is also hysterical.
“Son, there’s a panty on your head.” No? That did nothing? I spewed the screen… at the theatre!
Ha! I knew there was a reason why BORAT didn’t seem cutting edge to me. It’s cause I’ve seen it all before. “Tom Green meets Yakov Smirnoff” describes it to a ‘T’.
The Coen brothers don’t translate, I guess. I had a similar experience watching O Brother, Where Art Thou with a South African. She didn’t see the humor at all, and I was howling.
I just have to add my applause for Scribble’s epistle.
Inspired genius.
Ditto. I offer a humble curtsy toward Scribble.
For the record, I don’t like most of the Coen brothers’ movies. Just can’t get into them. And I saw the trailer for that Borat movie and didn’t find one single thing humorous about it.
You know, if it weren’t for the constant statements I hear from people in the UK that irony is a cherished and deeply enshrined part of their culture, I wouldn’t think of them as being particularly ironic. Sure, I can think of ironic British individuals, but as an outsider, irony does not strike me as being part of the national character. When I think of ironic writers or actors, I have to go through quite a lengthy list of Americans before any Brits start showing up. And I think I know why that is, and why the British seem to have the same misconceptions about us.
Good irony requires fairly intimate knowledge of the social moores or expectations being lampooned. A British comedian commenting on the peccadillos of a particular politician might end with the punchline, “He must have learned about that at Eton.” This might be screamingly funny deadpan irony to someone who knows exactly what Eton is and what sort of cultural connotations go along with attending that school. But most Americans don’t know anything about Eton at all, except maybe that it’s some sort of educational institution. They won’t get the joke, not because they don’t understand irony, but because they don’t understand why the joke is ironic in the first place. Similarly, I can easily see someone from England watching Raising Arizona and not getting the humor because they don’t see understand which parts are meant to be exagerrations, why they are exagerations as compared to the real-life baseline, what sort of attitudes and personalities are being satirized and why the particular method of satirization is funny, and so on. It’s not ignorance of the form of humor that makes them miss the irony, it’s ignorance of the culture that’s the target of the irony.
I think that is a pretty good analysis Miller. I am not sure if I believed it when I said it earlier but I am starting to now. People from outside the U.S. think that we only have certain kinds of humor because those are the only ones they realize exist. I can’t imagine another country having more varied and ubiquitous humor than the U.S. Most of the bases are covered quite well and most of them having a thriving market for it. Maybe Earnest Goes To Camp did really well abroad and that stuck in people’s minds.
I like black comedies myself but they are hard to do well and are probably hard for outsiders to pick up on. Heathers and Election are two of my favorite movies but it is hard to describe what is so funny about high school students that destroy so many lives. I would guess that most people don’t realize that Pulp Fiction is partially a black comedy as well. I cracked up when Vince accidentally blew that dudes head off in the back of the car and then acted embarrassed for being such a doofus. The whole theater wasn’t laughing but there were a few of us that almost peed ourselves seeing that type of humor.
That is an example of only one type of humor that foreigners, and even many Americans, would have trouble understanding. We could overload the servers presenting other styles and their examples that people may be missing.
Hmmm, let me guess.
Comparative literature?
Forest ecology, actually.
Bwhaaahaaa!
I love almost all of the Coen’s, but never got Raising Arizona, either. Hudsucker Proxy, now that’s good humor.
As for the Tom Green comparison, which was inevitable, there are superficial similarities but vast differences to the discerning viewer. Tom Green, in a nuthsell, is going up to an old lady on the bus and shouting weird things in their face until they get mad. Borat is light years ahead of that. He is about engaging the same old lady in humorous conversation while getting them to say funny things as well, as well as revealing things about themselves. Tom Green also will back off, turn tail and run if caught in a situation he can’t handle- in other words, his comedy has no guts- ala Chelsea Handler. Borat will get the shit beat of him and not break character- that’s a true craftsman. Borat also has the uncanny ability to come up with spontaneous witty responses to his marks comments- I know of know other comedian who can consistently come up with hysterical unscripted reponses to even the most bizarre statements. If you don’t find Borat funny fine, but to compare him to Tom Green shows a compelte lack of understanding of humor in general.