Posted on 12/24/2002 4:31:21 PM PST by PJ-Comix
Okay, it's Christmas Eve so let's set aside politics here for a bit and discuss something that has interested me for a long time. Which countries/cultures have the Best; the Worst; and the Strangest senses of humor.
I would classify Britain and the U.S.A. as having the Best senses of humor although they are a bit different. The Brits rely more on subtley and wordplay. American humor is more slap-on-the-back. Sometimes both types of humor combine wonderfully such as in the movie The Loved One written by a Brit (Evelyn Waugh) but set in an American funeral home with very American funny characters in it.
Germany is often thought of as having the worst sense of humor but in this category I think we have to award the French with this honor since those folks actually think that Jerry Lewis is some sort of comedic genius. However, there is a lot of truth that the Germans have a lousy sense of humor. I once went out with a German chick named Ernegard (sp?) and not only did she have NO SENSE of humor but she hated it when anybody else thought something was funny. I well remember the many times she would say to me: "Alvays mit der jokes! Alvays mit der shmiles! It's all vun bik joke to you isn't it?" Then Ernegard would get even angrier as I did an impression of her muttering these lines.
The STRANGEST senses of humor goes to the Japanese. I haven't any idea why they laugh at what they do. Once I was in a bar in L.A. filled with Japanese businessmen. I recieved a couple of half dollars at the counter as change so on an impulse I stuck both of them into my eyes like monocles and screamed: "BANZAI!!!" Immediately the Japanese were rolling on the floor in laughter. When they recovered I thought it was a freak accident and I repeated the same bit with the coins and the "BANZAI!" scream and again they rolled with laughter. They laughed so hard that one of them begged me not to do it anymore since he was suffocating from laughing so hard. And why they laughed so much at such a silly routine I don't know but this is why I said they have the strangest sense of humor.
One other thing I have observed is that it also depends on what part of the country some folks are from as to their senses of humor. One of the funniest people I know is from India and works at the food court at the Swap Shop. I often buy breakfast from him because I appreciate the humor. However, he is from (judging from his appearance) South India but the folks from North India seem to have no sense of humor. I recently told a funny story to these two guys from North India and they just glowered at me. Then I told them a really good dirty joke and they acted as if they I were insulting them by telling that joke.
I used to think Chinese folks were super-serious but perhaps the most humorous person I have ever met is my friend, Jessica, from Wuhan, China. The other day I told her my idea for a Chinese Restaurant with a Red Guards theme and not only did she laugh uproariously at the concept but she now wants to incorporate that concept as a business. So if you see a Red Guards Chinese Restaurant in South Florida in the near future, it had its roots in a joke I told.
At the same theater, not long after or before that (I can't quite recall,) Toto's daughter introduced one of his films.
Another fine Italian comic that comes to mind is the late Vittorio Gassman.
You better put me in the strange sense of humor category. Reading this bit had me almost suffocating from laughter. BANZAI!
Actually, I think the Chinese have a pretty good sense of humor.
It's not that the Germans don't have a sense of humor; it is just that there are a lot of things they think they do not have permission to laugh at. Call it Teutonic Correctness (a variation of Political Correctness, or vice versa). This isn't just a German problem; it can be specific to different generations, too.
My grandparents on my father's side were born in the late 1800's, and were British ex-pats. Very different sense of humor from my parents; my parents saw the movie "Kind Hearts and Coronets", where the lead goes around killing all of the people that stand between himself and his inheriting an estate. It was a comedy, which my parents thought was hilarious, but which my grandparents were scandalized by. One could simply not laugh at murder! Definitely a generation gap: people from the late 19th century "Victorian" mindset most definitely had a long list of things Not To Be Laughed At. In a way, Monty Python can be seen as the ultimate breaking of this British Victorian taboo about what was, and what was not, funny.
Speaking of Germans, that very bad German, Adolf Hitler, actually had a pretty lively sense of humor, contra the dour and humorless image we have painted of him by war propaganda. He would often do impressions of important figures that he had met; apparently his impression of Mussolini had his audience in stitches. His mockery of FDR's intrusion into European affairs (where Hitler makes a long list of the countries FDR wants him to promise not to attack) is actually quite funny, if you are willing to surrender your prejudices about Hitler and FDR and see the humor in it. Often the Devil has the best lines.
Something the Germans, Scandinavians, and other germanic peoples seem to share is a kind of literal mindedness which makes for good humor. They can be so literal minded that they can make humor at their own expense, exposing their tendency not to see the nuances of language.
Case in point, someone told me two examples of the earliest recorded "viking" jokes, which apparently are very old indeed. I'll use the name "Sven" since I can't remember the actual names used.
One joke tells the story of a man we will call Sven, who was a famous viking halberd fighter; he was the most dangerous when weilding his favorite weapon, the halberd (unclear on what viking halberds looked like; possibly a kind of spear with an extra long spearhead for slashing as well as for thrusting). Anyway, this particular viking is attacked by his enemies, who chase him, but lose sight of him until they reach a thatched house. Surmising that Sven is hiding in the house, they send out several people to scout around the outside of the house, and on the thatched roof. Like a flash, the halberd stabs out a window, and kills one of them. Then it stabs through the thatched roof, and kills another one of them. The survivors flee back to their leader, who asks "is Sven there?" One of them responds "I don't know, but his halberd certainly is!"
Shorter joke: two vikings are walking along, and they come to a crossroad, in the middle of which is a severed head. "Doesn't that look like Sven to you?" one of them asks the other. "No; Sven was taller" the other replies.
These are hilariously funny, if you keep in mind that these are Scandinavian "ya, sure, you betcha" types, who are apt to understand what you say in the most literal sense of the words, rather than in the usual way implied by the context.
Only half? Cest impossible! Com'on, fess up!
It should be mentioned that Jerry Lewis also is highly regarded in Italy.
I happened to be in Rome when Jerry Lewis gave a performance there.
A barrista I talked to was doubled over in laughter
as he described how Lewis tripped over his microphone cord
while walking onto the stage.
Under such conditions, it can seem disrespectful, or socially risky, to be seen as too humorous, so what I think a lot of Germans do is hide their humor in seemingly non-humorous situations.
I had a college professor who once received a grant from a German publishing magnate. This was in the sixties, in West Berlin. In the limo, they pass Bismarck's war memorial, commemorating the German victory over France in 1870. The American Prof. remarked jovially that since they had raised that war memorial, Germany hadn't won any more wars. The German publishing magnate was not amused.
Later, in the publisher's office, the tables were turned, humorwise; the publisher's office window looked out directly on the Berlin wall. Remarking on the wall built by East German chancellor Walter Ulbricht, the publisher leaned back in his chair, steepled his hands, arched his eyebrows, and in a very slow and stilted voice remarked that "kom-rad Uhhllll-bricht hasss his vall, und I hav mein". Well, of course, he was referring to the same wall, the Berlin Wall! It was very tongue-in-cheek, very subtle, and the kind of thing one could brush off as a non-joke if anyone was offended by it.
I used to do something else when around Japanese businessmen (not here in South Florida since we don't get many such folks here). I call it Karate Hara-Kiri. I would jump up in the air and scream "HARA-KIRI!" while karate choping my own neck with both hands. That was also an easy laugh getter from the Japanese businessmen. I don't know why I like making those folks laugh. Maybe it is because they look so serious in their business suits and then change so completely when you get them in laughing convulsions. I just like the contrast.
Actually, weren't there a lot of musical type comedy acts at cabarets in Berlin in the 1920s?
And the ultimate punchline was that all those countries listed by Hitler that he promised not to attack.....he attacked.
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