Post by Bozur on Jan 26, 2006 3:28:13 GMT -5
Ideas & Trends
Looking for Laughs in This World
Daito Dynamic Project/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images
BEST MEDICINE Whether it's Russia, the Netherlands or Japan, the sense of humor isn't easy to decode.
By MARY JO MURPHY
Published: January 22, 2006
ALBERT BROOKS went "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World" in his movie that opened Friday, but if he wanted a challenge there are funny bones far harder to measure.
In Japan, he might have heard rollicking laughter at an all-night game of rock-paper-scissors, or a giggling widow telling her employer that the vase she carried held the ashes of her dead husband. In West Africa, he might have studied the tiny Ik tribe, whose ravaged members were observed laughing heartily as they watched a baby wander into a fire or an old woman stumble off a cliff.
These are the yuks that require translation, and even then understanding is elusive - no one has yet explained satisfactorily why the devastated Ik laughed as they marched merrily toward extinction.
Certainly the capacity for laughter is universal. Homo risibilis; man is gifted with laughter. And most cultures, the experts say, seem to laugh at the same fundamental things, quite possibly for the same reasons, whether their jokes feature road-crossing chickens or light-bulb-changing Poles. Within that essential sameness, however, is a world of small differences, and the devilment is surely in those.
3 Japanese Walk Into a Bar...
The Bright Clear Skies of Glorious Spring
Only the politicians
Can doze off.
[signed] The common people
This short comic poem called a senryou, parallel to a haiku, appeared at the bottom of a page in a Japanese newspaper in 2001. Television cameras had captured lawmakers asleep on their Parliament benches at the height of an economic crisis. The Lenos and Lettermans of another culture might have "built it up into a massive comedy routine," said Jessica Milner Davis, editor of "Understanding Humor in Japan," a book of essays to be published next month by Wayne State University Press. But the Japanese permitted themselves only this tiny sly comment in a clearly signaled form, lest they break the conventions of politeness.
"What is important is you must not show public emotion unless permitted to do so," Ms. Davis said, and humor is traditionally seen as a lower emotion. This also explains the laughing widow, who was described by a 19th-century interpreter of the culture, Lafcadio Hearn. The widow "would have been obliged to hide her grief, and be respectful to her employer," Ms. Davis said. So when the employer asked what was in the vase, she answered as best she could. Laughing, in these or any circumstances, was infinitely preferable to tears. Hearn commented at the time: "Her smile or laugh would have then signified: 'Do not suffer your honorable feelings to be shocked upon my unworthy account; it is indeed very rude of me, even at your honorable request, to mention so contemptible a thing as my sorrow.' "
3 Russians Walk Into a Bar...
Two men meet on the street and one of them asks the other, Is it true that you formed a musical group? "Yes, a quartet." How many? "Three." Who? "Me and my brother." You have a brother? "No."
Post-Soviet Russians share a sense of the absurd with the British, who more than any people developed the art of humor, said Victor Raskin, a linguistics professor at Purdue and a leading humor researcher. Unlike the Japanese, the British and the Russians have few cultural taboos that make subjects unavailable for humor, he said.
3 Jews Walk Into a Bar...
Israel issues a postage stamp with the image of an unpopular minister of finance. Complaints arise that people can't seem to glue it to the envelope. Apparently instead of licking the back, they spat on the front.
Asked to name the world's funniest people, Christie Davies, a British sociologist and author of "The Mirth of Nations," doesn't pause even the usual heartbeat that precedes a punch line: the Ashkenazi Jews, he said. "There's not really anybody in the same league," especially if the measure is the volume of jokes.
Jews, along with the second-place Scots, are also the most self-mocking of people, he said, which gives them even more material for scripts. That trove has grown and evolved as the Jews have moved. Professor Raskin, a Jew in Soviet Russia who emigrated to Israel and then to America, said he had heard the stamp joke adapted to presidents and prime ministers around the world.
3 Romanians Walk Into a Bar...
A man is running in panic down a Bucharest street. A friend stops him. "Why are you running like this?"
"Didn't you hear? They have decided to shoot all the camels."
"For heaven's sake, you're not a camel."
"Yes, but these people shoot first, and then they realize you are not a camel."
Elliott Oring, a professor of anthropology at California State University, Los Angeles, cites this as an example of political jokes under repressive regimes. Various versions have been reported from Nazi Germany, Czarist and Soviet Russia and the Middle East, tracing back to the 12th century in the works of the Persian poet Anvari. Jokes are constantly being recycled, Mr. Oring said.
3 Iranians Walk Into a Bar...
They wouldn't, would they?
Looking for Laughs in This World
Daito Dynamic Project/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images
BEST MEDICINE Whether it's Russia, the Netherlands or Japan, the sense of humor isn't easy to decode.
By MARY JO MURPHY
Published: January 22, 2006
ALBERT BROOKS went "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World" in his movie that opened Friday, but if he wanted a challenge there are funny bones far harder to measure.
In Japan, he might have heard rollicking laughter at an all-night game of rock-paper-scissors, or a giggling widow telling her employer that the vase she carried held the ashes of her dead husband. In West Africa, he might have studied the tiny Ik tribe, whose ravaged members were observed laughing heartily as they watched a baby wander into a fire or an old woman stumble off a cliff.
These are the yuks that require translation, and even then understanding is elusive - no one has yet explained satisfactorily why the devastated Ik laughed as they marched merrily toward extinction.
Certainly the capacity for laughter is universal. Homo risibilis; man is gifted with laughter. And most cultures, the experts say, seem to laugh at the same fundamental things, quite possibly for the same reasons, whether their jokes feature road-crossing chickens or light-bulb-changing Poles. Within that essential sameness, however, is a world of small differences, and the devilment is surely in those.
3 Japanese Walk Into a Bar...
The Bright Clear Skies of Glorious Spring
Only the politicians
Can doze off.
[signed] The common people
This short comic poem called a senryou, parallel to a haiku, appeared at the bottom of a page in a Japanese newspaper in 2001. Television cameras had captured lawmakers asleep on their Parliament benches at the height of an economic crisis. The Lenos and Lettermans of another culture might have "built it up into a massive comedy routine," said Jessica Milner Davis, editor of "Understanding Humor in Japan," a book of essays to be published next month by Wayne State University Press. But the Japanese permitted themselves only this tiny sly comment in a clearly signaled form, lest they break the conventions of politeness.
"What is important is you must not show public emotion unless permitted to do so," Ms. Davis said, and humor is traditionally seen as a lower emotion. This also explains the laughing widow, who was described by a 19th-century interpreter of the culture, Lafcadio Hearn. The widow "would have been obliged to hide her grief, and be respectful to her employer," Ms. Davis said. So when the employer asked what was in the vase, she answered as best she could. Laughing, in these or any circumstances, was infinitely preferable to tears. Hearn commented at the time: "Her smile or laugh would have then signified: 'Do not suffer your honorable feelings to be shocked upon my unworthy account; it is indeed very rude of me, even at your honorable request, to mention so contemptible a thing as my sorrow.' "
3 Russians Walk Into a Bar...
Two men meet on the street and one of them asks the other, Is it true that you formed a musical group? "Yes, a quartet." How many? "Three." Who? "Me and my brother." You have a brother? "No."
Post-Soviet Russians share a sense of the absurd with the British, who more than any people developed the art of humor, said Victor Raskin, a linguistics professor at Purdue and a leading humor researcher. Unlike the Japanese, the British and the Russians have few cultural taboos that make subjects unavailable for humor, he said.
3 Jews Walk Into a Bar...
Israel issues a postage stamp with the image of an unpopular minister of finance. Complaints arise that people can't seem to glue it to the envelope. Apparently instead of licking the back, they spat on the front.
Asked to name the world's funniest people, Christie Davies, a British sociologist and author of "The Mirth of Nations," doesn't pause even the usual heartbeat that precedes a punch line: the Ashkenazi Jews, he said. "There's not really anybody in the same league," especially if the measure is the volume of jokes.
Jews, along with the second-place Scots, are also the most self-mocking of people, he said, which gives them even more material for scripts. That trove has grown and evolved as the Jews have moved. Professor Raskin, a Jew in Soviet Russia who emigrated to Israel and then to America, said he had heard the stamp joke adapted to presidents and prime ministers around the world.
3 Romanians Walk Into a Bar...
A man is running in panic down a Bucharest street. A friend stops him. "Why are you running like this?"
"Didn't you hear? They have decided to shoot all the camels."
"For heaven's sake, you're not a camel."
"Yes, but these people shoot first, and then they realize you are not a camel."
Elliott Oring, a professor of anthropology at California State University, Los Angeles, cites this as an example of political jokes under repressive regimes. Various versions have been reported from Nazi Germany, Czarist and Soviet Russia and the Middle East, tracing back to the 12th century in the works of the Persian poet Anvari. Jokes are constantly being recycled, Mr. Oring said.
3 Iranians Walk Into a Bar...
They wouldn't, would they?