[lit-ideas] Ethnic Humour: Us Laughing At Them, Us Laughing At Us
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 00:20:32 EDT
In a message dated 9/9/2004 12:00:06 AM Eastern Standard Time,
ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
one of the issues will be the many ways
in which people have considered otherness to be funny and us-ness to be a
source of succor.
Any help and guidance from this list will be welcome.
----
I don't think I understand your point about 'succor'.
I believe humour at oneself, or one's own ethnic group is _healthier_ (if
more boring) than laughter at _other_ ethnic idiosyncracies.
In general, the English find the English funny. They tend to find other
nations as 'ridiculous', but the ultimate source of humour for an English
person
seems to be something _said_ by a fellow English person.
Ditto for the French. They seem to have their own codes, and it's things the
French say that the French find funny -- and only them, perhaps.
It's this particular self-centred or self-referential type of ethnic humour
that particularly appeals to me.
The _other_ type of ethnic humour (e.g. Italians laughing at the Swiss)
relate on at least _two_ different cultural norms, and so the mechanisms cannot
be generalised.
Romans laughing at the brutishness of the Neapolitans, though, is not
strictly self-referential humour (even if both -- the laugher and the laughee
--
are Italians). And it may be that there's a type of Roman humour that only the
Romans will understand.
Cockney seems to work like that -- and there is a risk that this may become
tautological. If you end up appreciating Cockney humour, it may well be that
you have _become_ one.
Cheers,
JL
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