Laughing in a Foreign Language
Can humor cross frontiers? Do Americans laugh at the same thing that tickles the English funny bone? Would German humor amuse the French, if only as an oxymoron?
I clearly recall when I came to the USA for the first time in the mid-1970’s being confounded by the “humor” of Don Rickles and Johnny Carson. I did not find them at all funny. The English and Americans seemed worlds apart when it came to what each culture found amusing.
Boy, was I wrong.
If I had been asked to say which brand of English humor was the least likely to appeal to American sensibilities, I would have guessed Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I still find Rickles and Carson deadly dull. But Python is a global hit. So what’s going on?
A new series at the London Southbank Center, Laughing in a Foreign Language, explores the cultural relativity of humor in a global age, asking
if humour can only be appreciated by people with similar cultural, political or historical backgrounds and memories, or whether laughter can act as a catalyst for understanding what you are not familiar with.
The event showcases over 70 works including videos, photographs, and interactive installation, investigating the whole spectrum of humor, from jokes, gags and slapstick to irony, wit and satire, as well as questioning what it means to share a sense of humor and what it is that makes an individual laugh.
I caught a discussion of the event on a BBC podcast of the Today program. A couple of comedians I’d never heard of debated the point. It was claimed that whereas mainstream humor was often culturally specific, there is a significant alternative niche which transcends borders. As Python, and later, Seinfeld, showed, the globally hip recognize each other’s jokes.
Laugh and world laughs with you. Xenophobe’s, meanwhile, cry alone.
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The Weekend FT review of this show (which I learn is at the Hayward Gallery of the Southbank Center) quotes Gallery director Ralph Rugoff, that “laughter is universal” and that “contemporary art is getting funnier”.
Comments on specific artists give a flavor of the show, and Richard Cork concludes:
By Ian on 02.03.08 11:50 am
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