So for the first of my interviews I ate lunch with Yun Lim, an international student who moved to the States in 2010 from South Korea. He told me that a lot of South Korean humor is physical humor. There are a lot of slapstick comedies and things of that nature. When I asked him about American humor he told me when he first moved here he understood our humor pretty quickly. He said he's always been a quick study on humor and was even a part of an improv group, so he told me it was no problem for him to pick up our humor. In fact he doesn't really see a difference in the two.
We both had to get going pretty quickly, him to his studies and I to mine, so we didn't have as much time as I would have liked. But the interview got me thinking about how cultures perceive humor and, more to the point, is it possible to make judgment calls on an entire culture in terms of their comedic preferences? I mean, we've been talking all year about different countries and the types of humor they prefer, but is that really true of the whole country or just the people interviewed?
Think of it this way, have you ever seen the TV show Frasier? The eponymous title character is a pompous psychiatrist who enjoys the finer things in life. Now think of the show Wipeout, a game show whose only purpose, really, is to punch contestants in the face as many times as they can with as many different foam apparati as they can. Clearly these two shows are meant to appeal to two different audiences, but they are both American TV shows written and produced to make Americans laugh.
So, when you think about it, maybe the entire concept of giving presentations on the humors of various cultures is flawed. It's just something to think about.
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