> > > Do you mean that Dutch people are not funny, at least not funny
> > > in the way these girls are?
> > >
> >
> > Humor is one way of dealing with conflict (actually it's just
> > procrastinating from it)
>
> So when we are joking, we are not aware (or are aware?) that a
> conflict or argument or fight of some kind lurks in our future?
That's what I think. One day I got the idea that Monty Python's
Ministry of Silly Walks (made in the 60's) was telling people the
unpleasant truth that British power was on a downhill slide, all their
ministries could do was inventing new ways of walking silly
(translate: showing off, having an attitude, evading answers), not
anything useful, which many people at that time still thought they
could; some other day I got the idea that Faulty Towers was actually a
tragedy: a man who spent his youth killing Germans by the hundreds
with impunity now can't even kill a single one of them on his own
property. And once I got those ideas I didn't find those episodes
funny; I got the point, but I lost the joke. Actually I think John
Cleese himself is the tragedy, he looks like the product of a long
line of British military men, he would have made a great officer in
the British Empire, but by the time he came around, it was gone.
>
> , so culture clashes creates a lot of humor.
> > Think Chris Rock or Dave Chapelle.
> >
>
> In general not the kind of humor that I like, or find funny, quite
> often (particularly Mr. Rock, who seems to have a one-track mind).
> Just my opinion though. Millions of people love them.
Actually I wasn't recommending or endorsing either of them, I
mentioned them as an example of humor as a tool for lessening tension
between groups. In USA black Americans and white Americans constitute
separate ethnic groups by most anthropological definitions, they even
speak separate languages. In Canada AFAIK there is no group of black
Canadians, there are only people who happen to be black, same as Obama
stands outside traditional groups in the USA. As long as those groups
persist in the USA, there will be people trying to deal with it by
humor. The Germans have something called 'Narrenfreiheit', the freedom
of the court jester, meaning he is permitted to say things to the king
everybody else would get in trouble for (and that turns them into yes
men, which is why the king needs a court jester to tell him unpleasant
truths in the first place).
This is what the cartoon episode really meant here. People were
becoming divided over whether those immigrants could take a joke, so
someone decided to take it to the test. Apparently they couldn't. So
if humor was the safety valve, it's now been clogged.
Torsten