The nuances of satire and "reading between the lines" in shows such as Cheers or Seinfeld, was beyond my understanding, despite 13 years of formal English in school and university. It took me about a year of living and working in the United States that I finally appreciated and learned to love that style of humor. Now, 20 years later, I can relate everyday situations to particular episodes and play similar word games with my husband to evoke a chuckle.
So, how do we process humor, when we immerse ourselves in other cultures, and why is it so hard to get it? In order to answer that question, we need to look at cultures from a wider angle. In 1976, Edward T. Hall coined the term "Iceberg Theory" to explain the visible and invisible elements of a culture. Through this analogy, the majority of a culture is unseen to us and therefore is harder to understand and share. Humor falls into the invisible category, since it is a conglomerate of values, norms, attitudes, beliefs and much more.
Learning another language (among the visible elements in the iceberg theory) is a long process of memorization, grammar crunching and eventually manipulating language in a fluent manner by using more and more synonyms. At its best, it is firstly a linear path that we follow: "this word in my mother tongue translates to that word in another language". At a more advanced level, we start to branch out more in expressing ourselves in a foreign language, because we draw from a wider vocabulary base. That is when we enjoy reading foreign books or watch foreign movies. We are now able to follow a plot, but still stumble over humor other than slapstick.
Immersing oneself in another culture by living in it for a longer period of times, say at least 12 months, is what opens us up to the settle nuances of culture. We start to understand how that culture evolved, what its values are and how it deals with social and political criticism.
Although, universally, we all share a sense of humor, we react to different triggers. The central topic of a joke or punch line is directly connected to cultural norms, deep embedded in us. These norms are the yard stick for each culture's perception of a joke to be funny or not. Without knowing the underlying (invisible) aspects of a culture, we are unable to share humor as I had experienced myself in my first year in the United States, trying to make sense of the humor acted out in Seinfeld and other shows.
Some forms of humor are straight forward, such as slapstick, therefore easier to understand across cultural norms since they speak to a more primitive sense of pleasure, whereas more advanced forms require detailed knowledge of political systems, news' flashes and social circumstances, becoming a part of freedom of expression.
Historically, humor served as an outlet to criticize political or social circumstances in many countries. Berlin became famous for its political cabaret clubs during the Weimarer Republic in the 1920s, a time of social liberalization in Germany. During the Nazi regime, this freedom of expression was heavily limited. In the years after the division of Germany, the East as much as other countries of the Eastern block and the Soviet Union developed a very sharp version of political humor in the form of anecdotes, which were shared privately, among very close friends and family members, as a way to vent their political frustration and oppression. These anecdotes almost resembled a code language for survival and could not be shared with just anyone. A deep sense of trust had to be established first before the humor could be "shared safely".
I first learned about these anecdotes when attending language studies in preparation for my family's move to Ukraine. Months into full time language classes, one of our teachers presented us with a political anecdote. We translated the short phrase perfectly, were able to understand each word, but could not understand the cultural context. Our teacher desperately tried to explain to us, why this cartoon was so funny, but to no avert - it remained a simple translation to us.
While humor serves entertaining purposes and embellishes political satire, it is also held up to cultural norms in ways that it becomes intolerant for others. Holocaust jokes are strongly rejected by Germans, whereas in the United States I have oftentimes witnessed comedians incorporating it into their comic routines. Monty Python has crossed all barriers in my opinion through its movies and the "Flying Circus" series, sometimes reaching my own personal limits for what I find to still be acceptable humor. The publication of 12 editorial cartoons in a Danish newspaper in 2005 about the Prophet Mohammad, evoked very strong reactions in Muslim countries around the world and killed hundreds of people in violent riots. The Chinese government was baffled by the "mysterious sense of Western satire", when the satirical "The Onion" newspaper claimed the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to be the sexiest man alive in 2012. The state-run Chinese newspaper "People's Daily" reprinted passages of the Onion's article along with a series of photo the North Korean leader. A perfect example for intercultural misunderstandings.
Where do we draw the line? Are we allowed to mock another culture or religion for our own entertainment? When does tolerance turn into intolerance and how do we preserve the freedom of speech? The United Nations tried to address this human rights issue in a 2006 initiative called "Cartooning for Peace", which included a conference and culminated in an exhibit by the most popular international (political) cartoonists. A sample of their work can be seen at http://www.cartooningforpeace.org/?lang=en.
Delving into the human rights area, gives us a new understanding of the power of humor, far greater than comic relief. Its real powers are not in entertaining, but in political tolerance, freedom of expression and censorship.
