Getting The Joke

My good husband has taken to watching comedy skits on YouTube. He comes home exhausted after a long hard day at work and he and our youngest sit together at the computer and laugh until the tears run from their eyes. Sometimes I even join them.

It has taken me some time, but I get British comedy skits now. At first, I was completely flummoxed by a large number of them, but now I can watch them and laugh almost as much as my husband. In fact, if any uninitiated Americans happen to watch them with us, I can even interpret.

The sad thing is that a lot of the American stuff confuses me no end now. There are cultural references that elude me -- and my husband. "Who's that?" he'll ask, or "What does that mean?" and I cannot answer. The other day, I was thrilled to be able to explain who Tammy Wynette was. He had no idea; the fact that she co-wrote and sang Stand by Your Man made everything clear.

Of course it's hardly news that humor is culturally bound, but one thing I've come to see is that a joke that is shared is far funnier. This must be why they always had canned laughter on the comedies of my youth. I always assumed that this was to prompt the audience to laugh, but now I see it was there because laughter needs to be shared. There is something rather sobering about being the only one who is laughing your head off. When everyone else laughs with you, the joke is better and the whole experience is infinitely richer.

Before I went to Japan for the first time, I went to see the movie Love at First Bite in a Manhattan cinema. There is a scene in which the hero, a Jewish psychiatrist, brandishes a Star of David at a vampire. In New York, this brought the house down, but when I happened to see the same movie about eight months later in Tokyo, you could have heard a pin drop. And suddenly it just wasn't as funny.

Or take the British skit that features a large group of British sub-Continentals who go to an English restaurant and eagerly study the menu. One of them insists that she cannot bear English food; that she must have something spicy. Her friend urges her to at least try something a little mild -- why go to eat English cuisine if you do not at least try? The skit ends with one of the young men bragging that he can take the very mildest dish of all. He gets a bit too exuberant and begins to dance on the tables and behave loutishly. The first time I saw this, I was fresh off the boat and it sailed right over my head. The second time I saw it -- after years in the U.K. -- I could hardly stay in my seat. The fact that everyone else around me thought it was hilarious made it all the funnier.

When you cannot understand the humor because of linguistic and cultural limitations, you are doubly cursed. Once at a friend's house, we played a silly party game in which a series of questions with obvious answers are read out. Everyone knows, of course, that the obvious answers cannot possibly be the right ones: the response to What does a dog do on three legs, a man do on two, and a woman do sitting down? will absolutely have nothing to do with peeing. Everyone knows this, of course, except any hapless non-native English speakers who are present. We'd all had a laugh over the answer (shaking hands) and moved on to the next question when one of the guests, a boy from France, suddenly leapt to his feet, after long deliberation, and shouted "Pissing!" This response made us laugh far harder than the joke itself, and for the life of us, we could not explain to him why it was so funny.

I don't think I could count the times this happened to me in Japan. When all around me, people were laughing themselves silly and I just sat there, aching to understand the joke, but not getting it at all. There is nothing sadder than not getting the joke when everybody else does. I remembered the boy from France and his triumphant "Pissing!" and felt great sympathy. Even if you crack the linguistic code, you've still got the cultural hurdle left to negotiate, and chances are that if you manage both of these against all odds, you'll be too tired to get the joke.

But boy, when you do, it's heady stuff. "What beer makes you smarter?" a beginning EFL student asked me once. I pretended not to know the answer. "Budweiser!" she screamed, and the rest of the class got quiet. Brows were furrowed. Puzzled looks were exchanged and lips silently mouthed the words. All of a sudden there were explosions of laughter as student after student got the joke. I did my best to laugh along with them.