In this Cartoon we see the Palestinians and Israelis locked into a battle to see who will be the last man standing.  This cartoon tries to bring humor to a very dark situation in the Middle East.   A conflict where countless Palestinians and Israelis are dying every day.  This cartoon shows the hard feelings that exist between these two groups of people and just how difficult finding common ground will be.  It shows just how determined each side is to winning and maintaining control of their perspective territory.

Muslim feelings toward USA

In this segment we have a Muslim comedian explain the divide between Muslims and Americans.  He explains that the Muslims have no ill will towards Americans they just wish we would stop killing them.  They also hope that we will begin listening to them.  He goes on to have a fictional conversation with the White House and then President Bush only to be disconnected without a response.

Doc1

In this Comic Strip a Muslim extremist’s is trying to get Ahmed to blow up the pyramids.  It is there hope that by doing this it will release a mummy that will kill the infidels.  And once the infidels are gone there will be no more tour buses.  Ahmed goes off to his task reluctantly just so he can save face and be considered a good Muslim in the eyes of Osama and Allah.  At the end Ahmed goes off to the task not even realizing he is being deceived by his friend.

Hitler and German humor

I have found videos on youtube of German TV sketches about Hiler. Just to show you that Germans do have a sense of humor about their horrible past and are not afraid to have the dictator being made fun of.

The frst clip aired in a show called “Bullyparade” which was a sketch show running from 1997 to 2002. This particular sketch is a parody of a German TV commercial for candy airing around 2001 or 2002. In the real commercial, the owner of a small mom-and-pop-style store tells the story of a boy always comig to his store to buy a certain candy. The commcercial then shifts to modern times and shows the old man still in his shop and the boy, now a grown man, still stopping by to get his favorite candy.

In the parody, the little boy is Adolf Hitler and a couple of years later, the store owner sees his chance…

The second clip is from the first (and legendary, even at its time) incarnation of the Harald Schmidt Show (1995 to 2003). This clip is definately from the first half of the show’s run, but I can not date it specifically. I hope this is not too profane for anyone, I was not sure i I should post this.

It is actually a parody of a type of commercial for educational VHS tapes popular in the Nineties. A lo of these commercials were for documantaries on the Third Reich and the history of the Second World War. This particular spoof blames the second world war on the supposition that Hitler only had one testicle. Thank god there are subtitles

Humor tricking the news

Here is an interesting story/video of the German late night show “Harald Schmidt” which I already mentioned in my presentation.

In mid-September one of the contributors of the show started contacting news networks, newsdesks and newspapers claiming that he is a social outcast since he was diagnosed with the H1N1 virus. The actor and comedian did not actually contract the virus at any point. He told the various journalists stories about how his doctor did not want to treat him and about how he was afraid of more people finding out about his illness (!).

A lot of the jurnalists covering the suppsoedy real story obviously did not do much fact-checking and just trusted the person confessing to them in a time when the Swine Flu scare reached a new high since the one this spring.

A lot of the shows ran apologies the day after that episode of “Harald Schmidt” aired, promising to chek their facts better in the future.

So, as we see, humor can also expose things going wrong in the media and society in general.

Going too far in creating humor?

A very interesting article about the filmmakers behind “Bruno” presenting a member of a Palestinian political movement as a terrorist in their movie.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/did-a-fake-interview-with-a-terrorist-in-bruno-cross-a-line/?scp=3&sq=satire%20bruno&st=cse

Interesting because it sheds light on how movies like “Borat” and “Bruno” are being made and on which “rules” filmmakers are ready to break to create a funny scene or atmosphere. I have not yet seen “Bruno” but I found “Borat” to be very funny but kept asking myself questions like “Do these people really not know that this is an actor?” or “Were they paid to say this?” This story can be linked to “Borat” in that movie college students were shown making racist remarks in the company of Sacha Baron Cohen dressed as disguised in his role of Borat, a reporter from Kazakhstan. After the release of the movie, the students claimed that they were encouraged by Cohen and his crew to drink lots of beers and other alcoholic beverages.

I guess a lessen could be that with humor, as with journalistic and academic work, the sources and the production processes should be checked for possible frauds as much as possible.

In this clip a muslim extremist is trying to recruit his friend Akmed to become a suicide bomber.  When his friend ask why he cannot do it he explains that he is married and is the only one who can make the bomb.  He tells Akmed that if he goes threw this he will live a great after life and be rewarded.  He then goes on to tell his friend not to where his new Nike’s because he might look suspicious.

Iraq War Humor

The war in Iraq has cost the lives of thousands of innocent civilians and soilders.  This war has served to divide and rip our country apart.  But in these dark days of war some have found ways to bring laughter to those in dispair.

clips from Israli TV satire

I found a lot of clips of the Israeli show “Eretz Nehederet” on youtube. We read an article about that show and its influence in Israel in class some weeks ago.

Two of the clips I found have English subtitles:

The first clip shows an Israeli family learning about a rocket alarm on TV and trying to get their belongings together before hiding in the bomb shelter.

Interesting to see that this show does not even stay away from issues like daily warfare in its comedy.

The second clip shows young Israeli men perform a song about their home country with very patriotic lyrics. I guess it can be assumed that a lot of it is very cynical.

What is Humor?

Before beginning an in-depth study of the concept of Humor,” I would think a definition of the word would be necessary. One of American college students’ favorite (but unfortunately, sometimes misleading) source of information, Wikipedia defines humor as “the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement.” Another source, Dictionary.com defines it as “a comic, absurd, or incongruous quality causing amusement.” In short, both Web sites refer to humor as a situation that is either funny or creating amusement.

In that case, does universal humor exist? Perhaps it does. But if it does, I can’t think of any at the moment… Can you?

Humor isn’t simply a situation but a compilation of cultures, views, beliefs and the way of understanding things of a certain geographic area that shares a similar ideology. In order to understand a situation to be funny or amusing, one also needs to understand how and what the creators of that humor are thinking. As a native South Korean who had to go through rigorous training in the English language during my younger academic years prior to coming to the States, I’ve heard many teachers define the standards of mastering a language and this was one of them. “There are two measurements to help you find out whether you’ve mastered a language or not. The first is to hear yourself sleep-talking in that language. The second is when you understand the humor of the language you’re studying and can actually make others laugh.” The point this teacher wanted to get across was that only when you can understand the humor, otherwise defined as  the culture and the way people of another culture thinks, can you truly speak their language.

In other words, while universal humor may exist, it is also likely that different types of humor exists… Something that the people of a certain segment of culture would find amusing while people of other cultures may find the same material to be boring, random or even offensive.

Hopefully we will all getter a better sense of how humor is different according to culture as we spend more time studying for this project.

- Written by, Jae Ha