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I think the Mardi Gras movie ties in well with my theme of my research paper as well as with the class. The Mardi Gras movie showed distinctive cultural divides as well as similarities. When I did my research, I found all the people I interviewed all like to hear jokes and have a good time just like many people who grew up in the American culture but there were distinctive differences. I interviewed my mom first and most because she is the reason I decided to do my research on Latinos and jokes because I noticed that she doesn't really understand sarcasm. Instead, she takes everything literal. I used to get frustrated with the fact that she did not understand my humor or my dad's or sibling's humor for that matter. But then I realized that it was a cultural barrier because she grew up in Mexico and until she got married to my dad, she was in a Latino community. I interviewed my friend's aunt who is Guatemalan and grew up there so I could have an interviewee outside of my family. The other remaining people were my mom's sisters. My mom and her older sister grew up in Mexico but her two younger sisters are 10 and 12 years younger and they were born in the United States, so they have more of an American cultural influence than my older aunt and my mom. The results were completely different between the older and younger set of sisters. My mom and my aunt were definitely more conservative and and did not laugh at various jokes I said or had written down. My two younger  aunts thought all my jokes were funny and were a lot more open minded and absolutely understand sarcasm. When I said racist jokes, my mom and and older aunt thought I was being mean and rude, whereas my younger aunts thought they were funny and did not take offense. Also, My mom's Guatemalan friend was not very to my jokes and even said she never heard people joke in a sarcastic way. She probably had but did not understand that it was a joke. I also watched show in Spanish that is on Telemundo that is on after the soaps which is suppose to be comical. Compared to popular comedy shows Americans watch, the humor was completely obvious. There was an old lady dressed up really ugly with tons of ugly make up and jewelry that thought she was pretty and hit on guys that were a lot younger than her. My mom laughed a lot, but I thought it was so unfunny. I basically concluded that since this show was aired and popular with the Spanish speaking Latino community that Latinos as a whole like more obvious humor instead of lets say the show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The humor in that show is crude and sarcastic and not so obvious. The Mardi Gras movie showed that even though both Whites and Blacks liked to celebrate Mardi Gras, they grew up culturally different, so some things they like will never change. In comparison to the Jokes with Americans and Latinos, my mom and her older sister will never change their sense of humor because they are so woven into the culture they grew up in.

Blog 6

The foodaway concept this week was very interesting. I suppose I overlook the importance of food in culture. I think of cultural traditions or festivities when I think about culture but food is probably the most identifiable aspect in a person's culture. It was amazing and sad how the Indians in Northern Washington were deprived of hunting whale which was a huge part of their tradition. The whale which was used as a means of food was also utilized in other ways and it was ultimately very symbolic to their culture. The mere ban of hunting whale made their culture incomplete. The rice in South Carolina was an identity to the geechee people. Rice was an overlooked cash crop during the 19th century. The slaves that cultivated the rice ate the rice and created their own community and cultural group based on this particular food. They take pride in how the rice is cook and the rice identifies their past and where they came from. In Hawaii the poy is very symbolic to the people because it is a difficult plant to cultivate, thus has meaning behind its challenge to grow. It is a staple food amongst them and is eaten every day. They expressed that their culture simply would not be the same without this particular food. The influence of food in a person or society's culture is simply fascinating and before I saw the video I didn't realize how important food is especially on my mom's side of the family. My mom tells me all the time that she could not live without her rice and beans. The Mexican food she grew up with is such a big part of her. The tradition and culture behind food is relative to tradition and culture behind even the Latin jokes I am researching because my mom told me that there is a saying or joke in Mexico related to food, and if you eat a certain food it means that you are poor or dirty, so food really correlates immensely into culture.

Blog 5

The concept this week was to grasp how stories are told. I did not realize that myth, urban legend, folktales, and personal narratives were so different from each other. Personal narrative was by far the easiest to separate from the others because it is a story told from the personal perspective of a person. Myth, urban legend, and folktale all meshed together in my perspective before this week. I though myth was known to be untrue to everyone, but really, it is the explanation of something to be true when no other explanation is provided. Urban legend is more untrue and we as a group synthesized that it usually has to do with a great person or real event that was once true but because a popular story for the meaning behind it. Folktale was a little easier as well because all of us as a group thought about the childhood stories and Disney movies as fairy tales. Also, poplar children's books were the representation of fairy tales for us. Folktales always have a moral meaning behind it like snow white's meaning was that good, honest people always prevail and little red riding hood's moral was to not talk to strangers. I thought the Noah's Ark interview was very interesting because it ties into our anthropology class very well. The author looked at the Noah's Ark story from the perspective of all the people that were condemned and that God was killing. She told the story from an insider's perspective which is similar to what anthropologists try to do when doing research in understanding humanity and how other cultures work. They try to see the culture through a different lens. Similarly, that is what I am doing in my research project fro the class because I have to really get in touch with the Latino culture to see why they would think some jokes are funny over others. I have to look at the reasoning for this not as an American cultured person, but a Latino cultured person.

Blog 4

This week's lesson is very similar to my project because we discussed jokes and how they can be offensive. My research is a  tad bit different in the aspect that I am trying to find out what constitutes as funny to the Latino culture based on their culture and why. Some of our classmates got a laugh of the milder jokes on the topic of ebonics and i thought some were pretty funny as well. Perhaps the Latino culture would not find these jokes funny or perhaps they will also find the jokes funny. My guess is that since they are a minority, they may not find jokes that are racist in nature as humorous. What kinds of jokes do Latinos find offensive? My interviewing process is just getting started so I will obtain that data soon. Also, the topic in class about dialect and accent will play into a bit part of my research. I think Americans as a whole like to poke fun at jokes when someone portrays an accent or speaks with different dialect to mimic or mock a different speech pattern. Latinos may not find any types of these jokes to be humorous because they too sometimes have an accent and/or different dialect than other English speakers in this country. Or maybe they just don't find jokes funny that are offensive to others in general. The topic in class about dialect was very informative and gave me a sense of just how linguistically different the United States is and how people can judge others based on their accent or dialect. Also, one can sometimes tell what part of the country a person is from based on their language. The dialect of a person usually has to do a region or group of people they grew up with, thus language is a clue to understanding culture.Like the ebonics example shows us that ebonics is culturally common amongst African Americans because of their slave roots and simplified English from lack of formal learning of the language.

Blog # 3

This week in class, I have learned that beliefs are a very important part of folklore anthropology. Beliefs and rituals are essential to the study of folklore because it is a group's cultural beliefs that create folklore. For example, when we watched the Guardians of the flute, most  of our class seemingly found the tribes beliefs and rituals foreign and quite inappropriate. The reason our class found the ritual of the boys sucking semen from older men is because in our culture and society we know that sucking semen does not turn a bot into a man, and we would associate this act with pedophilia because we have our own set of beliefs that are completely different to other sets of beliefs. Like chapter 6 in the book notes, there are different kinds of beliefs- there are those that are common which most believe to be true or false and beliefs based on culture so they are only true because someone personally believes something true- like the idea of becoming a man through the consumption of semen. Superstitions are a bit different because they are known common ideas that stem from our particular culture but do not really find to be completely true. Nonetheless, a person who says they are not superstitious usually refrains from walking under a ladder or opening an umbrella in a house because these concepts or beliefs are so ingrained into our culture. The way the topic of this week pertains to my research project is the idea that humor among the Latino culture is different than American culture is due to certain beliefs associated with the Latino culture that are not seen in American culture. Knowing what the background beliefs of a certain cultural group are will help me better to analyze, understand and interpret the jokes and humor aspects I am aiming to get out of my research. I am interested to see how the various Latino groups in my research are similar or different. Do they have varying beliefs with a strong common background such as religion? The belief portion of the book will definitely help me to get down deeper into context and help me to be a better analyzer knowing the differences with belief and rituals.

Blog #2

Fieldwork is crucial to obtaining information for a research project for Folklore anthropology. The methods used to obtain data take on very different approaches. For my research project/experiment, I could use all the approaches in the following ways: Questionnaires would work for asking Latino people their opinion of how they view comedy in popular culture in the United States. The draw back would be, like mentioned in the book, is the questionnaire is a bit impersonal and will not catch the essence of an interview. An interview I can ask more specific questions and also ask follow up questions to answers that I do not completely understand from the interviewee's response. Again, my project is to view and understand the folklore of Latino's use of humor, jokes and anything that is considered popular comedy in their culture. An approach I have thought of that is different from the methods above is to watch popular Latino shows since I understand Spanish. This way I can grasp what is comic to the Latino audience and then ask people questions about the shows. Also, a few of my interviewing questions would be to ask what types of humorous shows/movies their culture considers funny, what is not funny and why? For example, yo momma jokes are not funny in the Latino culture. Do the answers of the interviewee have anything to do with their greater culture such as strong sense of religion? The background on Latino's in the book's chapter mention that Latinos are dominiately Catholic, so maybe their religion has to so with the type of things they consider funny. The Spanish language does not evenly translate to English, so sometimes, jokes or statements cannot be taken in the same way, which would ultimately alter the joke or humorous part of the statement. For my type of research, I would need to do "thick" description because I would have to get into the Latino perspective to appreciate why their culture accepts some things as humorous and some things as offensive.

Blog # 1

The way people identify themselves is very important to an individual. It can also be very confusing. As we learned in class, culture is a shared belief or tradition amongst a group of people, therefore, a certain group of people sharing the same culture would need to identify themselves to others. My research focus is on how cultural groups identify themselves- Latinos in the United States is my concentration. The reading for class on Latino Folklore in the United States made me realize how important it is to have a separated identity from others and how difficult it can be to express to various people how they would like to be perceived. Patricia Sawin, emphasized the numerous terms "Latinos" use to identify themselves. It was surprising that she said Latinos do not even refer to themselves as Latino, but it is what others refer to them as. But Latinos themselves will tell some people they are Mexican-America, Hispanic, and Chicano just to name a few examples. But it all depends on whom they are identifying themselves to. Sawin gave a great comparison in the book to show what and why she meant this. For example, she says, a person living in New York would tell their cousin in California they are a New York, but they would tell a Canadian they are Americans. That gave great perspective on what she was conveying. So I am intrigued on views and reasons why this specific cultural group identifies themselves differently depending on whom they are communicating with.