Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Last Blog
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.
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Humor is tricky: what's funny to people in one culture may not be funny to people in another. I really enjoyed your presentation! Interesting stuff!
ReplyDeleteI understand and sympathize with you on this! My mother was born in Mexico and she has grown up with much different humor than I. She does not get sarcasm either and I have a hard time watching the shows she thinks are funny. She likes very obvious humor that is mostly slapstick comedy where it is all physical. very intersesting
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