Forum - View topicIs anime humor an acquired taste?
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Guile
Posts: 595 |
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You essentially described why I find American comedy unfunny. It has gotten into the routine of placing a date on itself and thereby preventing it from being a timeless piece. I can go back and watch comedy anime from any era and enjoy it because it does not really require contextual knowledge of the era it was made in. If a show specializes in knowing what was going on during the Bush Administration, or what topics were making the front page of the newspaper in August 2007, then someone watching it ten years later would be out of luck. It is especially worse for those not even living in said countries like myself. However, a more formulamatic plot such as a boy's date with a girl going haywire, is a timeless concept that can be enjoyed in any era. One example I see recently is internet memes starting to be incorporated into some American shows. Memes which can have a life cycle of a month. It reminds me of when Rick Astley tried to Rick Roll people at a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade about a year and a half after the fad had gone out of style and no one cared about Rick Rolling anymore. I imagine in 10 years people seeing that would be confused and not understand why it was suppose to be funny or what the point is. I think it's a pitfall that limits your work when you start putting expiration dates on your product. It's what makes the earlier seasons of a show like South Park so much of a chore to go through, because I forget just what they were suppose to be satirizing but it's clear they're purposely making fun of something. Then I look it up and it was some insignificant event no one talks about anymore. I prefer more timeless writing styles. |
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ChibiKangaroo
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^
I will say that I generally agree that your premise has merit, however, I think we need to distinguish between "pop culture" comedy, which I think is the primary target of your critique, and comedy that focuses on "cultural and institutional norms," which is the main area that I was talking about. Yes, pop culture comedy can be dated and can be un-funny to people who aren't somehow aware of what the pop culture reference is. However, I think comedy focusing on "cultural and institutional norms" is much more timeless and universal. For example, take the episode of Family Guy where Peter becomes friends with Bill Clinton and the two of them go on a rampage together. This episode was focusing on lampooning the institution of "head of state." Here you have a former President of the US acting goofy, going around and playing pranks on people, chasing after pigs in the middle of the night, and getting high on drugs. The reason it is so funny is because you expect heads of state to be these great people who are somehow above us all, but here you have Bill Clinton acting like some immature kid. You don't have to have been old enough during the Clinton years to remember him as President to find that funny. The Simpsons did something very similar with George Bush Sr., in the episode "Two Bad Neighbors." In this particular instance, there was actually a pop culture reference (i.e. Dennis the Menace), but the episode again was primarily a lampooning of the institution of President. Additionally, the Dennis the Menace reference was subtle enough that even if you had never read/watched that particular cartoon, it was still funny. But yea, most of the shows I was referring to don't just focus on pop culture references, so I don't think your critique really applies to them. They satirize things that are essentially "forever," like I said, government, politics, education system, "family," religion, corporations (a substantial amount of The Simpson's jokes seem to be about corporate culture), entertainment industry, etc... and of course racial/ethnic issues. I do agree that South Park does devote a substantial amount of its time to joking about pop culture references, and to be honest I don't find South Park to be that funny. However, there are other shows that focus entirely on pop culture and are quite funny. Robot Chicken is a prime example. Pretty much all of the pop culture references in Robot Chicken are dated, both literally and figuratively, but the writers still manage to make them hilarious. It has to do with proper set-up. In particular, their 80s cartoon themed jokes are quite effective today, (e.g. Care Bears, He Man, Sheera, Rainbow Brite, etc...) because they don't simply crack a joke about those shows, instead they create a whole new narrative using those characters in a way that is funny to us today. I think that type of "pop-culture" comedy is beyond the scope of your critique. Like I said, I think your critique is good for shows that simply crack jokes about pop-culture, which IMO is primarily limited to South Park and a few others. |
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Animegomaniac
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Family Guy, the comedy show that did the Star Wars movies with its own characters for some reason other than comedy, is more relevant and less pop culture centric than South Park, the show that's of the moment, every moment as each show has the potential to be made in less than a week yet still has outright plotted shows? I learn new misinformation every day. I've been a fan of South Park since day one, I thought Family Guy's "Kaboom" was interesting, not funny which remains my overall impression of the show. Just minus the "interesting" part. Also, all American comedy is of its time {it's made for its audience and America loves itself. A lot.} but the overall effect isn't that you need to know trivia about that time, you get trivia about that time. Monty Python TV show was the 60s, Life of Brian and Holy Grail were the 70s and Meaning of Life was the 80s but you'll never know that from the material. It doesn't make the comedy funnier, it does however make the time it was made in harder to relate to {Their "political reporting" show is the only political satire I've ever seen that combines funny with absolute generic blandness. It's true every year, has no value at all}. On the other hand, we can have WWII cartoons where the inherent racism kills all possible humor but I still find "Draftee Daffy" to be some of the funniest 7 minutes ever created. Also, anything that uses nostalgia comedy {something that already came back in time} has nothing to do with actual pop culture comedy. And most of that is along the lines "Isn't it weird we thought this was worth something? Let's use it in lieu of actual creativity!" |
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EricJ2
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Family Guy's I LITERALLY put as an example of Life With ADD. No, that's not a clever phrase, I meant that medically: HS or college teens with ADD have a sort of running hostility at the world--"Geez, why does everyone keep talking at me, who cares, shut up, man!"--and retreat to getting their involvement through computer, Internet, and basic cable, where they have their own control of the keyboard and remote. So, in FG, we have a sort of hostile humor where things happen quickly...suddenly!...Peopletalkin sortofquick speedystaccato burstsofshortdialogue, and then...fall over, after having heart attacks or being hit with something! Scenes will go on with Stewie or another character just piling passive-hostile insults on another as the whole point of the scene for two or three minutes, and then every--EVERY--association is tied to a 70's, 80's, Star Wars, or current movie reference that "everyone knows", just in case it was getting "boring" with all those, y'know, people talking for so long. Rather like the "It's like that THING, you know?" tendency in Funi's Sgt. Frog dub, where every single aspect or plot development had to be compared to a current US movie or TV reference to "explain" it. ADD's don't talk to each other, but they've all seen the same movies, and speak the same "language", almost literally. (Like that Pepsi commercial where everyone converses in corny recent-movie catchphrases, only for real.) Which explains why FG creates such fierce niche-fandom, it's like a shelter for them from a non-ADD world they don't understand and can't cope with. (And if we're playing the South Park vs. FG game, think South Park's hilariously deliberate-unfunny deconstruction of how FG's constant free-associating pop-refs make absolutely no contextual comedy sense whatsoever, was nothing short of absolute genius in breaking down the argument. I don't think I was even that much of a Park fan before that "Compare my sense of humor to Family Guy's, and I will kill you where you stand!" episode.  )
It wasn't attacking his "tastes", it was the early accusation that Loudness was simply troll-bombing the thread with a cheap cliche'd premise, not participating in the thread, and just milking his one cliche' gag over and over again now that he was noticed. Later on, he DID participate in the thread, and while not all of his arguments are valid, and he's not quite as open to discussion as others, at least he wasn't troll-bombing. If Animegomaniac says why he doesn't like Frog or AZD, and the reasons turn out to be somewhat mistaken, that can be explained in nice detailed fan discussion, but the OP's posts were somewhat in doubt at the beginning. (It's also old traumas from the Usenet days, when rec.arts.anime's phone number started being put up on troll bathrooms with "They'll believe anybody!"  )
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ChibiKangaroo
Posts: 2941 |
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I'm actually really glad you brought up the Star Wars episodes of Family Guy, because I think it perfectly illustrates one of my points. I was making a distinction between shows that simply crack jokes about pop culture references, and shows that create/recreate entire narratives using pop-culture references. When Family Guy does make pop-culture themed jokes, it tends to do that using the latter method (either via short skits in between scenes/dialogue, or through extended skits like the Star Wars ones you mentioned). This allows the comedy in that skit to be mostly self-contained. Yes, you can get some added benefit if you know everything about the pop-culture reference being used, but the skit has its own self-contained narrative so you can still get the primary comedic value without any outside knowledge. Additionally, the specific episodes you mentioned not only parodied Star Wars, but also were quite effective in satirizing the American movie industry in general. Several tropes used in Star Wars that were lampooned in those Family Guy episodes are tropes that are consistently used in other Hollywood properties as well. Those episodes were meant to play as parody/satire on several levels, and I think it worked.
I have rarely seen a pop culture reference in Family Guy that made "no contextual comedy sense whatsoever." Could you please give some examples of what you are talking about? |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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You think that's bad? (And except for the distractions into the then-current Dutch Mohmammed-cartoon flap, and typical "Free First Amendment" self-martyring for edgy US animation, gotta admit, that's just nasty genius.) |
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phia_one
Posts: 1657 Location: Pennsylvania |
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I definitely agree with this. Renge was essentially the only reason why I watched NNB to the end. I felt like the series was trying too hard to play up Haru's admiration of Komari. It just came off as creepy at certain points and kind of pathetic. spoiler["Oops! Looks like I made too many dolls!"] |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7987 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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All humor is an acquired taste. We aren't born thinking many of those things are funny. Personally, I'm American, and I'm just as likely to laugh at any of that as I am to Girls Bravo or Beavis and Butthead's toilet humor for that matter. |
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ChibiKangaroo
Posts: 2941 |
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I will admit that the parody of Family Guy in those clips is funny, however I don't think that is even close to any kind of real intellectual critique of Family Guy's comedic genius or lack thereof. None of those clips represented actual jokes used in Family Guy, they were gross exaggerations (which is typical in parody), so you can't use that kind of parody of the show to conclude broadly that Family Guy's pop culture references "make no contextual comedy sense whatsoever." The proper thing to do in making that kind of statement would be analyze actual jokes from Family Guy and see whether the vast majority of them make no contextual comedy sense. As I said, I have rarely seen one that fits that description. |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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I think AE hit it with the "Yotsuba Lite" comment--I thought it looked sorta familiar without actually accomplishing anything. Like Lucky Star, there's a fine line on girl's slice-of-quirky-life shows between talking about quirky things, and talking about just plain ol' NOTHING, if the characters don't have that inner mad spark that we painfully identify with ourselves. (Like Tomo's tornado of bossy immaturity on AzD, Osaka's odd observations and Sakaki's doomed kitten frustration--I remember comparing AzD to Charles Schulz' Peanuts, and you can't NOT see Lucy, Linus and Charlie Brown in the characters.) If the OP found AzD "boring" for just talking about quirky observations, let's see him try to get through the infamous "Chocolate cornets" scene of Lucky Star, which was aimed more at high-school girls that already had those "nothing" conversations than at anime fans, and just turned out to be one long, long, long, long setup to illustrate just the one joke of how much of an all-around otaku geek-girl Konata turned out to be. |
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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Yes, that was quite a challenge. It took me three tries to get past that and move on to the second episode. I am very glad that I was persistent because Lucky star is now one of my favorite shows. Fortunately most of the rest of the show is not like that. The majority of the comedy has Kagame playing straight man to Konata. |
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yuna49
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I enjoyed many of the "Lucky Channel" epilogues in Lucky Star as much as the show itself. As with Welcome to the NHK! though, knowing the context helps understand the humor. Each LC episode includes voice-actor Shirashi Minoru as himself alongside "Kogami Akira," a wannabe idol seiyuu hilariously voiced by Konno Hiromi. Akira smokes on stage, complains about her fans and her poor salary, while abusing Shirashi. Regardless of what transpires in the middle of the segment Akira always wears her "genki" face at the beginning and the end and transforms her voice from growly and sullen to high-pitched and bright. I found most of these parodies quite funny, but I knew enough about the culture they were satirizing to get the jokes.
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HaruhiToy
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The episode where Akira realizes Minoru has more fan mail than her is one of the funniest skits in all television let alone just anime. And the dub is as good if not better than the original track. Riiiiiiight? |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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Although Minoru couldn't take it forever...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA72IGaexuk |
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Spastic Minnow
 Bargain HunterExempt from Grammar Rules  Posts: 4617 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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So much of this thread seems to be focused on a variety of symptoms of the difference in Japanese and western humor, but not the cause.
Like so much of Japan, its entertainment, its culture, their humor is all about the shame. Japan is a shame society, shame is what predominantly motivates the culture to behave. Shame is about how others see you and the desire not to be ashamed of oneself. Japan takes shame very seriously. So, in my view, Japan loves humor about shame- about embarrassment. What Japan doesn't typically appreciate, and finds little humor in, is the the act of shaming.
The way I see it western humor puts much more emphasis on shaming other people because of the greater influence of a culture of guilt. The satire bites, the sarcasm can be cruel, the dry humor is judgmental and the dark humor is often about how bad the subjects feel about themselves. The point is more on making the subject feel sorry for themself. Japanese humor puts the emphasis on the subjects doing something stupid. Western humor puts the emphasis on the subject being, and feeling stupid. So, let's take well known examples of similar scenes in US and Japanese comedy shows. K-on!- At the end of their first concert, Mio trips over a wire, her skirt flips up and she ends up displaying her striped panties for the entire auditorium. Result: Shame, embarrassment, it remains a running joke throughout the show that she is mortified that everyone saw her like that. But she's not guilty, she's ashamed. Futurama- Fry has lost the musical ability that made him a virtuoso with an extremely complicated musical instrument but he plays at his big concert anyway and the results are hilariously bad. Result: a meme that I bet Japan doesn't understand in the least- 
In both cases the culture is reacting to what they're most sensitive about and laughing about it.
You see, Japan emphasizes oddities and strangeness. The straight man points out the weirdness but he doesn't typically bring it out to mock the others inadequacy. I think a reason that Japanese dark humor is so uncomfortable to us is because it still takes the shame very seriously. I also often found Welcome to the NHK too uncomfortable to enjoy because they were seriously depicting his pathetic nature. Yet he didn't feel "guilt", he felt shame. Basically, when Japan humor goes dark, it goes very dark. Although, IMO, it still can't compare to Korean dark humor... which is completely brutal. So, is it an acquired taste? I think much of it requires understanding. I personally love Japan's lack of emphasis on "humiliation humor"- I can take such things to a certain extent, but extreme example like The original BBC "The Office" and Larry David's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" make me cringe. But endless parades of "Look how funny this is!" does get on my nerve. It's just a personal preference, though, not completely a cultural difference. For many people the best anime comedy of the last couple years was Humanity Has Declined, and while I could appreciate the extreme absurdity, I had to stop around the third episode because, to me, it was all "Look how weird I am!" and I could almost count to the beat to when "new strange thing pops out." Alternately, I personally found Nichijou / My Ordinary Life to be the best anime comedy of the past few years for what I found to be it's genuine randomness and quasi-sketch format, but many people can't get past a couple episodes. Although, I personally do think it has some of the most Western sensibilities of an anime (and I blame that for its failure in Japan). Mostly in it's sense of cruelty. I say that Japan doesn't like the act of shaming, but Nichijou tows that line. Mai is a relentless troll and will take anyone down, and "Professor" is pretty damn devilish in her cute little torments of Nano. Finally, you always have to remember that the Japanese really do not get sarcasm. It was mentioned in a viral article being passed around lately, 10 Japanese Travel Tips for Visiting America 6. Knowing how to use sarcasm is a must to communicate with an American. If you put your bent middle and index fingers of both hands in the air, you are making finger quotation marks. It means you do not believe what you are saying. You can also say, "or so called." This sort of satire really is "foreign." If it's a crappy day and you say to them "It really is a nice day, huh?" chances are they won't get it. I guess it's a symptom of not wanting to make fun of a person with a misleading statement. I simply doesn't work. |
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