Monday, November 23, 2009
Local Humor
In class the other day we were several clips from local comedians presented to the class. At the surface the jokes may seem to be mean spirited or offensive, but the comedians telling them do so with the general knowledge of what a local audience will find acceptable. People like Augie T, Andy Bumatai and Frank Delima know tell jokes that could be called "making fun" or "teasing" the various local ethnic groups, but because people consider them to be "Local" it gives them a sort of entitlement. The speaker for that day mentioned this sense of "entitlement" a few time in class. The audience found these jokes to be acceptable not only because of the context they were being told, but also because of who the presenters were, Locals. If a person from say the Mid-west united states who's lived in Hawaii for six months made a joke about "No flips in the pool" with an exaggerated Filipino accent to the same audience they probably would be booed off the stage. I thought all of the jokes were completely acceptable and did not step over the line because I know the credibility behind these comedians. I'm not 100% sure about this, but I'm pretty sure most people make jokes/tease people outside of they're own race whether its about the Japanese, Chinese, Caucasians, Filipinos, Portuguese, etc. These comedians are taking that concept and making it into something funny.
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I have found when comedians start making jokes centered around ethnicity, a lot of the time they start by making fun of their own race. This seems to me like an ice breaker for the audience, as their way of saying- I am going to make fun of all of us, I can laugh and make fun of myself too, so don't take it too seriously.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Rosalyn said above. Most of the time, comedians will make fun of their own race first. When we started talking about who is entitled to make jokes about who, my first thoughts went back to high school. It was high school when I first heard "Hey I'm samoan so I can make Samoan jokes all I want". I think in Hawaii its been a common acceptance that we're allowed to make all the racist jokes we want as long as we belong to that race. However, in the case of Frank Delima not being Filipino but is making Filipino jokes, it's a tought situation to judge whether or not its appropriate. I think the fact that Delima is "local" kinda makes it okay for him to do that. In Hawaii, it's not so much if you're Chinese or Filipino - sometimes it's more important that you're local.
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