Dame Edna "forget Spanish"

[P. Kerim Friedman]

I, too, enjoyed Peter's post. But I wanted to focus on an issue that seems
to have been shoved to the side: What is "funny" or what is successful
satire? I personally think this is quite pertinent.

As with any other verbal performance (such as the comical code-switching
discussed in some of Woolard's work), our reading of it depends very much on
the skill with which it is performed. Like so much of modern humor, we are
supposed to treat this as "funny" simply because we are told that it is
funny. Like a bad laugh-track, the fact that this is written by Dame Edna
defines the piece as humor - even if it is lacking any wit or skill in its
delivery.

I guess my point is that Dame Edna's piece fails not just as humor - but as
the specific genre of humor it is supposed to be: satire. Satire is defined
as the art of making somebody or something look ridiculous. Supposedly this
piece was aimed not at making Spanish literature look ridiculous, but was
aimed at people who hold such views. But how does it make them look
ridiculous? In the end it is only because a ridiculous person like Dame Edna
says it. Because of the author we are supposed to know that it is funny.
There is certainly nothing funny in the text itself, and if it was said by
Rush Limbaugh it would be quite serious. It is funny not because it is
funny, but because we are supposed to know that it is funny.

If it had been successful, however, we would have truly found the people who
hold such ideas to be ridiculous and would not have been offended by the
piece, and probably would be quoting it when we teach Bonnie Urciuoli's
book.

It is an issue that bothers me because it seems to me that satire and irony
is greatly lacking in American humor - which frequently depends entirely
upon jokes about sex/gender and ethnicity for laughs (black people are like
this.... but, white people are like this....; men are like...., but women
are like ....). This is just repeating stereotypes and delivering them back
to us as humor. No different from this supposed "satire" by Dame Edna. I was
just watching some clips of Laugh-in (a TV show from the 70s) and was amazed
at how much more political humor there was compared to what seems to be
permissible now. Not to mention a comparison of old Saturday Night Lives
with contemporary ones. Funnier too - although I am a big Mike Myers fan...

kerim
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