Archive for December 9th, 2007
Sense of humour
An old woman goes to the greengrocers: “Can I have a kilo of potatoes but each must be different, I am fed up with twins.”
The only people laughing right now should be Poles, because the above is a fairly typical example of a translated Polish joke. Of all the things in life one can embrace in a new country, the sense of humour is the one thing I have yet to fully get to grips with here in Poland. I must have been the target of about a thousand Polish jokes over the years and so far I think I’ve laughed at three and that was only because they were taking the piss out of Bush or some other recognisable figure. Your average, run-of-the-mill Polish joke leaves me cold as a frozen turkey.
The Poles seem equally unable to grasp anything other than what I consider to be the worst of British comedy. They say silly things like “You British have such a great sense of humour. I really love Mr Bean, Benny Hill & Keeping Up Appearances!”. I smile. We move on to the next subject. I was browsing the “Polish Press” blog I link to on this site and there was an article about “Little Britain” being shown on Polish state TV. The fact that they would choose such drivel to show in the first place says a lot about how they see British humour. To then censor it quite severely to remove any rather course punchlines (in this instance regarding gay priests), thus removing its one and only claim to fame, is just plain stupid and shows how little they really understand. Buying the rights to “Little Britain” and then removing all the “dodgy bits” is a bit like buying a cheap car and then taking the wheels off. It was crap to start with and now it is useless crap!
I know “Little Britain”, Keeping Up Appearances”, “Benny Hill” and similar so-called comedy was very popular in the UK but is that any excuse to export it and contaminate other cultures? This stuff should be treated like nuclear waste and be carefully disposed of after use in concrete shelters way below ground in Siberia.
I’m not sure what to make of all this. Is this good, because I still retain what I consider to be the best sense of humour in the world, cutting-edge, intelligent, British. Or is this bad because it means I still have an incredibly long way to go before I can say I have fully embraced the Polish culture?
