Time Theft Nation

Humor, A Scientific Discourse

By Duck Dan

I began my cross-cultural examination of the globes humor with an Australian who answered to the title of “Keith”. Keith is a bit of a raucous character with values and humor not too different from my own. Now, what separates his traditional Australian jesting from my own American comedy is deep rooted in what can be traced back to the exiling of British convicts to this far away land. Their own cultural mix of the brutishly dim witted to the sharpest speakers of the Kings English is a combination that can be directly reflected upon their own style of humor.
Our narrative started out at a pub he recommended, not too far from our place of residence, Max’s I believe was the name. It was crowded, and dark, everyone kept to themselves, it was ideal really as we didn’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves. Keith ordered a beer, myself, just water as I would need my wits about me for whatever turn our discussion might take. I began the Q and A by providing Keith with a brief Webster’s dictionary definition of what American humor meant. Immediately his eyes widened, a sly grin spread across his face, pale ale dripping down his weeklong scruff of a beard. Now it was his turn. “What is Australian humor exactly?” I posed to him. He sat back in his chair, took a long pull form his mug and begun.

“Australia is a place my friend, not unlike here in America, with people, laws, and yes even humor not too different from that in the states. We employ wit, debauchery, use cruel and sinister tongue, we gender bash, make fun and use humor to exert our dominance over others or for some, to hide underlying insecurities. Now, for me, I use wit with my friends and colleagues to provide a form of entertainment, now what do we find entertaining you may ask? Well we generally find pleasure in making fun of one another.”…….. “We also are guilty of slewing the most vile of curse words when jesting about. There’s nothing like a good ‘fuck’ in the middle of a joke or sentence to give it that final blow to send your audience careening over the edge of sanity and into uncontrollable fits of laughter. To put it simple mate, we pass the time by cursing and pointing out faults in one another.”

At first I was shocked to be hearing such a barbaric recount of how the Australian people integrate the use of jest and joke into everyday life, however upon further examination of his native comedic discourse, I drew the connection of similarities to that used by my own friends. This was very curious. Puzzled, and still searching for more answers I proceeded to delve deeper into what humor at its basis was and what it meant to me. For me, humor was a way to pass an evening with friends, joking over intelligence levels, hygiene, obesity and competence. Aha! This brought me to the realization that for both Keith and myself, we employ humor in the manner of the arousal-relief theory! At the end of a long day we both shared the common ground that humor was used to relieve stress and unwind after a long day of classes. It is a medium through which we can spend time with those close to us and communicate openly, freely and entertainingly. Keith agreed to this entirely. Also during such conversation amongst others and myself, I too realized that we were guilty of utilizing comedy to assert our dominance over others during these times as well.
So maybe our sense of humors weren’t all that different to begin with. It would appear that Keith’s transition into mainstream American society was indeed seamless and flawless and his integration and use of joke was no exception to this. This may have been a large coincidence as Keith happened to be my friend and we both enjoyed the cynical, sarcastic side to life, but really we may never know. Perhaps the question is not how culture defines our humor but how cultures define us as people.