In another installment of Slate‘s series on humor, Peter McGraw and Joel Warner look at what inspires laughter in different countries:
Some cultures have diverse brands of comedy while other societies’ humor is remarkably uniform. When we traveled to Japan, immersing ourselves in sadistic game shows, ribald karaoke excursions, and the (mandatory!) comedy training schools for aspiring comedians, we hardly understood any of the jokes. That’s because most of them didn’t bother with set-ups at all. As a member of the Japanese Humor and Laughter Society explained to us, Japan is a high-context society: It is so homogenous, jokesters don’t need to bother with explanations or detailed backstories. They can get right to the punch line. One common joke, about an Olympic gymnast whose leotard was hiked embarrassingly high during a performance, has apparently become so familiar that even the punch line isn’t necessary. All you have to do is gesture to your upper thigh.
A newer piece from the series tackles whether jokes can propel political change:
If anyone was going to argue that such witticisms helped topple the Berlin Wall, it would be British sociologist and international joke expert Christie Davies, who spent decades tracking humor in the USSR. But in fact, he believes the opposite. According to Davies, among all the factors that led to the Soviet Union’s spectacular collapse, joking didn’t even crack the top 20. At best, he thinks the explosion of Soviet jokes was an indication of a rising political discontent already underway among the populace, not the spark that started the fire. Or as he puts it, “Jokes are a thermometer, not a thermostat.”
Some scholars go further, arguing that not only is comedy incapable of launching revolutions, but it might even have prevented a few from happening. According to this line of thinking, joking among the discontent masses might act as a release, allowing folks to let off steam, instead of rising up in rebellion.
The Dish 