I’m coming to grips with a fact of my Swiss life. I’m just not funny.
It started dawning on me when, in trying to win friends and charm neighbours here in Switzerland, the nice-to-meet-you joke I found so clever was met instead with silence.
“Heidi?” they say. “A Heidi in Switzerland!”
“Yeah, it’s kind of like a Swiss being named Elvis in the U.S.”
Not that I have some particular gift that puts people in stitches back in my former life, but c’mon! That’s witty!
Perhaps the Swiss are less likely than Americans to feel obliged to smile at bad jokes.
People sometimes say, unfairly, that the Swiss don’t have a sense of humor. That’s not true.
It’s just that my attempts to be funny fall flat. Which is a bummer when you’re new and feel like that dorky kid with acne and braces.
At times, “funny” things surely miss the mark for cultural reasons.
Like a T-shirt I heard about. It says “Sick Pow on the Mao,” with a picture of a skier ripping through deep powder with Mao Tse-tung looking on. That gave me a good chuckle.
But I suppose the audience - skiers like me, American, younger than 40 - is too narrow of a target to make a clean transatlantic leap.
Other times, things I find downright hysterical may even give offense.
During the race for the White House between McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden last fall, the American comedy program “Saturday Night Live” aired a skit with Will Ferrell acting as a bumbling George W. Bush.
The whole thing was a riot, but one “Bush” line killed me: “Well, it looks like the race is down to the hot chick and the Tiger Woods guy.”
Yes, the line has sexist and racist overtones so loud they’d surely violate Switzerland’s anti-noise laws.
But those overtones were exactly the point. And although I have no academic knowledge, I would explain that the culture I come from finds skewering human foibles a comedic sport.
It’s so wrong it turns the bend and becomes … well, farce.
Over lunch with long-time British expats recently, I asked about the Swiss sense of humor, trying to glean when it’s appropriate to crack a joke and what they might find funny. “Slapstick,” a pal replied.
Ahhh. I get it. I suppose I could start slipping on banana peels. Then again, maybe I should go for earnest instead of funny.
Tags: cultural differences, funny, humour, Life in Switzerland, Swiss
Social bookmarks:
In my experience working as a copywriter in Zurich, I learned really fast that the Swiss rarely get sarcasm at all.
So in my effort to find out what the Swiss do find funny, I went to the Witzerland exhibit at the Landesmuseum in Zurich. I was surprised to find out that the Swiss mainly find jokes about foreigners funny. They also laugh at each other–like the Swiss Germans making fun of their French-speaking countrymen and vice versa.
I cannot imagine living in a land without sarcasm. It’s terrifying to even imagine.
They like toilet jokes and jokes about physical infirmities and old age, too. Jokes about incompetence slay them! And slapstick. Yes.
We are insecure about race (and other things), but their insecurities have to do with not measuring up to the norms. So that’s what they joke about.
Chantal > I don’t even want to know what you saw at “Witzerland”, I’d probably give back my red passport if I did.
I do think that the Swiss get sarcasm - and not only those typical swiss jokes about Berner being slow and Genfer talking too much, please - but I’ve also found out that it’s difficult to be understood as sarcastic when speaking a second (third…) language. People are never sure if you meant what you said or if you’re just misusing the language. Sarcasm, irony, wordplays… not easy to convey in a foreign language. I’ve experienced it myself in English.
I have an American friend who spent over 6 months in Germany. The first things he told me when we talked about humor and cultural differences is that he noticed that Europeans used self-derision much more than Americans - “I guess we love big egos too much to do that” and that he often felt that people were not confident enough in their understanding of English to know whether if he was being sarcastic. Needless to say he didn’t try to learn any German.
Chantal > I don’t even want to know what you saw at “Witzerland”, I’d probably give back my red passport if I did.
I do think that the Swiss get sarcasm - and not only those typical swiss jokes about Berner being slow and Genfer talking too much, please - but I’ve also found out that it’s difficult to be understood as sarcastic when speaking a second (third…) language. People are never sure if you meant what you said or if you’re just misusing the language. Sarcasm, irony, wordplay… not easy to convey in a foreign language. I’ve experienced it myself in English.
I have an American friend who spent over 6 months in Germany. The first things he told me when we talked about humor and cultural differences is that he noticed that European used self-derision much more than Americans - “I guess we love big egos too much to do that” and that he often felt that people were not confident enough in their understanding of English to know whether if he was being sarcastic. Needless to say he didn’t try to learn any German.
hey i like your blog! are you learning swissgerman or swissfrench now? do you have to?
Hi M’dame Jo,
Here’s what I saw at the Witzerland exhibit:
http://www.onebigyodel.com/2009/07/what-swiss-laugh-at.html
Apparently, the Swiss find foreigners funny among other things.