Humor of Me and My Friends

Couple of days ago I tried to write an article on what unites me and my friends. The article soon turned into an unnavigable bloated mess. I guess I need several articles to tackle each of the aspects of our friendship separately. I will begin with an easier one, a humor.

Back in the days we of course did not think deep about what we make fun of. We just said what we wanted and liked. Many years later I analyzed as I tried to better understand myself.

As I said before humor and to be more precise satire is what unites pretty much all of my friends. However just saying we like to laugh is not enough. There are different kinds of humor out there, what is funny for one is offensive to others and so on. As I said the humor, we like is either a satire or a deadpan. There is also dumb repetition of words we find funny.

By satire I mean that we like to laugh at the world around us. At its absurdity to be precise. Every so often we see something that makes no sense in our opinion, and we make fun of that. Sometimes it is just keen observations on some silly situations around us. Other times its some socially charged topics. We do not shrink from criticizing and mocking various rules, cultural and social norms and so on. 

A lot of the jokes are about that. A more conservative person might find out humor offensive to feelings of the people around us. However, if we think it makes no sense or wrong, then we make fun of it.

Sometimes such humor addresses certain social issues. For example, once a daughter of school principal was trying to answer a certain math question. It was clear that she does not know that particular topic. However, math teacher did not want to fail daughter of her boss, so she decided to just let slide with some dubious remark.

My friend followed it closely and then just shouted to the whole class: "fake" (I think it's the most accurate translation). Because of his reputation as a funny man no one took it as a serious protest against favoritism, but rather just another crazy stunt from a class joker. 

Back then for some time we made fun of her and other "exemplary" students. There were a number of such "exemplary" students in our class whose marks were all excellent and school intended for all of them to graduate with red exemplary diplomas and a golden medal because that would be good for a school reputation. Because of that teachers were willing to forgive these select students' occasional fails.

In retrospect I think this bout from my friend was like protest cry against unfairness of the world and system where some students, well-liked by teachers, are treated better than everyone else. However back them we did not think of it that deep, we just made fun of "fake excellence".

This joke is just one example of the kind of humor Fedya and my Russian friends favored. We had many more, it will take forever to list them all. Many of them are connected to a certain situation and will take a lot of time to explain.

I was in the same class with Javier and Tsukasa for only 5 weeks. We did kept contact for some time after we were split into different groups. However, we managed to have couple of inside jokes. 

First is "lasagna". I think Javier coined it because of Tsukasa's tendency to wear several t-shirts one over the other to keep warm during winter. Several layers of t-shirts are like several layers of pasta in lasagna, hence the joke. I think Tsukasa disliked this joke. However, word stick and we ended up saying it for not particular reason all the time, just because it's a funny word. Javier made it funny.

The other one "good food is the biggest lie" joke. That started when Javier bought a schnitzel (chicken) and chips in one of the uni cafeterias. The schnitz was visibly burned and looked very upsetting. The box in which all that was served had a simple design with just two words on it "good food". I asked was so good about it, since food did not look that good. Then I think Javier responded it's the biggest lie. That too sticked and we kept repeating "good food is the biggest lie" for some time.

On the other hand, we tend to avoid self-deprecating humor. I guess everyone is sensitive about themselves and do not want to be offended. Sometimes we tread fine like with that, but we do not cross it.

The other humor, Fedya was particularly good at, is dead pan. It was inspired by actor Leslie Neilsen who starred in many Zucker brothers' movies, such as Aeroplane, Hot Shots and Naked Gun. In movies Neilsen would do the most absurd things with a dead serious face. The contrast between absurdity of action and seriousness of the person who does it produced unique comedic effect. Gintama anime does that well too.

Fedya even practiced doing or saying any absurd thing with a dead serious face just like Nielsen could. He succeeded and them often said the most absurd things in tone and wording of the news report to our amusement. He tried to teach me as well, but I could not.

The last one, funny word humor was basically like lasagna joke eventually became. Fedya even kept the row of words that together sound funnier than on their own.

There is one deceptive thing about humor. It looks silly, people who do it are often seen as nothing more than funny. However certain types of humor are actually a reflection of a great intelligence. A great intelligence that exposes issues in society but disguises itself as a joke to avoid retaliation from powerful and influential people whose power this expose threatens. That is our kind of humor.

To analyze us interest in humor further, I think it was one thing that let us forget about many unpleasant things in life and instead laugh at it. It allowed us to see unpleasant things around as pathetic jokes rather than evil devils and feel better about ourselves as we are not as much of a joke as they are.

I will continue this series with articles about cynicism, melancholy and escapism later.