Good Morning Gents,
I take it most of you are in the UK? Quite funny videos. I am in Atanta Ga. USA, people seem quite full of themselves when it comes to good natured humor that has anything to do with race.
That is an interesting perspective, and reminds me that I would like to think ( as on this forum ) - we don't mind scoring a deliberate 'Home goal' to emphasise that the preceding banter was in good spirit. In that first clip of Douglas the Lawyer, I can well imagine that the police in the audience laughed the loudest at the end 'reveal' - and " those of his Hue" - laughing throughout, at the dichotomy in the man, thus ( by implication ) that part within themselves / ourselves - whichever racial / political 'fence' we find ourselves looking ( somewhat cautiously) over. How the character is caught so uncomfortably - between wanting to overcome cross cultural prejudice, yet manifesting it ( via his carefully
chosen wife's lineage ) - most of it himself.
That tendency , to attempt dissolution of predudice, or any perceived 'guilt' within ourselves - only serving to remind us that we had to first have build it, to laterly make great show on knocking it down.
On BBC television recently 'Live from the Apollo ' there was a nice, gentle - but- effective stand up routine by a second generation Iranian immigrant by the name of Shappi Khorsandi. A different angle on things, but the spirit being somewhat similar.
Neither side of the equation came out particularly well - and that was of course both it's beauty
and victory.
I'm an not saying that humour should either favour,
or studiously avoid the potential cultural divides, but as Mel Brooks always believed, you score the goals against yourself on your terms, leaving potential verbal aggressors, quite weaponless.
I suppose there is first and foremost a very British(?) tradition / tendency of habitually taking the p**s out of ourselves. It's almost masochistic, but it seems to 'fit' us somehow.
