Zardoz
One Yank, at least.
Question: How do you explain the success of "The Simpsons", which skewers every aspect of American life? How could a sitcom that makes such glorious fun of Americans become an icon of American humor if we are such oversensitive, stupid, witless Neanderthals?
And how do you explain our love of Brit humor? If we don't get it, how could we love it so much?
The Simpsons is an outlier. Not representitive of the norm in American comedy. It does, however prove Americans themselves have a sense of humour, I never tried to dispute that. What I was saying is that shows which are made in America are usually not as funny as Brit ones. The market is bigger and they need to make the jokes really obvious so more people watch the show and get the jokes (note the big long pauses between lines and the over-bearing fake laugh track on most US sitcoms etc).
It doesn't make Americans stupid, or lack humour, they simply don't encounter as much dry wit, drollness in their lives as many other cultures. This tends to make them
expect people to be less ironic, or less sarcastic in their posts. They aren't used to looking for it as much, and tend to need big flashing things like
,
,
etc just so they recognise the intent of certain statements.
Its also not as if a select few understand my humour (and Famine's if I'm allowed to speak for him on this), its ONLY Americans who accidently take me too literally, and thusly get annoyed. Famine even noted that he has to be way less subtle with his humour (than in real life) whilst on GTPlanet, just for the American audience.
Its not that Americans lack subtlety in humour if they try, its just that they are conditioned to not expect it in their day to day lives.
And now I apologise for crapping on about comedy so long in the wrong thread...
Maybe it isn't the wrong thread after all - it pretty much is a big comedy for me!
