CalamityJane wrote:You're too kind, georgeob - but I thought I distributed my attention
evenly among all attendees
farmerman, every country has its own humor. The Germans
joke about the KKK and think nothing of it - it's not part of our history.
Yet, when the British or Americans joke about WWII and the Nazis,
we're quite sensitive towards it, and won't laugh a bit.
When I first came to the United States, I was puzzled that Americans
could find humor even in the lamest slap stick there was, just like children.
I have learned to appreciate the humor, but it does take time....
While Charlie Chaplin made fun of Hitler in one of his silent movies, the real anti-Nazi humor, I believe, was only after the allies won the war. Then it was safe, in effect, to find the Nazi goose-step (ala John Cleese in his memorable episode of Faulty Towers, where he had a concussion from the falling moose head, and then started to goose-step in the dining room in front of German tourists). Or, in the movie A Thousand Clowns, where the uncle would talk to his nephew in a put on German accent to affect that something was supposedly very important.
The anti-Nazi humor, I believe, is a way to relieve the tension that humanity could have reverted back to a neo-pagan society, if the Nazis won. Any humor about the KKK is really the past that was dealt with in the U.S. Few Americans, I believe, would find it funny; perhaps, just stupid.
But, without the allies defeating the Nazis, Germans would have had to live under that regime. So, what is the emotion that anti-Nazi humor elicits? "Sensitivity" is just a reaction; what's the emotion?
That wasn't t even the whole thing.
