Cultural Differences Illustrated in Comedy

We experienced the cultural differences that happen when a person has been in more than one culture. Some were comical, some were more persuasive. It was interesting to find out that "Jackass" was inspired from Japanese comedians. Recently, I rented "Jackass" from Tsutaya to watch with my Japanese friends. However, they found the movie ethnically disturbing and did not find the movie funny at all. At the time I thought that it was the difference of American comedy and Japanese comedy, but the idea of "Jackass" was actually originated in Japan. That's might be why Rab asked us if we thought Japanese comedy has changed.

Personally, I didn't think anything has changed because although I do not watch much Japanese television, I know that there are comedians in Japan that use their body and do crazy things to get a laugh. This is basically what "Jackass" and the old Japanese comedians were doing. I found it that people found this kind of comedy disturbing, regardless of what country they were from.

The video illustrating the weird customs of Japanese sushi eating  was somewhat culturally accurate. It illustrated the excessive politeness of Japanese people comically, which may only be funny to people that have lived in Japan. I assume that if a person from a foreign country watched the video, some people would not even recognize the video as a comedy script, and accept it as Japan's culture. I believe that these things would happen naturally if we went to a foreign place. We need to understand that this kind of miscommunication happens and that we need to find ways to cope with it. 

(image source: http://dvdmedia.ign.com/dvd/image/jackassmovie_01.jpg)