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Harris's pigs and ethnic references
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From: Monica R. Edinger <edinger>
Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 07:58:47 -0400
I've been thinking further about Harris and Me in terms of humor in context. Some of the humor in the book transcends specific experience. You don't have to have been the child of drunks being literally farmed out during WWII to understand large swatches of the book. However, there are parts I've had to explain to my kids. The dirty pictures. The "commie jap pigs." That last has been tricky for me. I've had Japanese children in my class and debated internally whether to censor that bit. I ended up doing so because I figured trying to explain it would interrupt the flow of the story too much. The humor in that truly depends on sufficient background knowledge, it seems to me. You have to understand that this is wartime and this is Harris in a remote farm with only the vaguest idea of what the war is about. His use of the epithet is done without much of a clue of who the commie japs are. However, kids listening, especially Japanese or Japanese-Americans may not have that context and even if they do will find it far from funny.
Riffing off the previous paragraph I'm going to comment on my own discomfort with ethnic humor based on my own background. I've written before that I'm the daughter of German Jewish refugees, that I have close friends and relatives in Germany, and have spent a lot of time there. For this reason, Germany-Nazi-Hitler jokes make me very uncomfortable. Fake German as in The Producers, making fun of Hitler. It is not funny to me at all although it is funny to many. On the other hand, Mark Twain's essay, "The Awful German Language" and a probably forgotten book of my parents called something like "The Schoenest Langwitch" are. Twain's essay on German is still hysterical to me as someone who struggled with written German despite being fluent with the spoken version. The other book is about the way German immigrants mangle and mix German and English as my family did. It was funny because it was our experience. It was not making fun of German or German culture from without as Mel Brooks' does in The Producers (and many others have too). I write about this because I suspect this is similar to Italian-Americans joking about stuff from within versus stereotypic Mafioso stuff from within and other ethnic humor of that ilk. I think it does appear in kid fiction, but can't think of any off hand (as I probably try to forget it right away as it is distasteful to me).
Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at yahoo.com
Received on Wed 08 May 2002 06:58:47 AM CDT
Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 07:58:47 -0400
I've been thinking further about Harris and Me in terms of humor in context. Some of the humor in the book transcends specific experience. You don't have to have been the child of drunks being literally farmed out during WWII to understand large swatches of the book. However, there are parts I've had to explain to my kids. The dirty pictures. The "commie jap pigs." That last has been tricky for me. I've had Japanese children in my class and debated internally whether to censor that bit. I ended up doing so because I figured trying to explain it would interrupt the flow of the story too much. The humor in that truly depends on sufficient background knowledge, it seems to me. You have to understand that this is wartime and this is Harris in a remote farm with only the vaguest idea of what the war is about. His use of the epithet is done without much of a clue of who the commie japs are. However, kids listening, especially Japanese or Japanese-Americans may not have that context and even if they do will find it far from funny.
Riffing off the previous paragraph I'm going to comment on my own discomfort with ethnic humor based on my own background. I've written before that I'm the daughter of German Jewish refugees, that I have close friends and relatives in Germany, and have spent a lot of time there. For this reason, Germany-Nazi-Hitler jokes make me very uncomfortable. Fake German as in The Producers, making fun of Hitler. It is not funny to me at all although it is funny to many. On the other hand, Mark Twain's essay, "The Awful German Language" and a probably forgotten book of my parents called something like "The Schoenest Langwitch" are. Twain's essay on German is still hysterical to me as someone who struggled with written German despite being fluent with the spoken version. The other book is about the way German immigrants mangle and mix German and English as my family did. It was funny because it was our experience. It was not making fun of German or German culture from without as Mel Brooks' does in The Producers (and many others have too). I write about this because I suspect this is similar to Italian-Americans joking about stuff from within versus stereotypic Mafioso stuff from within and other ethnic humor of that ilk. I think it does appear in kid fiction, but can't think of any off hand (as I probably try to forget it right away as it is distasteful to me).
Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at yahoo.com
Received on Wed 08 May 2002 06:58:47 AM CDT
