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| Angelika/Mike Schilli |
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Michael German humor doesn't have a good reputation internationally. Generally, Germans are considered to lack any ability to be funny. People only enjoy the involuntary comedy of German stiffness. Take a look at the latest Volkswagen ad: A crazy guy in a white coat appears in America, speaks English with a fake German accent, and mimics American behaviors. Americans find that funny.
German humor is not only underestimated within Europe, where the Dutch and English often think all Germans are sullen, but especially in the USA. There, Germans are admired for their diligence, perseverance, and love of technical perfection, but a German comedian would never make it onto television in the USA.
I find that this is not fair. Sure, there are a lot of popular snoring humorists in Germany who ruin the German reputation. Over... onlinetvrecorder.com The translation of the text to English is:
Since recently, you can have German TV shows recorded onlinetvrecorder.com from the U.S. and then download them, and that's how I recently got to enjoy the Harald Schmidt Show. It was so utterly unfunny that one could really believe a humor drought had broken out in Germany. In comparison, Letterman, who is considered slow-paced here, is a laugh bomb.
But when you look at products like the magazine "Titanic" (of course, I still pay for an international subscription at the exorbitant price of 95 euros a year) or the books by Max Goldt or Rattelschneck, you have to say that they can also compete well internationally and often stand out in terms of humor. Although "Titanic" has been steadily declining for decades, columns like the "Humor Critique" by Robert Gernhardt (under the pseudonym Hans Mentz) are still unmatched.
American humor tends to be on the lighter side. I hear this quite often at work. You wouldn't believe how often the episode of The Simpsons is quoted at the lunch table, where a bunch of German backpackers invade the Simpsons' house. One of the most popular quotes: "Number 37 of what's wrong with America: No national health insurance. What is this, the age of Charlemagne?"
Or the topic of David Hasselhoff. That third-rate actor is known from the series "Nightrider" in the eighties, even topping the German charts with "I've been Looking for Freedom" for months, has ruined the reputation of German musical taste in the USA once and for all. David Hasselhoff is a complete laughingstock here in the USA. Recently, in the TV series "The Office," someone who wore their shirt a bit too unbuttoned was referred to as "Hasselhoff," and it was hilariously funny! And even on Yahoo, I often have to endure mockery when I talk about dim-witted American behaviors, and then someone dryly brings up the topic of "Hasselhoff" as a counterbalance. A particularly embarrassing Hasselhoff-Video from German television, which a Yahoo colleague from our lunch group recently sent around, you are welcome to watch. And I have to live with something like this! It's not easy.
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