I am supplementing this conversation with my conversation partner with a conversation with a friend about Vietnam humor. With Dr. Williams okay here it is:
I asked Minh Anh Dinh (Mia) to talk with me about Vietnamese humor. I have known Mia for quite sometime from a few different organizations. She also moved into my hall freshman year second semester so this conversation was an easy flow. We sat down in Union Grounds and started to talk about life. Just the normal "I haven't seen you in three weeks" catch up. Eventually we go onto the subject of humor! I asked her what she thought humor in Vietnam was all about. The first word out of her mouth was diverse. She said in different regions different jokes were funny. The north and the south have quite different senses of humor. Mia is from the north therefore she knew a bit more about northern Vietnamese humor. She said how it required a bit off thought or more intelligence than normal humor. When northerners tell a joke their is rarely a large punch line. It is a joke that requires thought and understanding to get it. Now on the other hand Mia said the South's jokes were more about plays on words. They used grammatical errors or punctuation differences to create laughter. Rhyming jokes are often common in the South too. Mia seemed to favor the Northern style more probably because that is what she grew up around.
This reminded me a lot of our presentations on humor around the world. Many of the presentations talked about difference within the country on humor. I remember Canada having many different topics for their jokes. I believe the US has many different types to. Often my friend Lauren will say that her jokes fall flat or that not many people get because she is from California. I hear this from multiple people. Talking to Mia helped remind me that it is hard to summarize one whole country's humor preferences in a power point or conversations because even inside the country is different.
Mia and I talked about American humor as well. She said that coming here it can be tough to find American humor funny. A lot of American humor uses slang and the language barrier makes it hard to understand the slang. Even if Mia understand the slang often she said that it still didn't seem funny. She does find the show "Friends" quite funny. Mia mentioned that it plays at home too she she would watch it their as well as in America.
I went to the Amazing Vietnam production Mia had helped put on a few weeks ago. It was incredibly funny and well done. It was all about sharing and representing the Vietnamese culture. It truly was amazing. I laughed almost the whole way through it along with learning more about Vietnam. I know after seeing the show that a lot of Vietnamese are incredibly funny people. I did see what Mia was talking about. Often the jokes made us think a bit more than the average American joke or Southern joke according to Mia. If you didn't get the chance to go to Amazing Vietnam I would go next year! It was a wonderful submersion into their culture. We got to see their traditions, beliefs and more! Plus a lot of my friends were up their performing. It was a wonderful surprise to see my friend Ethan beat boxing on stage!
Thank you to Mia and the wonderful actors in Amazing Vietnam for helping me learn more about their culture!
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