Argentine humour
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Argentine humour is exemplified by a number of humorous television programmes, film productions, comic strips and other types of media. Everyday humour includes jokes related to recurrent themes, such as jokes at the expense of Galicians (the inhabitants of Galicia, Spain) called chistes de gallegos (where they are commonly portraited as stupid), often obscene sex-related jokes (chistes verdes, literally "green jokes", a term equivalent to the English-language "blue humor"), jokes about the English, the Americans, blonde women (who are supposedly stupid), dark humour (called humor negro), word and pronunciation games, jokes about Argentines themselves (typically featuring two main characters of different nationalities plus an Argentine), etc.
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[edit] Word and pronunciation games/jokes
Many jokes in Argentina refer to the pronunciation of other languages, sounding weird to the Argentine ear. These jokes often start with the phrase ¿Cómo se dice... ? (How do we say...?)
For example,
- ¿Cómo se dice 99 (noventa y nueve) en Chino? - Cachichien
- How do we say ninety-nine in Chinese? - Cachichien (mispronunciation of casi cien, which means "almost a hundred")
- ¿Cómo se dice colectivo en alemán? - Subanempujenstrujenbajen or also Paguensubanapretujenbajen
- How do we say Bus in German? - Subanempujenstrujenbajen (amalgam of suban empujen, estrujen and bajen, meaning "get on, push, squeeze and get off", which sounds very harsh due to the repetition of the Spanish j, which in Spanish has the same sound as the German ch as in lachen (to laugh))
Other jokes play with the word order in a phrase. These jokes often appeal to sex-related themes. They usually start with the construction No es lo mismo..., meaning "It is not the same thing..."
For example,
- No es lo mismo una bola negra que una negra en bolas
- A black ball is not the same thing as a naked black women. (en bolas, literally "in balls", is an expression meaning naked, while una negra simply means "a black woman" and normally has no racist connotation).
[edit] Television shows
There are and have been many humorous Argentine television shows, of many genres and themes. Many artists focus on political humour. Shows include Cha Cha Cha, Todo por dos pesos, Caiga Quien Caiga commonly referred to as CQC, El Show de Videomatch, etc.
Notable television comedians include Juan Verdaguer, Tato Bores, Alberto Olmedo, Jorge Porcel, Antonio Gasalla, Alfredo Casero and Guillermo Francella.
[edit] Comic strips and comic books
Quino's Mafalda is one of the internationally best-known Argentine comic strips and comic-book series. Its humour is related to local and international politics.
Maitena is another successful comic-book writer, dealing with women and family values.
Fontanarrosa is another famous Argentine cartoonist, known for his comic strip Inodoro Pereyra featuring a gaucho.
[edit] Literary humor
Humor can be found in the works of some of Argentina's best-known writers. For example, Jorge Luis Borges was known for his dry, sometimes dark, humor. He begins his story "The Dread Redeemer Lazarus Morrell" by describing Bartolome de las Casas as having taken pity on the natives suffering and dying in the mines of the Antilles, thereby leading the Spanish government to relieve their suffering by importing African slaves to suffer and die in the mines of the Antilles. His one-paragraph short story "On Accuracy in Science", probably inspired by a remark of Lewis Carroll's, imagines a map drawn at 1:1 scale, so that it covers the entire country that it illustrates. Borges and another of the country's leading writers, Adolfo Bioy Casares, created the pseudonymous H. Bustos Domecq, under whose name they wrote, among other things, comic detective fiction.
[edit] Stand-up comedy
See Enrique Pinti
[edit] Musical comedy
See Les Luthiers
[edit] Phone pranks
Argentine youth, especially young men, enjoy phone pranks. One of the first popular prank-callers in Argentina was "Doctor Tangalanga". (Spanish-language article: Tangalanga)
A popular website contains audio files of the prank-calls made by a group of three young men who call themselves "Los 3 Cabiados". They are Sergio Fernandez, Ariel Blanco and Nicolas Bianchi. Jokes are generally rude, ridiculous, but sometimes inoffensive and simple.
[edit] Jokes about Argentines
Jokes about Argentines are more or less popular across Latin America, with the obvious exception of Argentina. Latin Americans, and also Spaniards, perceive Argentines as very arrogant, and therefore jokes portraying Argentines in this way have become commonplace. The level of arrogance is often pushed to the extreme; in many jokes an Argentine character compares himself to God or even puts himself at a higher level than God.
For example,
- Why does an Argentine stare at the sky and smile when there is lightning?
- He thinks God is taking his picture.
- How does an Argentine commit suicide?
- He climbs onto his ego and jumps down, but he doesn't die from the impact; he starves to death on the way down.
