Yakov Smirnoff

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Yakov Smirnoff

Photo By Sam Cali. 05/03/86
The Tower Theatre - Upper Darby, PA.
Born Yakov Naumovich Pokhis
January 24, 1951 (1951-01-24) (age 57)
Official website

Yakov Naumovich Pokhis (Russian: Яков Наумович Похис), better known as Yakov Smirnoff, is a Ukrainian-born American comedian and painter. He was popular with American audiences in the 1980s for comedy performances in which he used irony and word play to contrast life under the Communist regime in his native Soviet Union with life in the United States, delivered in heavily accented English.

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[edit] Life

Smirnoff was born in a Jewish family in Odessa, Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. He was an art teacher in Odessa and continues to paint. He came to the U.S. in 1977 and became an American citizen on July 4, 1986.

He was a roommate of comedian Andrew Dice Clay and has appeared in several motion pictures, including Buckaroo Banzai and The Money Pit. Among his numerous appearances on television, he was featured many times on the sitcom Night Court as "Yakov Korolenko". At the peak of his success, he also had a starring role in a 1986-87 television sitcom titled What a Country. In that show, he played a Russian cab driver studying for the U.S. citizenship test. In the late 1980s, Smirnoff was commissioned to provide educational bumper segments for Saturday morning cartoons, punctuated with a joke and Smirnoff's signature laugh. Since 1992, he has been a fixture in Branson, Missouri.

He is almost completely unknown in the former Soviet Union. The decline in his U.S. popularity started after the collapse of the USSR, as nearly all of his signature material consisted of mocking the Soviet regime.

In May 2006, Smirnoff received a master's degree in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.[1] He has taught classes at Drury University along with Missouri State University in this topic.

[edit] Comedy style

The largest part of the humour of Yakov Smirnoff falls into two wide categories:

[edit] "America: What a country!"

  • Misunderstanding of American life and custom through the eyes of a new immigrant.
    • For instance, reading employment announcements of "Part-Time Woman Wanted": "What a country! Even transvestites can get work."
    • Upon being offered work as a barman on a "graveyard shift," he remarks “A bar in a cemetery! What a country! Last call? During Happy Hour the place must be dead."[2]
    • At the grocery store: "Powdered milk, powdered eggs, baby powder . . . what a country!"
    • "The first time I went to a restaurant, they asked me 'How many in your party?' and I said 'Six hundred million'."
  • Bizarre comparisons between the U.S. and Russia.
    • "We have no gay people in Russia—there are homosexuals but they are not allowed to be gay about it. The punishment is seven years locked in prison with other men and there is a three-year waiting list for that."[3]

He once told Johnny Carson, "You have such nice things in the U.S.—like warning shots!"[4]

[edit] Russian reversal

Russian reversal or "In Soviet Russia" is a type of joke originated by Arte Johnson on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, and popularized by Smirnoff, and is an example of antimetabole. The general form of the "In Soviet Russia" joke is that the subject and objects of a statement are reversed, and “In Soviet Russia”, or something equivalent, is added. For example:

In America, you catch a cold.
In Soviet Russia, cold catches you!
In America, you can always find a party.
In Soviet Russia, Party finds you!
In America, you drive car.
In Soviet Russia, car drives you!
In America, you open door.
In Soviet Russia, door opens you!
In America, you slaughter cow.
In Soviet Russia, cow slaughter you!
In America, you choose Pikachu.
In Soviet Russia, Pikachu chooses you!
In America, people drive you insane.
In Soviet Russia, insanity drives you!
In America, you eat toast.
In Soviet Russia, toast eats you!
In America, you edit Wikipedia articles.
In Soviet Russia, article edits you!
In America, you can pay women for sex.
In Soviet Russia, women pay you!
In America, cars can drive you anywhere.
In Soviet Russia, you drive cars!

In an episode of Family Guy, Peter gets a used car made in a former Soviet country. The built in navigations system tells him to:

Take fork in road. In Soviet Russia, road forks you!

In an episode of King of the Hill, Bobby, who wishes to be a comedian, watches Smirnoff and this joke is heard:

In America, you put 'In God We Trust' on your money.
In Russia, we have no money!

In an episode of Futurama, Zoidberg, who often (poorly) tries out as a comedian at the Apollo, says:

(Earth, what a planet!) Here, you enjoy eating a tasty clam.
On my planet, clams enjoy eating a tasty you!

All of Smirnoff's original "In Soviet Russia" jokes made use of formulaic wordplay that carried Orwellian undertones. For example, one well known joke of this type runs "In the US, you watch television. In Soviet Russia, television watches you!" The joke alludes to video screens that both reproduce images and monitor the citizenry, as in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

At the peak of Smirnoff's celebrity in the mid-1980s, he did not say "Soviet Russia"—he said simply "Russia", as the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic had existed since 1917, was still extant, and showed no signs of imminent collapse. Smirnoff added the Soviet qualifier after the fall of the USSR, long after his fame had faded, presumably to specify that he was referring to the communist regime and not the present state.

The joke form has become a staple of Smirnoff's humor, and is widely referenced in television parodies and references as well as many on-line communities. The widespread reference to the jokes has led some linguists to consider the phrases to be Snowclones.[1]

Smirnoff is listed as the fourth worst stand-up comedian of all time by Maxim magazine.[2]

[edit] 9/11 mural

Smirnoff is also a painter and has frequently featured the Statue of Liberty in his art since receiving his U.S. citizenship at Ellis Island.

On the night of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks he started a painting inspired by his feelings about the event, based on an image of the Statue of Liberty. Just prior to the first anniversary of the attacks, he paid $100,000 for his painting to be transformed into a large mural. Its dimensions were 200 feet by 135 feet (61 m by 41 m).

The mural, titled "America's Heart",[5] is a pointillist-style piece, with one brush-stroke for each victim of the attacks. Sixty volunteers from the Sheet Metal Workers Union erected the mural on a damaged skyscraper overlooking the ruins of the World Trade Center. The mural remained there until November 2003, when it was removed because of storm damage. Various pieces of the mural can now be seen on display at his theater in Branson, Missouri.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/movies/14586040.htm
  2. ^ Yakov Smirnoff : Comedian Profile
  3. ^ America on Six Rubles a Day; ISBN 978-0394755236 Smirnoff, Yakov; 1987.
  4. ^ firstamendmentcenter.org: About
  5. ^ http://www.yakov.com/images/GAmericasHeartB.jpg

[edit] External links