Politics

Amok Mama: Subtle humour

So. About German-bashing. As I said last week, it's not like I actually give a shit. There's worse stuff happening in the world right now than a bunch of loser expats sitting around a dinner table in Prenzlauer Berg doing impressions of German people waiting for the green man at the traffic lights.

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Photo by schmilblick (Flickr CC)

So. About German-bashing. As I said last week, it’s not like I actually give a shit. There’s worse stuff happening in the world right now than a bunch of loser expats sitting around a dinner table in Prenzlauer Berg doing impressions of German people waiting for the green man at the traffic lights. You know the kind of stuff I’m talking about. Real Problems. Israel, Palestine, that kind of thing. Cancer. Aids. Anorexia, rape, forced prostitution. Six-year-old kids who are meant to be deported being housed in camps. Chechnya. Germany’s Next Top Model being really popular among people who are neither mentally ill or disabled. Humanity is doomed, man. There is too much fucked-up stuff going on right now for me to start even pretending to give a shit about the German-bashing. Bash away, kids, Momma’s busy.

Still. Don’t take it too far, or I will literally have to get involved. For instance, you know that thing you’re always saying? About the Germans not being funny? “The Germans aren’t funny. The Germans have no humour….” BLAH, BLAH, BLAH….Come on. It’s unfair, and what’s more, it’s untrue. Some of the funniest people I know are Germans. They just have this really subtle humour, that’s all. They’re subtle. Give ’em a break. AND they’re just a bit crap at television, too. German TV sucks. It’s really bad. It can be pretty horrific sometimes. Sometimes, I sit at home, on my own, at night, watching it, totally gobsmacked at how horrifically bad it is. Some nights I think a bit of torture porn would be less distressing. I close my eyes and pray silently to God: please, Father, never let me be so well-integrated into this country that I find this shit acceptable.

German TV is really, really, really, really, really, really, really, REALLY bad. You know those women who wear funny latex bras and whisper seductively into the camera? “Ruf mich an, mein Mann ist nicht zu Hause?” Those women are basically the most intelligent and most interesting things shown on German television. German TV is really bad. I don’t know how come some of the cleverest people in Europe can make such DUMB TV programmes. And some of the crap they bring over from the States! Have you ever seen Cheaters? Some German dude must’ve gone to America, been sitting in a hotel room, bored and lonely, when Cheaters came on the telly. Then, instead of, like every sane person in the world, thinking to himself: “Huh! What a totally meaningless, dickheadish TV show! I’ll change the channel!”, he must’ve thought to himself: “That is BLOODY fantastic. I am going to BUY that show – I am going to get some translators to translate all the shit those silly people are saying – I am going to DUB it – and then I am gonna BROADCAST it to the Bundesrepublik Deutschland! BINGO!”

So it’s not that Germans aren’t funny, it’s more that they don’t let the funny the ones on telly. Oliver Pocher, Stefan Raab, Mario Barth. These people aren’t funny. They’re just on TV. But I think, as long as a Super RTL camera’s not being pointed at them, Germans are fully capable of being funny. They crack me up all the time. Especially the ones from the East. They’re hilarious. They do this really subtle joke about how they think people from the West are always pretending to be “friendly” but in fact they’re just being “superficial” and “fake.” They can keep this joke up for hours on end. You’re like: “I really appreciate your really subtle irony here, but you can stop now. Everyone knows that nobody in Germany has ever been friendly to anyone else ever, either superficially or just plain ficially. Whenever someone in a public institution is slightly friendly to you, you know they are actually a mentally ill person who has been given a job from the government to keep them occupied. Just drop it now.”

And what’s so great about being thigh-slappingly funny anyway? Are we really meant to waltz aimlessly through life, with stupid grins smeared across our faces like greasy lipstick? Humanity is doomed, after all. The Krauts have just realized it quicker.