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November 10, 2004
Being Funny in Persian
I went to a talk by Firoozeh Dumas, the author of Funny in Farsi, last night, and bought her book as well. I am glancing over it now and it seems to be an average book, well written in the "book club" sense of the word, each sentence bearing obvious signs of instruction. That, the apparent lack of authenticity in popular fiction, asks for another discussion all together.
Anyway, a point the author was making was that her book seems to be the only humourous book by a Middle Eastern author and about the Middle East (or West Asia, but let's not be PC here!). She was told by agents that they did not expect humourous works from the Middle Eastern authors, and that people do not get attracted to such works, much prefering tales of oppression and such.
Her answer has been that not everyone in the Middle East is tense (and intense!) and not all women are oppressed and not all men are oppressors.
I too was shocked about this suggestion. They did not expect humour? Wow, it is interesting. I consider myself a pretty funny person, as far as my word plays and dry sense of humour is concerned. Humour is part of my daily life, and all the people around me. Indeed, living under an oppresive regime or in closed society almost automatically means that humour and jokes are going to be used as a way of releasing frustrations! I don't know anyone who tells more jokes than my mom and dad (my mom is the official joke teller of parties!). So, this is culture shock par excellance!
Indeed, the Persian language (I did ask her why she used "Farsi" instead of Persian!) with its vast vocabulary and poetic heritage, makes it quite easy to be funny! Word plays are so easy to make, and the 1200 years of spoken New Persian means that almost every word has at least two meanings, so the humour of people like my dad is quite common as well.
So, the next time you read a funny book about/by a Middle Easterner, don't be amazed, it is probably even funnier in their own language!
Posted by Khodadad at November 10, 2004 11:53 PM
Comments
Did someone say we're not funny? That in itself is worth laughing for. Based on my personal experience, us the Iranians, like the culture of doom and gloom as far as its religious sense. However, that only preoccupies several minutes of our lives per year and aside from that like many other ancient cultures we love a good laugh. These agents need to spend some time with me
Posted by: Jamak at November 13, 2004 12:00 PM