For all of the French’s intellectual and cultural posturing, when it comes to humor, they enjoy simplistic, physical comedy: Mimes, clowns, Jerry Lewis, Jim Carrey, and America’s Funniest Home Videos are the sorts of entertainment that cause many a busted Gallic gut. Humor like Monty Python, the Simpsons, Steven Wright, and Tim and Eric is bizarre and ridiculous to the French, unless someone falls down, makes a funny face, or suddenly breaks out in pantomime.
Americans tend to take after our British forerunners, and find situations humorous when it involves a cerebrally-pleasing element like wit, irony, and satire. Generally, we find mimes to be creepy, clowns to be childish, and home videos of men accidentally getting hit in the genitals with baseballs to be lowbrow.
I can usually predict if my French husband will find something to be funny. For example, I knew that the infamous Sarah Silverman “I’m f***ing Matt Damon” video would be beyond him. “Don’t you get it? Not only are they publicly making Jimmy Kimmel a cuckold, but they’re singing this elaborate song about how much they eff!” He stared at it, adapting the typical annoyance-twinged stone face that French people use to convey that the only way they could be less amused is if someone started wondering what happened to all of the French Jews.
But I was totally unprepared for his reaction to the videos of the Chilean midget who dresses up like female celebrities and dances around like an idiot (here for ‘La Pequena Hillary Clinton’ on YouTube). I showed him the video this morning at breakfast, expecting him to laugh with me about how the Internet elevates the stupidest crap to the public’s attention. But instead, he was genuinely amused, charmed, even delighted. It kinda freaked me out, actually, how he wouldn’t stop laughing.
