In his essay Simon Critchley discusses how a possible attraction of comedy resides in its particularism. How it doesn’t unite the masses but reaffirms smaller social bonds in the fact it cannot be explained to others. This made me initially think of comedies than obtain a quasi-cult status dependent on geography.
I have spoken before about how The Inbetweeners was something of a social bible during my school years. Survival in the playground was made easier in understanding and distributing applicable lines from the show.
I found similar stories were true after I moved to Scotland. My Scottish friends would reference and recommend Limmy’s Show. A sketch show from the Scottish comedian Brian “Limmy” Limond. On my initial viewings I found very little to laugh at; the sketches were quite irreverent and seemingly revolved around nonsense. However, the friends that showed the clip would be shouting out other sketches to watch In-between their almost constant laughter.
After several sessions of this I started to appreciate the sketches, after a few more I would laugh along, and after that several Limmy-isms entered my vocabulary. I felt a sense of accomplishment in sharing this particular ‘cultural insider-knowledge’ with my friends and engaging in it. Upon showing one of the below clips to my friends back home in England- of the Inbetweeners School of Thought- they shared a similar reaction to my first viewing. Some expressed genuine confusion as to its popularity. While I was initially embarrassed that the clip flopped, a part of me rather enjoyed it; the ‘ostensive untranslatability’ of the humour reaffirmed in me the idea I was becoming more culturally Scottish and thus the bond with my Scottish friends was reaffirmed.
To extrapolate from this, I feel there is real value in the concept of humour as a social rite. Further than the high school or homosocial teenage context we can see how humour and more widely language can be used to exclude and include based on a person’s understanding of specific jokes.
I had a very similar experience in my first year here, where I was sat down at a friend’s flat and made to watch the Limmy Show. Fortunately, we were not very sober so it was incredibly funny to me from the jump and now I quote “Wrong Way Down a One Way Street” far too often. I don’t think I’ve got a comparable show from an American perspective besides maybe SNL, and I wonder if the general weirdness of American culture has something to do with it.
I completely agree with your points about humour as a social rite and as being linked with specific places and groups of people, and I think it’s really interesting and telling how understanding the comedy of a certain place can make us feel more at home and more integrated.
Limmy often complains that the BBC wouldn’t broadcast him UK-wide, as they thought English people wouldn’t be able to understand him. I think the show actually uses relatively little Scots language and it mostly isn’t central to the jokes. As someone originally from England, I’ve always found the show’s humour incredibly enjoyable.