When one makes a joke where race or nationality is involved, there is often that one nervous second before one knows if the joke was taken as such—a joke—or if it had offended instead. Where people trust each other and the environment is right, words that might be offensive actually become funny—an insult becomes well-meant poke at the foibles of a good friend.
In the past few weeks, we’ve seen that China and America are not quite at that level of friendship just yet. A recent Jimmy Kimmel sketch consisted of the comedian asking children for foreign policy advice—specifically, what should be done about the trillions of dollars that the United States owes to China. When one of the kids answers, “Kill everyone in China,” what began as a silly sketch became an international incident.
The fallout has shown up all over the Internet. Protestors besieged Kimmel’s studio, and Kimmel was forced to issue an apology. Chinese and Chinese-Americans alike felt offended at the genocidal undertones of the piece—which seems reasonable, given that I can’t think off the top of my head when genocidal undertones have gone over well for anyone.
Personally, I have been besieged for requests for comment from my Chinese friends, and I have sat by uncomfortably as some “Kill all the Americans” parody sketch ideas floated around the Chinese comedy circles in Beijing. I was even asked by people I know to be kind and funny individuals to act in one of these sketches, and didn’t know what to do. I eventually never answered the e-mail.
Most of my Chinese friends have said that they give the kids a pass—ignorance is expected of eight-year-olds. But, they say, Kimmel is an adult, and when confronted with childish behavior should be the one to stamp his foot down and assert that killing whole nations to relieve debt is wrong. My friends seemed to be scared by his “well, we can try that” reaction, perhaps reading into it that Kimmel knows so little about China that if all Chinese people were to be killed tomorrow, he wouldn’t know how or why he should miss them.
Now, I also happen to be in the “Can’t just kill them” camp of dealing with this problem. Obviously, I have many good friends I would miss if all the Chinese were killed—I think not a fair bit of the discomfort for many Chinese is that they are less sure whether this same fact would apply to the majority of Americans.
This idea is part of a larger Chinese perception of a lack of empathy for China from America. In the eyes of many Chinese, Americans are ignorant to Chinese demographics and history, as well as the plight of its long-suffering people, who occupy at the bottom rung of a global economic system which America plays the top role. This perspective can be clearly seen in this interesting piece intended as a response to Kimmel, entitled “The Undying Chinese.”
First of all—let’s get it out of the way. Yes, the Chinese reaction to this debacle—as is their cartoon—is humorless. Also, its title, “The Undying Chinese”, sounds more like a sinister Dungeons and Dragons villain than the proud moniker the authors were intending to put forth.
But their lack of humor comes from an understandable place. China, to Chinese people, is not a subject matter foreign comedians should take as lightly as Kimmel did.
From a Chinese perspective, it becomes increasingly obvious why Chinese people as a whole “can’t take a joke.” All of this information—including their place in history and as a culture—is so crucial to Chinese people’s sense of identity that it is embarrassing to need to explain it to Americans. This, of course, says nothing of the fact that they had to do so in English—a Chinese person viewing this piece might think to themselves not only is China being patient at teaching Americans what they should already know about the world’s most populous county, but China also uses the foreigners’ own language and website (Youtube) to do so, rather than insisting foreigners learn Chinese and go on Chinese sites.
I can understand this mindset, though I find it a little uncomfortably passive-aggressive. If Americans knew all these things about China, it would make me feel a bit more slighted at the somewhat belittling tone of the piece—but most people probably don’t immediately think of all these things when they hear of China. If they do think of Chinese factory workers, it tends to be as a faceless individual used as a platform for a progressive rallying cry and not as regular people who want to have homes and families and friends. Until we know as much about China as the Chinese know about us, a little old-fashioned schoolhouse book-learnin’ is probably in order, whether that makes me uncomfortable or not.
But this piece also highlights one of the key cultural disconnects that I come across over and over again in my experience performing cross-cultural comedy. This is the idea that somehow, the best way to know each other is to lay a bunch of facts on the table, and when people know how many tracts of arable land each country has, we will understand and respect each other.
Indeed, as a comedian, I know that simply laying out the facts is a much worse way of trying to engage with someone than making a safe but reassuring joke, smiling, being genuine, and listening more than you speak. While I struggle with these sometimes, especially with the last one, it remains to be said that the biggest problem I have about this piece is that it was never meant to listen, only to speak. It was never for Americans at all—it was only ever for Chinese people themselves, to hear the bitterly-won progress of their cause in a foreign tongue, proof of the progress of the nation. As an effective communicative tool, I feel as though it failed.
Chinese people should be proud of their progress over the last few decades, and of their rising stature in the global market and political sphere. But pride, however humbly it is packaged, is a poor medium for actual communication. If there is a point where “being able to take the joke” is valuable, it is that comedy forces us to be self-deprecating, and while this piece looks on the surface to be such a piece, it actually is not in the spirit of self-deprecation.
As for vilifying Kimmel’s role in this mess, I would urge taking a step back. Any improv comedian—and the piece’s dialogue was clearly largely improvised—knows that the first key rule of creating good improv comedy is to say “Yes” and explore the possibilities of any offer. Most viewers wouldn’t see the piece in that light, but any non-improviser knows that yelling at a six-year old for an off-hand comment is not funny, so I personally am not surprised at Kimmel’s reaction and am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn’t as nonchalant about the eradication of the Chinese people as he looked on TV. The blame, if it falls anywhere, falls on the editors for including the piece in the final cut and using the cuts to accentuate it for comic gain; Kimmel, as a comedian, was trying to make material out of the setup he was given.
Jokes that cross cultures are truly double-edged swords. Done well, a joke can reveal commonalities between cultures and reflect our common humanity. But when jokes fail, we see stuff like what has happened recently with Jimmy Kimmel.
My own effort over the past year has been in trying to investigate this issue by performing my own jokes onstage in Chinese. When I write jokes about China, I am constantly frustrated by the fact that without constant reassurances and continuous reminders to the audience that I do, in fact, love China, my comedy can almost instantly be dismissed as offensive and tasteless. I want so dearly for us to be close enough to not take every perceived slight as such, and to be able to use comedy to address touchy points between our cultures and countries. Good friends, after all, can use good-natured ribbing to get at some tough issues.
But at this point in our countries’ history, our economic connections are much more developed than our human ones. And just like you can find a way to sign a contract with someone and still not want to go see a comedy show with them afterwards, we have been able to advance our national relationship in some ways much quicker than others. Recognizing that we still need to be careful about what our jokes mean to each other is something that considerate human beings do in each others’ company, and after Jimmy Kimmel, perhaps American comedians will be more alert to that fact as well.
But through all of these struggles to make cross-cultural comedy, I still hold in my head the vision of a sensation like this one, but in reverse—of a joke or sketch that so beautifully crosses the cultures in a way that is reasonable and funny for everyone, and that can get people talking laughing with one another rather than killing each other.
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PS:
I would be remiss if I didn’t include one of the most wacko rehashings of the events of KimmelGate that I ran across, the creatively titled, “Jimmy Kimmel leaves China completely butthurt.” The video, which features Xi Jinping waving a handgun while riding a panda, is certainly ambitiously absurdist. However, the ten-to-one negative comment ratio on the video makes it clear this attempt at humor also fell well short of being able to address the issue.