ParTOBA and the Brazilian sense of humour
Humour is a strange, intangible thing isn’t it? We often just laugh at something without really thinking about why we find it funny. Of course comedy is massively subjective even among people who grew up in the same town, but how does it transfer across cultures? I’ll start with a short tale from my childhood.
When I was 9, I went to France for 10 days as part of a school exchange programme. We were paired off with French kids from a school in Versailles and spent the days all mixed together in the classroom or on sight-seeing trips. At the end of each day we would go off to the family homes of our respective French kids. I remember feeling a bit nervous and homesick, but it was also really interesting to see how French families lived, what they ate, what they did with their spare time and so on.
Looking back, I now realise that my French family were seriously rich – ‘old money’ rich. On the weekend when all the other kids went together on a trip to a local fun fair, I went with my French family to their château in the French countryside. Seriously, it was a proper château! The main building was encircled by a moat and beyond that there were countless acres of forest which the family had been using to hunt deer and wild boar for generations.
This isn’t the exact place, but it looked just like this. How lucky was I? source
My French friend and I spent quite a lot of time running around the grounds, fishing in the moat and doing other things that 9 year olds enjoy. Then, in the evening, I remember the whole family gathered around the television to watch something. I wondered what family treat I was about to enjoy – would it be something my family and I enjoyed like The Muppet Show (or some French equivalent)?
No, I discovered with dread that we had gathered together to watch a 2 hour special of these two:
Apologies to classic comedy enthusiasts, but I always found Laurel and Hardy to be deeply unfunny.
As the minutes slowly turned into hours, I found myself looking at my French family with growing bewilderment. Not only had they chosen to watch this interminable Laurel-and-Hardy-athon, but they were loving it. They were roaring with laughter and rolling around in their seats with glee. For me it was like torture.
“This is the 1980s” I remember thinking to myself, “We have plenty of great entertainment available, so why on earth are we watching this old rubbish? And why are they finding it so funny?”. I left France with many positive impressions of the French, but I remember also thinking they had a terrible sense of humour (forgive my generalisation – I was only 9!).
A crumpled figure smashing his head on the floor… It that funny…?
Fast forward 25 years to 2010 and you find me working in an office in Botafogo. I have that same look of bewilderment on my face because my Brazilian colleagues are watching something called parTOBA and they are laughing so hard that some of them are crying! Here, take a look:
[Maybe some of you will think I’m being overly sensitive here, but I feel I should warn you it’s kind of horrible]
So tell me honestly, do any of you find this funny? I honestly won’t judge you, but I’m interested because I personally I find these clips horrible (it looks like those people are getting seriously hurt) and I find the voice of the ‘narrator’ really annoying. I know not all Brazilians like this stuff – in fact Mrs Eat Rio had never heard of it and complained bitterly when I was watching these clips for research purposes.
Seeing all my colleagues (admittedly all young, male, IT workers) laugh so hard made me wonder about the Brazilian sense of humour in general – is it very different from other countries? I have found that Mrs Eat Rio really likes some British comedy but finds other stuff very dull. I also don’t like El Chavo (a Mexican comedy series, hugely popular here under the name Chaves) but in that case I wonder if I am just missing the jokes because I don’t have a strong enough grasp of Portuguese.
Can anyone recommend a great Brazilian comedy? One comedy group that consistently makes me laugh is Portas dos Fundos – if you are not familiar with them yet, then have a browse through their videos. Have a great weekend!
Hi, as a UK citizen (like wot you once were and half of you still is), l agree with you that parTOBA doesn’t fall into the funny bracket, more shock factor. We have You’ve Been Framed here, which is prime-time Saturday night fodder, and perhaps only .5% of the clips shown on it would mirror those of a more “troubling” nature on parTOBA. But then there’s always Jackass to fall back on if you seek more testosterone-fuelled camcorder clip madness. An analogy of sorts: wrestling; some love the pantomime and popcorn of WWF while others hunger for the more visceral, palpable, that-looks-really-fucking-painful adrenaline of cage fighting. Still, l’m not a 20-year-old Rio IT nerd. Christ knows what kind of hardcore shit they’ll have seen online prior to parTOBA gracing your TV screens.
Good points Aaron and a great analogy. Interestingly enough, UFC is hugely popular here in Brazil. Once I got desensitised to all the full on violence, I found myself starting to like it too.
As an American, I found the guys voice annoying (my Portuguese isn’t very good, but I’m working on it), but I found the videos funny. It looks similar to a show on MTv 2 here in the states called Ridiculousness.
Hey Stacey! You know one of my ex-colleagues commented on this post in Facebook saying “Dude, you’re making us look bad!” – oops! I hope he didn’t think I was condemning him and his colleagues for finding this funny – it’s just not for me I guess. But interesting too was that he said the narrator was the really funny bit. So I guess both you and I need to continue working on our Portuguese to truly get this… :)
I think the humour used on this video’s voice over is very similar to “Pânico na TV” kind of humour. They probrably share the same target audience. I can’t stand neither but my IT nerd brother can’t stop laughing while watching them.
I like a few of Parafernalha’s videos but they aren’t nearly as good as PdF.
I also found this gem on youtube yesterdady. A banned BBC documentary about Globo. Scary…
Hee hee! I liked the one about giving change in candy – that happens to me at the Kilo restaurant all the time! ;)
Also, that looks like a really interesting documentary on Globo! I’m going to sit down and watch it all tonight! Thanks Nanda!
It’s kinda funny but I think it grows on you. Try watching Auto da Compadecida and see if that’s funny. It’s apparently a Brazilian classic and while I give mad props to Suassuna as a proud and talented nordestino, I thought the film based on his book was really bad (mind you, I saw it once about 10 yrs ago). Also, things like Se Eu Fosse Voce are just humorless crap (sorry). I much prefer British humor (oops, humour) over anything else.
On a side note, try “Thank God You’re Here” on YouTube (I prefer the Aussie version but there’s a UK one too).
Ah yes, I’ve been told to watch “Auto da Compadecida” before. I guess I should get on it!
Ha ha! Just saw your second comment about Thank God You’re here. Man, I know that feeling when something you remember being hilarious ends up being much less funny a few years later. Still, I just found a random clip fairly chucklesome ;)
So I watched a few TGYH skits just now, as I hadn’t seen them in 3-4 years, and I didn’t find it that funny anymore. Oh well…
I find El Chavo much funnier in Spanish, where the actors’ inflection and wordplay is stronger; a lot gets lost in translation. I find that lots of my Brazilian relatives react to the slapstick in Chaves more than anything (and since there’s a lot of it, and it’s pretty good, I think that accounts for its popularity). I find a lot of Brazilian humor to be slapstick, much more than I’m used to/can always appreciate.
Hmmm, yes, I have a real problem with slapstick – to me it just feels a bit old fashioned. I can totally believe what you’re saying about El Chavo being funnier in Spanish – I’ve never been a fan of dubbing.
At least your French family didn’t subject you to 2 hours of Jerry Lewis, who was very popular there. So it could have been worse, though I’ve never been able to figure out the appeal of Laurel and Hardy, either.
The narrator’s voice on ParTOBA was so annoyingly shrill that I could only watch the first half, but I don’t think I missed much, since each scene was a variation on a theme. It makes “Punk’d” look like sophisticated comedy.
Oh man! Jerry Lewis! Do you know I hardly knew who the guy was until a year ago. Without knowing what I was letting myself in for, I randomly went to a documentary about his life. I had got him confused with Lenny Bruce (could I have been more wrong?!).
It turns out that Jerry had basically produced or directed the ‘documentary’ himself and let’s just say it was extremely sympathetic, full of interviews with people saying he was the funniest guy in the world ever. I’ll never get those 2 hours back… ;)
I love how the Airwolf opening @ .29 tries to showcase Hawke’s gentle and introspective cello playing side (in contrast with the rest of the vid where he blows everything in sight to smithereens). LOL.
Good old Airwolf – happy memories. It came to mind because Airwolf actually did come on the TV a bit later on that weekend at the chateau. I remember being fascinated that in France it was called Supercopter – weird how I remember something so useless, but can’t remember the name of the chateau.
Lucky you for living in such a lovely place during your French stay. Some of the older homes I saw in France were true Chatholes if you get my drift. Perhaps real estate pertaining to old money – being that the money part of the equation no longer exists. I wonder if this has gotten worse due to present day economic woes in that country.
On the subject of comedy are you familiar with the Spanish movie below? Quite funny methinks.
“Some of the older homes I saw in France were true Chatholes if you get my drift”
Hmmm, chat as in cat? They were cat-holes? That conjures up various images, not all of them very tasteful! ;)
Hi Tom. Interesting post. Humour is very subjective and i agree there is definately a cultural aspect. Im from the north of england and my wife is argentinean. She loves british humour and ive found argentinean humour to be clever, ironic and sharp. We live in Madrid and we love it but the humour is too slapstick and obvious for us both. Horses for courses i guess.
Thanks Chris! I’ve found my wife to be quite a good test case of comedy – she loved Peep Show, but couldn’t get Alan Partridge at all – too many obscure references in the latter I suppose. I’m still kind of amazed how popular Monty Python was/is internationally – I guess there was enough pure silliness to have broad appeal.
Terça Insana has some nice stuff, but maybe im saying that because its just my type of comedy.