English humor - I dont get it?

For the record, I never said anyone was too stupid to understand British humour.  I was saying that some people (actually, a lot of people!) don't like jokes that make you think.  They prefer slackslip (or other non-thinking required) humour. 

Perhaps you mean slapstick?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slapstick

It's not a matter of your IQ level, it's a matter of what you find amusing (is it more funny to make an intelligent play on words - requires thinking - or is it more funny to watch someone fall down a flight of stairs - requires no thinking)?   

I saw a clip from 'Not Going Out' where the guy was reading a classified ad, saying "Are you looking for a job, init?".  The woman said "No, it's are you looking for a job in IT?".  Not a lot of Americans would "get" that...but it doesn't make them stupid.  Sometimes British humour that wouldn't be classified as "intelligent humour" requires thinking on the part of foreigners (and thus could be considered unamusing).

Sorry, but now it sounds as though you're saying Americans aren't too stupid to get British humour, they're just too lazy and uninterested.  Whereas you are apparently gifted with some special element that lifts you up above us commoners and allows you access into the intellectual and thought-provoking world of British humour.  Ah, if only we commoners could be bothered to think about it, perhaps we too could understand.  If only. 

That might not be what you meant, but it's rather how your remarks come off. 

They prefer slackslip

slapstick?

This thread is getting funnier by the minute.

Guys, Gals, Guys...it's humoUr 

*is a Brit and legs it fast*

I would have to agree with Waiting... There is a big difference between british humour and american humour in that british humour can often require a lot more thought than american humour - american humour is more superficial than british humour on the whole. That isn't to say americans are to dumb, lazy, or whatever you want to say to get it, but british humour is a deeper humour and very often filled with puns, irony and sarcasm.

Shows like QI or Mock the Week would not do well in the States because it isn't what the majority of people expect from comedy, nor is it what the media thinks Americans like. You can see the differences in American and British humour in these shows, primarily MTW, when they have some American guests. I can't remember the guy's name but he basically gets up and does one liners where everyone else has a more in depth sort of comedy.

That isn't to say one is better than the other or one is more intelligent than the other but they are just different styles. I don't get German humour, they just find different things funny.

Still there is no excuse for benny hill.   

So how do you account for the people who watch QI and Mock The Week on BBC America or the internet?  How do you account for the expats who like those shows? 

People's appreciation of humour is based on their subjective preferences, period.  It has nothing to do with their nationality.  My father in law is British and thinks the Marx Brothers are hilarious.  My British husband claims John Stewart is "too American" but can't help laughing at the Daily Show.  People all over the world love the Simpsons.  Saying that British humour is more intelligent or requires more thought or is deeper than American humour is a pretty sweeping generalisation. 

Ironically, I never mentioned whether or not I personally like intelligent humour, just noted that it seems (and to me that's not a sweeping generalization, but a personal opinion based on observation) to be more prevelant in British humour.  I know a lot of people who don't find Seinfeld (obviously not British) funny because it "requires too much thought".

That was really just a side note for me though.  I think the cultural references and slang used in British comedy has a much larger impact on the ability of an American to "get" it.  3 years ago I wouldn't have understood a joke about 'init' or being 'pissed' or Yorkshiremen wearing flat caps and loving ferrets because I wouldn't have known what any of that means.  I don't think many Americans would.

Personally, I don't think it has much to do with American humor vs British humor.  It's just a matter of what you find funny.  I grew up in Boston and our sense of humor is very similar to the scarcastic and/or ironic humor of the Brits (perhaps that's why DH and I get along so well...LOL).  I find shows like "Not Going Out" beyond hilarious...and can't get enough of it.  However, I don't really find The Simpsons funny all that much.  That's just me, though.  I know many people that find that hilarious (like DH).

Basically, it just comes down to personal taste.    Heck, my favorite comedian is Eddie Izzard....again, that's just my preference.  And you can't go wrong with Monty Python or Fawlty Towers...just classic.

And, pengi, I agree...there really is no excuse for Benny Hill.   

and there are people over here that like friends, but the vast majority of people i know here don't. my husband often complains about the delivery method of people like john stewart or robin williams - a sort of 'if I shout it at you, you will laugh.'

Maybe it is what you find funny, but comedy and humour are full of nuances and a lot of things that can be easily missed if you don't know the culture. like the show that was referenced earlier, if you didn't listen to people saying 'init' all day you wouldn't get the joke in the same way. I tried to get my brother in law to watch little britain and vicky pollard was completely lost on him.

So to the OP, you may not get it now, but give it time and you most likely will. That's no guarantee  that you'll find it funny though.

Yes, a fairly offensive point.

The foreigners I know who don't like British humor don't like the piss taking element, as it seems to hold an underlying meanness -- the whole, is there an element of truth hiding in there.  They certainly don't dislike British humor because they are too stupid to get the intellegent jokes.  Give me a break.  

I agree with Sara.

I like most British humour and I'm not too stupid to get an intelligent joke.

What I dislike about British humour is when it's done in an in-joke kind of way - if you "fit in" you would find the joke funny.

It's hard to explain this, but as an example.

I was in a dance class and my dance partner said to me - with a completely serious expression - "I really like this music a lot." So I had to ask him if he was joking - he was, because everyone has different taste in music and it's possible that he really did like the music.  It's as though as he was implying that any intelligent person with good taste couldn't possibly like the music we were dancing to.

ETA:

Brits and Americans both do slapstick.  (Little Britain, anyone?) Brits and Americans both do intelligent humour. The last time I heard them, George Carlin, Jon Stewart and Lewis Black didn't have English accents.

And because an American might not understand a pun based on British expressions and dialects doesn't mean that they American isn't intelligent.  A British person probably wouldn't understand puns based on American expressions and dialects. And you can't expect anyone to get jokes based on cultural references from a culture that they didn't grow up in.

I have to explain some of the jokes in Family Guy to DH because a lot of them reference American pop culture from years ago.

This thread is getting outrageous. I'm an American, and my favourite film is The Royal Tenenbaums, which I think is hysterical. I really get that film, whereas some people don't, English or American or whatever. And what I mean by get, is not that I understand the humour in the film better than someone else, it's just that I can relate to it more, or it appeals to me on some deeper level than it would another person. I prefer dark humour. Other people don't.

Furthermore, there is "intelligent" humour on both sides of the Atlantic. Puns and other word play humour don't always appeal to everyone, regardless of where they are from. Having said that, though, a lot of puns and word play won't make sense to someone who is unfamiliar with the language or culture. Once you get settled in, things start to make a bit more sense because you know that the word "bog" refers to a toilet, or what have you. If you don't know what a bog is, then how are you going to understand the joke?

One of the hardest things to adjust to when I first got here was... how do I explain it? I guess on some level, the difference in humour, but it was more like just understanding the cultural references and differences in language so that I could carry on a conversation without feeling out of place. Basically, I would make some sort of joke about something that was really familiar to me... oh, I don't know... Fritos, or something like that. Everyone would look at me like I was nuts and then I would realise that they had no idea what Fritos are. Or I would make a reference to I Love Lucy, and no one around me had ever seen the show or even knew who Lucille Ball was. And then in return, they would make some joke about "Corrie" and I would think they were talking about curry! After a few months, I knew that Coronation Street was a popular soap opera here and that many people refer to it as Corrie. I also knew after a few months that Fritos weren't available here, so I would know better than to make a joke about them. Etc, etc.

What I am trying to say is that it can be difficult when you first arrive in a new country to understand all the cultural references, differences in language, etc., and that in itself makes it harder to understand the humour. As IPM said before, in reference to the joke in Shaun of the Dead, if you didn't know that "She's engaged" means "her line is busy," then the joke wouldn't necessarily make sense to you. This doesn't mean that anyone is thick or less intelligent than someone else, for crying out loud, it just means that someone who is less familiar with the language is going to have to stop and think about it in order to get the joke, whereas people who were born here might not have to do that. Believe me, there were many things I never "got" before but find hilarious now that I understand them better, and the understanding doesn't come from an increase in intelligence, but just an increase in my cultural knowledge of England, etc., after having lived here for two years.

x-posted with Pengi, who said basically the same thing in less words. 

In more or less to reply to the OP question I go to a local comedy club once a month, so I think I 'get' British humour. If you don't get a joke about a commercial that aired here in 1992, that's you not having the same cultural reference.

If someones joke is inappropriately personal or obviously to hurt someones feelings, I think your misunderstanding of their humour less of them being British and more of them being an a**hole. There is a difference between Brit humour and insult comics!

This thread is getting outrageous. I'm an American, and my favourite film is The Royal Tenenbaums, which I think is hysterical. I really get that film, whereas some people don't, English or American or whatever. And what I mean by get, is not that I understand the humour in the film better than someone else, it's just that I can relate to it more, or it appeals to me on some deeper level than it would another person. I prefer dark humour. Other people don't.

Furthermore, there is "intelligent" humour on both sides of the Atlantic. Puns and other word play humour don't always appeal to everyone, regardless of where they are from. Having said that, though, a lot of puns and word play won't make sense to someone who is unfamiliar with the language or culture. Once you get settled in, things start to make a bit more sense because you know that the word "bog" refers to a toilet, or what have you. If you don't know what a bog is, then how are you going to understand the joke?

One of the hardest things to adjust to when I first got here was... how do I explain it? I guess on some level, the difference in humour, but it was more like just understanding the cultural references and differences in language so that I could carry on a conversation without feeling out of place. Basically, I would make some sort of joke about something that was really familiar to me... oh, I don't know... Fritos, or something like that. Everyone would look at me like I was nuts and then I would realise that they had no idea what Fritos are. Or I would make a reference to I Love Lucy, and no one around me had ever seen the show or even knew who Lucille Ball was. And then in return, they would make some joke about "Corrie" and I would think they were talking about curry! After a few months, I knew that Coronation Street was a popular soap opera here and that many people refer to it as Corrie. I also knew after a few months that Fritos weren't available here, so I would know better than to make a joke about them. Etc, etc.

What I am trying to say is that it can be difficult when you first arrive in a new country to understand all the cultural references, differences in language, etc., and that in itself makes it harder to understand the humour. As IPM said before, in reference to the joke in Shaun of the Dead, if you didn't know that "She's engaged" means "her line is busy," then the joke wouldn't necessarily make sense to you. This doesn't mean that anyone is thick or less intelligent than someone else, for crying out loud, it just means that someone who is less familiar with the language is going to have to stop and think about it in order to get the joke, whereas people who were born here might not have to do that. Believe me, there were many things I never "got" before but find hilarious now that I understand them better, and the understanding doesn't come from an increase in intelligence, but just an increase in my cultural knowledge of England, etc., after having lived here for two years.

x-posted with Pengi, who said basically the same thing in less words. 

I agree with Jewlz wholeheartedly!

 
I also think it really depends on the person as others have pointed out, I'm a brit and I'm pretty deadpan, and self deprecating and some people (not just Americans, other brits) don't always get that, or it takes them a while before they realise I never mean anything meanly, I just grew up with that sort of humour and the first butt of any jokes I'll tell is normally myself.

I think, too, that sometimes the combination of the somewhat unfamiliar accent with the rapidity of the speech, the quick-firing wit and the deadpan expression can really make some comedians harder to follow at first, like Jimmy Carr. I love him now, but at first, I found it kind of hard to follow along with him because he was moving along so quickly and I barely had time to process what he had said just before and he speaks very quickly.

There are so many different kinds of English humour, though. Jimmy Carr's style is so far different from something like Harry Hill, which is again so completely different from something like The Royle Family, that I think most of us will find some sort of English humour very funny once we understand more of the cultural references and are more settled in. 

And because an American might not understand a pun based on British expressions and dialects doesn't mean that they American isn't intelligent. 

I agree with this.  I'm not really sure how my comment of "A lot of people don't like intelligent humour" turned into "A lot of people don't like intelligent humour because they are too stupid (or lazy) to understand it".  Some people just don't like that type of humour (which is exactly what I said in my post)...just like some people don't like "pie in your face" kind of humour.

So to the OP, you may not get it now, but give it time and you most likely will. That's no guarantee  that you'll find it funny though.

I also agree with this.  There are a lot of things that I "get" now that I wouldn't have understood a year ago (before I moved to the UK)...but I still don't find it funny.

There's some good articles online that describe the differences between British and American humour (I like the one written by Simon Pegg) and some of them explain why Americans don't "get" it.  Some of them are pretty funny...if you like "that" type of humour.