A Treatise on Europe: Swedish Comedy

Sometimes you can’t predict what living in a rainforest will teach you. If there’s one thing I’ve learned that I miss out on living in North America, it is European national stereotypes. We’ve got our stereotype that Europeans as a whole are culture snobs with awkward-looking haircuts, but generally speaking most of us don’t know enough Europeans to have stereotypes about specific nationalities (the French being the exception, obviously). But in recent weeks I have become enlightened. It turns out that there is a whole plethora of hilarious national stereotyping going on that I wasn’t aware of. I don’t necessarily agree with all of these stereotypes, but the stated purpose of this blog is to educate the masses and as I do not support censorship I really have no choice but to pass this information on. I’ll start with what I’ve learned about Sweden.
The first thing I learned was that Swedish people are universally known for being unfunny. This came as a shock to me because the Swedish people I’ve seen all look so cool and Mats Sundin was a hero to me growing up. But then I realized that these two observations were completely unrelated to their sense of humor and might in fact prove the validity of this stereotype. In terms of how cool they look, I really only see “normal” Swedish people at the winter Olympics snowboarding events. The reason they look cool is that they’re always incredibly attractive (this is not meant to imply that people who are not incredibly attractive can’t look cool, because there’s lots of ugly people I would love to hang out with, i.e. the guy who played Gimli in Lord of the Rings) and are snowboarders, which in general is a good look. Now I’m going to speak in generalizations here, but the attractiveness that I associate with Swedes is probably an indicator of how unfunny they are. I mean, how many physically attractive comedians can you actually name? And honestly, can anybody actually name a Swedish comedian?
The British are obviously known for their comedy (although I think that Russell Brand guy is pretty lame). There aren’t that many French comedians I can name, but I remember the movie Bogus with Gerard Dipardieu having some funny moments. Also, I happen to think mimes are hysterical, so the French have that going for them. When I searched the term “German comedy” in Wikipedia it claimed there were 39 pages. I could only actually find one page, but somewhere out there are 38 more pages, which in my opinion is a lot of pages. But when I opened an article on Swedish humor in The Local, which is apparently an English language online Swedish News publication, this is what it had to say about Swedish comedy:

Swedes might often come across as a rather amusing lot. But as a rule, their idiosyncrasies raise a bigger smile than their comic timing.
When it comes to comedy, the Swedes are usually deemed a rather sober lot. But scratch the surface and you find a rich seam of ribaldry.

Now I’ve got no problem with rich seams of ribaldry, but this description doesn’t exactly make Sweden sound like a nation of Richard Pryors.
I should note that I think that there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Not everyone needs to be dropping wisecracks all over the place. By all means Sweden should keep doing what it’s doing and continue producing classy hockey players who will provide steady leadership to teams in troubled times (I’m referring to Mats Sundin here and not Daniel Alfredsson, who in my opinion is a bit of a prick). I’m just relieved that if I ever have to pick a European country to see a comedy festival I can cross Sweden off the list.
So there’s your first lesson in stereotypes that Europeans (not me, I’m just the messenger) have of each other. Sweden’s not that funny. I hope this information is useful to you.

The Fallout from Mumbai

Writing about my initial reaction to the terror attacks in Mumbai last week was easy. The vast majority of people worldwide are horrified by acts of mass-murder. To post about the reactions of Indians I spoke to, I simply needed to relate fears similar to those that I myself was experiencing. Over the next few days however, I tried and failed to write a follow-up post about how those reactions were evolving.
The Indians who I manage at the Rainforest Retreat are mostly born and raised on rural farms. Although they are brilliant at farm work and are caring and often charismatic with guests (in spite of massive language barriers), they are not educated in International Affairs. In the days following the Mumbai attack, their response changed from one of sadness to one of anger towards Pakistan. None of my staff are religious fundamentalists. They are an assortment of Hindus and Christians, and they live happily in close quarters. Not once have I heard one of them speak derogatorily towards Muslims. Religion seems to be a matter of personal belief, and Coorg is known as being a beacon of religious understanding. The anger they expressed towards Pakistan was deeply rooted and frightening.
My trekking-guide Ravi approached myself and two Dutch guests at dinner and excitedly informed me that India would soon be marching its army towards the Pakistani border. It was later related to me that many of the staff regretted that India had not gone to war with Pakistan over Kashmir in the earlier years of the decade. The staff’s initial sadness at seeing their countrymen murdered was replaced by a sense of anticipation.
The next day I decided to check with my bosses about the fallout from the attack. Their response was markedly different. They completely dismissed the notion that a war with Pakistan was anywhere near imminent, and explained that India’s news services have become increasingly sensationalist in recent years. It recalls the rapid rise in influence of right-wing pundits in the year immediately following September 11th. India, just like America, suffers from a news-media that manipulates it’s reporting in order to further a certain agenda. Much of the news in Coorg comes from Tamil Nadu, a state that is renowned for its deep distrust of Muslims (and other religions other than Tamil, which are seen as being foreign and a threat to the state’s Tamil traditions). Many of the Western opinions that I have read seem to be based more on these media reports and the subsequent reactions of their audience that the reactions of educated Indians.
In Madikeri, thousands of Indian congregated on December 3rd to show solidarity with those in Mumbai and to express their disapproval of terrorism. From what I have read in the Indian Free Press (based in Mysore), these demonstrations against terrorism are becoming more and more common. The fears I expressed in my last post about terrorism’s potential success (in demoralizing Indians and their faith in the government) appears to be being countered by mass condemnations of terrorism.
All of this brings me to an article by Eliot Friedman that was published in the New York Times on December 2nd. In the article, Friedman rightly praises the Pakistani government’s response to the terrorist attacks and promises of co-operation. He then raises a point which I find to be quite poignant. Recalling the mass protests against the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2006, Friedman reasons that the Pakistani people have the ability to mobilize quickly and “express their heartfelt feelings, not just as individuals, but as a powerful collective”. Friedman argues that the Pakistani people must at some point stand up and demonstrate their disapproval of the terrorists who are murdering innocent people.
As a good liberal I obviously believe that the hate that causes terrorism is bred by an unjust socio-economic system. But I also know that the vast majority of Muslims (even those who come from the exact same situations as terrorists) do not storm foreign cities and murder innocent people. I know this, but my Indian staff do not. How powerful a message would it send if this peaceful majority met en masse and full-heartedly denounced the acts of mass-terrorism being perpetrated by those who claimed to represent their interests.
I am not so naïve as to suggest that a mass-demonstration against terrorism in Pakistan would stop future terrorist acts from being committed altogether or resolve the hatred between the two countries. The suicide bombers who attempted to kill Benazir Bhutto proved that the peaceful majority could not silence the violent minority. But given the response of my Indian staff to Pakistan’s involvement in the terrorist attacks, a demonstration of this sort could certainly begin to aid the relations between the two countries. There is certainly a deep hate that I cannot fully comprehend between the two countries, but if relations are to improve in any way than it is possible that the Pakistani people must show Indians that the attack on Mumbai was not done in their name.