frankie

Eighteen months ago, I hauled my shit halfway across the world
and discovered something important about everyone who lives in
the Pacific: we’re significantly funnier than literally everyone else.
When I moved to the United States of Terrible Politics, I figured
there’d be a period of cultural re-adjustment. Some time to get
used to the lack of real coffee and Vegemite. But I didn’t expect
to spend 90 per cent of my days explaining that everything I say
is a kind of, sort of joke. “Nah, I totally love train delays,” does not
always read as sarcasm, and my constant stream of self-deprecating
commentary has led many unsuspecting Americans to reassure me
that I am “worthy”.

There’s something about life at the bottom of the globe that makes
it hard to take anyone too seriously, which in turn makes it funny
to speak in endless sarcastic riddles. At any one moment, 43 per cent
of Australian conversations are made up entirely of nonsense
shit-talk. Here in America, people sometimes ask me to interpret
Australian slang – words like ‘baller’, ‘goon sack’ and ‘Shane Warne’.
Firstly, I’m from New Zealand. Shane Warne is not my problem.
But even if I could translate the words into American, I’m not sure
there’s really much point. Swap out ‘baller’ for ‘gutsyyoung man’
and the world grows 20 shades more grim.

The problem with translating Australasian humour for non-Pacific

audiences is that non-Pacific audiences don’t always want to

laugh. Stretches of the US and Europe are 30 decades deep into

a game of ‘keep a straight face or you have to touch my booger’.

So, when we waltz in with our dry, monotone lols, it’s got to be a

little unnerving. I learned the hard way, for instance, that it’s not

universally funny to relentlessly mock your friends. Personally,

I don’t consider a friendship to be real if you can’t tell the person

they’re looking more and more like an old avocado skin, but some

cultures are different. Besides, times are serious, people. The world

is literally burning, and in Australia that’s the basis for 10 to 12

inappropriately morbid jokes – elsewhere, it’s just a plain old fact

about climate change.

When I discovered I had moved to the most earnest nation in the

world, where people are only up for a laugh when you very clearly

vary your tone to emphasise the punch line, I figured I should try

and change my ways. How hard could it possibly be to abandon

a life-long commitment to droll cynicism, rampant exaggeration

and endless self-mocking? Very hard, actually. In Australia and

New Zealand, we don’t just ‘joke around’ from time to time.

Joking around is the basis of our vocabulary. Just try having a

conversation that’s 100 per cent earnest – I promise your brain

will last two minutes, at most. When I tried out life as an honest-

speaking American who thinks self-deprecating banter is a sign

of low self-esteem, I felt like a scrap metal robot trapped in

a flesh suit.

In part, I blame my own people. Whenever I fly back home to

New Zealand, the line for the plane is just a big clump of bodies

laughing and saying the words, “Beached as, bro,” while US airport

staff watch on in horror. My dad has a not-so-great tendency to say

the word ‘bomb’ when he approaches airport security. And my sister

can spend a solid two-hour flight pretending to be a Norwegian

soccer mum, for literally no reason at all. It’s the absurdity of our

tiny island, expressing itself in our little human bodies like a secret,

monotone code.

you’ve gotta laugh

SAM PRENDERGAST MAY HAVE MOVED

CONTINENTS, BUT SHE CAN’T LEAVE HER

NOT-QUITE-RIGHT HUMOUR BEHIND.

Photo

Courtney Jackson

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