I found this to be an interesting story. Jesse Appel studied in China. As he gained fluency in Mandarin, he started doing comedy there. In fact, he had a Chinese mentor.
I can't judge whether he's funny in Mandarin Chinese. But there's a good chance he's a harbinger of upcoming trends. China is thriving in many respects. Even as they're a rival country, there could be a lot of Americans and Westerners in general living there in the near future. And they'll be doing all sorts of things. From the Chinese perspective, "American" may become an ethnicity, more or less.
2 comments:
I was curious to have a look at his act but unfortunately there's very little on youtube. The one video I watched called 'Crosstalk Comedy with Da Shan' had a part that caught my attention when he described returning to Canada for a short visit while he was in the midst of a performance schedule in China. This was 2020 and the lockdown was declared by the time he reached Toronto. He started making phone calls to see how he could get a visa to return and was told by an embassy person it was a matter of job type:
'What do you do?'
'I'm a standup comedian'.
silence..'Do you have any other skills?'
'I make TikTok videos'
silence..
At least it gave me an idea of Chinese comedy and the good news is there are already a number of Chinese here and in America. The audience will grow will likely grow in China too.
I have a favorite new foreign comedian you might like, Dara O'Briain. Our friend Geraldine didn't send us a clip because she didn't think we'd understand him, but we did. Here's Chuggy the Tunnel Digger:
https://youtu.be/C8gW3oi3urM?si=HaYztQYkm7f6tRhc
The early, traveling parts of that Da Shan video are kind of grim because you can see everyone complying with arbitrary COVID restrictions. Once the two of them got talking it was more fun. I actually can pick out when someone is speaking Mandarin Chinese with a Canadian accent. And you can see the two of them cutting up, which is basically what they should be doing.
Chinese comedy in the US and North American comedians of European descent in China. There are interesting developments going on.
Dara O'Briain has great facial expressions. It's not every day you hear a comic doing an extended bit on anthropomorphism. Well, he's found his spot.
Post a Comment