A sense of humor is developed through personal experience, not the least of which is emotional trauma, but a big part of it, I imagine, is based on the terms(metaphors, whatever) people learn to use to define reality.
So, TV, basically. At least for me and most of my generation. Movies too. Popular culture generally. I think there is a window, maybe between the ages of 4 and 12 (which would be '76 to '84 for me) where media exposure helps form those building blocks for whatever sense of humor you have (if you have one) when you're older. There are things that I find funny that my Mother (and farther afield still, my Mother-in-law) just won't get. The gap isn't that big, since her formative media and mine were fundamentally based on the same culture, but it's still there.
But I fear my son may develop a sense of humor completely alien to mine because of Imperialist Japan.
"Oh no!" you say. "That all ended with World War II!"
Hah! Have you seen children's programming lately?
Pokemon, Digimon, Xiaolin Showdown, and the horror that is Yu-Gi-Oh! The list goes on, especially if you have cable.
I can forgive the art, barely, but good heavens, have you paid attention to the dialogue and storytelling? It's more than bad. I can deal with bad. That old Fantastic Four cartoon was incredibly bad. But what we have today is bad and insane! It's not that it is extreme or fantastic, which it often is, it's that it makes no sense on some fundamental level.
But perhaps it does, somehow, make sense to the children. And will to my son, once he is old enough to form words. It will warp his little mind into patterns that are surreal and unintelligible to his Superfriends-era father.
Alas, the father-son relationship will disintegrate, and he will seek understanding elsewhere.
Curse you, Nipponese Media Monster! You destroy my family!
Comments