Self-depreciation

I'm from the south myself and my mother never understood my sarcasm at all. Went right over her head. She never responded to movies that were similar in tone, but loved some of the dumbest comedies. I think she just didn't understand them to be honest and no one wants to laugh at something they have to think about.

You sound like a bore.

I've noticed that with rural people and small town folk here in Europe as well. Also sarcasm, like r1 mentioned, and dry humour. My parents don't register that at all.

What about all the "bless her heart" BS? That's passive-aggressiveness at its finest. It's not self-deprecating, but it's subtle and has layers.

I've noticed the passive aggression, too, R4. They can be quite nasty.

Sarcasm, irony, and satire require a certain level of intellect to understand that southerners simply do not have. They take things literally or at face value, with little understanding of "shades of gray." It's why so many of them are religious fundamentalists.

I love your thread title, OP.

R6 just might be correct here.

When I was doing theatre in the south, I noticed that the big goofy farces where people are running into each other or falling over beds and couches would be met with ground shattering laughter and applause. A comedy that was more sarcastic, dark, or satirical was usually met with an occasional chuckle or two and not much else. And that was on a good night.

I do think maybe religion does have something to with it. As R6 was saying, they're required to always see things at face value. Everything's either black or white and there's no in between. Religion doesn't want people to think. If people think too much, they start to question things and they can't have that.

Maybe your jokes are stupid?

I am from Alabama I'm usually the last person to defend southerners on any subject.

I have lived in Alabama for 47 years but I do not find this to be true. I know many Southerners who possess a self deprecating humor.

yesterday at work one of my coworkers needed QC to inspect some of his work. He told QC "I've got something I need you to see" add QC jokingly said "I hope it's not your penis" and my coworker responded "no I wouldn't bother you with anything that small"

OP, maybe they consider you a bullshit artist.

R11, you do realize this is just another "let's talk shit about the south" that a few of the more pathetic DLers have started posting recently, don't you?

i've only been here on the DL for about a month

[quote]Self-depreciation

Are you using the straight-line method, or Double Declining Balance?

It exists in the south, but a lot of those tend to move away to bigger cities once they can swing it. Trust me, I'm from the Deep South. Most of the humor they seem to like is the fart joke variety or men in drag. Men in drag ALWAYS kill. Still, it always depends on who's in the audience. I did some Neil Simon shows when I was there (it was community theatre, but I'd say we did a darn good job) and some nights, we'd get roars of laughter and, other nights, not a chuckle the whole show. We were doing the exact same show and playing the scenes the exact same way. We always knew we had a dud audience that night/afternoon which was probably full of elderly church people.

It's not just a southern thing, though. I worked in a comedy club as a bartender after I moved away and I'd see the same comics go up there night after night and on Monday, they'd kill, but on Tuesday, they'd be lucky to get one laugh. They didn't change their act at all, so it wasn't their act - it was the audience. You're taking a risk every time you get up on that stage. It's why I think Broadway shows should be required to do the exact same show for the first 5 performances during preview period. You don't want to start changing things just because one specific audience didn't enjoy the show. That might just be them. Now, if the same jokes bomb night after night after night, it's clearly your material. Keep the stuff that works for most people and toss out the stuff that everyone seems to hate.

I noticed this too. I am a Texan and I've lived in many places, but when I lived in the Deep South, my self-deprecating humor was not understood. People acted as if it made me look weak and pathetic. It is not well-received there at all.

So how much do you estimate you depreciate each year? Are you able to write that off on your taxes?

OP? That's one thing Trump would never indulge in.

I personally, however, have depreciated quite a bit.

I don't know. I think the women can be funny. Robin Williams' mother was from Mississippi and he said it was a gift to have a mother from the Deep South, that his was a combination of Tennessee Williams and Neil Simon. Also Brett Butler? She was from Alabama I think and had that wacky sometimes melodramatic thing you find sometimes. Parker Posey's from MS, Carrie Nye was (very wry), Lillian Hellman (had the melodrama down anyway), Tallulah Bankhead wasn't funny? and viciously deadpan. Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty - their novels are steeped in self-deprecation and a weird sense of the humor mixed in with the macabre. I mean the place is dripping in desperation and dark hopelessness and layer upon layers of subconscious shame and defensiveness. A writer's dream to live inside, amirite, Mr. Faulkner?

Tyler Perry's plays are popular among Southerners. Northerners don't get the humor, though.

Like Robin Williams, Brett Butler said all the women in her family were funny. Maybe it's an at-home kind of thing, and they're all fake politeness and silly giggling around the menfolks in public. Most people who are oppressed develop a kind of resigned "gallow" humor, be it women in the Southern patriarchy, African Americans, Jewish people - I think it's a pretty universal way of surviving horrible life situations.

My grandfather is a Southern country guy and the most sarcastic person ever. Also, watch an episode of the old Hee Haw show, they all did self-depreciation. Minnie Pearl's main shtick was about how desperate she was to catch a man, but that she was too ugly and desperate to get one. Jeff Foxworthy is one of the richest most successful stand-up comics of all time, and his main routine is making fun of himself for being a redneck.

R22 the fake politeness and giggling is a Southern Belle stereotype of rich Southern women, that was never applicable to most Southern women.

I've actually seen the women be very funny. Like someone else said, whether they know it consciously or not, they're very oppressed down there and there's a need to abide by very specific rules in public. However, get a gaggle of them alone and you'll never have so much fucking fun in your life, especially if they've got the drinks flowing. I've seen some of the same women shut down and not laugh at things in public if they're with their stone-faced husbands, especially at the theatre. The husbands have been dragged there and seem hellbent on grunting and rolling their eyes the entire evening and the wife is too scared to laugh and have a good time.

White Southern culture is built on social hierarchy and religious fundamentalism, and while time and generations keep moving forward, the social structures of the white South act as a brake to slow progress.

Likewise, wit, irony, and wordplay usually require the listener to be able to grasp more than one meaning in a word or situation to understand what the joke is. White Southern culture has never been keen on such subtlety.

Every culture produces outliers, and the fact that the South has produced writers who have been able to make a living publishing nationally (and sometimes globally) doesn’t really contradict the general Southern appreciation for slapstick and common forms of base humor. There’s also a particular form of other-deprecating humor common in white Southern culture, where passive aggressive suggestions that others are of lesser social status is practiced.

* oops meant to say "gallows" humor in R22.

And thank you R23 - I didn't think I was crazy. I actually find Southerners funnier than Midwesterners. Even some of the Evangelicals, if you can believe that.

And I see your point R24, but I'm old -- almost always lived in the Deep South -- and there's the honky-tonk kind of southern woman who certainly isn't polite or giggly -- but in the old days, maybe still, women are expected to let the men have center stage, especially the "moral" ones. But get 'em by themselves and they really are hilarious - as pent-up + judgemental people can be, when they finally get amongst themselves. Whew lordy! It's like when the Ru-Paul ladies go backstage to spill a little tea.

How many of y'all have actually spent time in the South? Or are you just going by stereotypes and prejudices? Because the South y'all are describing is nothing like the South I know as a born and bread Southerner. All this talk about oppressed women, when the Southern women I have known are much more like Designing Women or Steel Magnolias. They are not oppressed, in fact most of them rule their husbands like Ma Kettle ruled Pa.

Dolly Parton is one of the funniest women in show business, imo - and also very self-deprecating at times, about her intentionally whorish looks, for one thing - but pretty much about everything.

A lot of my family is still in the Deep South and I can say that the old school ways are still very much in place for a lot of women above 30/40. The younger ones are starting to rebel a bit (but a few have drunk the Kool Aid and become women who exists simply for their men). However, there's still this mentality of being a good Godly wife and mother. It's a southern baptist thing. As I said, I do think it'll start to change a bit (I hope), but a lot of the "weirdos" and outliers tend to move away in their 20's or 30's instead of staying and trying to make a difference.

And yes, there are always exceptions to this, thank God. Most of the people I hung around with or wanted to spend time with were nothing like that. They were fun weirdos themselves. I think a lot of us can turn the quirky down a bit and change our demeanor depending on who we're in the room with.

All that sarcasm and self-deprecating humor is usually just a cover for depression and bitterness. It’s really not funny after a while. It’s why so many comics are suicidal, drunks or addicts. Happier people don’t “get it.”

R30 Is your family, rich, poor, or middle class, rural or city? My family has mostly been working class rural Southern Baptists, in South Carolina, and that does not describe them. And, having done a lot of genealogical research it has never described them. For one thing, they were never about being the "perfect" wife. Well before the women's movement they were working outside the home in the cotton mills, which made them very independent minded. However, in speaking to people who grew up in towns or cities and were middle class or better, their experiences and the expectations placed on them were very different.

southerners are too polite to tell you they get it, but it’s not very interesting

R31, I believe there's truth in what you said. When did being sarcastic and understanding sarcasm become a measure of intelligence?

R28, you write you're a "born and bread Southerner" and you're worried about Southern stereotypes??

As they say, the jokes, they write themselves.

R35 I'm sure you have never made a typo in your life. Even the New York Times publishes typos. This is a quick fire anonymous messageboard not an academic journal.

I'm kinda surprised by this. the one thing I thought the South had in abundance was a sense of humor, including self-deprecating humor. never lived there, so I believe you OP, but I am truly surprised by this. here in the Midwest we can be a little grim and bitter, but we got that self-deprecating thing, mostly. surprised at the South.

Maybe it helps to figure out who the ancestors of the southerners (or whoever) are. I think of English people and Australians as being self-deprecating. I don't think of French people as being self-deprecating. (Maybe I'm wrong here.)

Isn't there a stereotype that Germans aren't funny?

There are stupid people everywhere. There are just more of them in the American South than in almost every other place. The result is that the smart people, and you have to be smart to really be funny, seem funnier in juxtaposition and, frankly, they have inherently better material to work with than Northerners.

R38 That could be the case, most of my Southern family are from English and Irish stock, and are extremely funny and self-deprecating. The smaller French and German lines tend to be the less humorous ones.

i know, that is the thing that surprises me r41. the English love two things: being pompous and picking on themselves. I am amazed the South isn't the same way. being oh so fine and also laughing at themselves. and the Irish have always had a great sense of humor about themselves. it's weird, if true.

r39, that's not a stereotype: it's a FACT!

R40 If you look at IQ scores, there really isn't that big a difference between the states. The top state of Massachusetts' average IQ score is 104.3, while the lowest state Mississippi, is at 94.2, which is only about a ten point spread, and all the other states fall somewhere in between the two.

You sound stupid and like a liar. What you wrote never happened. Loser.

yikes, what is the bitterness r45?

Self deprecating humour is just poorly disguised narcissism.

Humorless people don't "get it."

There! Fixed that for you, R31.

Here in the South we don't hide crazy... We parade it on the front porch and give it a glass of ice tea.

and THAT'S what I think of the South, r49, a damn sense of humor about the whole thing. But apparently not.

R49 sounds like it came from "Designing Women" (the TV show). I don't feel like checking.

I depreciate everything. I save a lot of money that way, especially at tax time.

Like minds, R7.

I've lived in the south for most of my life and it's a lot more diverse than you'd think. I dabbled in community theatre here and there and it's true that there's a certain group of audience members that you always dread. They usually show up on Saturday or Sunday matinees and rarely ever laugh or applaud. They're usually over the age of 70 and church-y types. They don't seem to possess a sense of humor at all. The other performances usually do well with a much more broad and diverse audience.

I certainly wouldn't say the south as a whole has no sense of humor, but it's about finding the right audience for the material. I'm pretty sure it's like that everywhere. I've been to Broadway shows where I'm laughing my ass off and the rest of the audience seems made up of bridge and tunnel folks who aren't getting the humor.

What the rest of America thinks about the South - is sorta what the rest of the world thinks of America as a whole - smug, naive, can't understand irony, likes simplistic humor (god just look at our sitcoms and stupid Hollywood films)

Bottom line? Americans abroad. No matter race or stripe. They just fall into each other. Thick as thieves and the only way to really live the American experience. Canadians and Mexicans even fall right into that certain mindset. By hook or by crook we always have each others backs. Flash back to 9/11 for a refresher. Delve for 10 seconds with eyes closed. That's the acid test there. People pouring in with aid. South of border. North of border. Alaska. Oregon (thanks guys). The South, the Midwest.

Closed ranks in a heartbeat. Push comes to shove and we're one. Take the silver lining of what 9/11 was. Think back. Goosebumps.

R55, couldn't give a rat's gash what the rest of the world thinks about America or Americans!

Obviously they think a hell of a lot about us being that WE set global standards. Our pluralistic society makes the seemingly impossible possible. Ingrained in us from birth to be cognizant of other cultures and differences. That's how we pull off innovative feats. First in flight. First at everything! It's not what they think of us but what WE think of them.

Depreciation is not the same as deprecation.

Oh, DL. So important with your fancy college ways and big-city Jew humor.

R57 writes like an obnoxious, pompous Texan.

R60, Texan? Really? You got Texan? Polar opposite. And do mean "polar" as in the bear 🐻

Not having it! Not some rah-rah USA moron believing America is perfect. This comes from extensive travels all over this globe and when I tell you that Americans are marvelous it isn't coming from some hilljack. Friends & family flung far and wide. Besides that, I know talent when I see it. So many things wish we could borrow from Japan, France & Canada. What we don't need to borrow though is the character of our nation. Puerto Rico, Hawaii or Cleveland. Doesn't matter and don't sell us short. Wake up and realize the overall attitude of owning that passport. How else do you think we started the internet or autos & airplanes? Please, we're all here. Always righteous. Compassionate. Not talking our government here. Talking the people. The American people. Adorable. Lovable. We manage this on a huge continent. See us for what we are. Peruse history.

Like everything in France is always so fine. Over the top. Same applies to the national character of a huge territory made up of the world. Open your eyes and bask in the greatness that is the USA. Well earned. Knowing smirk. Celebrate it. Celebrate US.

Are you lost, R62?