Today, on my way to my workplace, I saw a girl eating bread, while riding her bicycle. Seeing this scene, I developed a question: Can humor, jokes, or parody in one culture be understood by people in other cultures?
Japanese Manga and Anime (Animation Movies) culture are popular worldwide. Some people even say it is number one in the world. The Manga culture has many genres. Some manga are hero stories, in which the hero fights and gets stronger and stronger every time he fights against enemies. Others introduce scientific worlds and advanced technologies in the future. Among such genres, one is particularly popular: Girls’ Manga. Young girls are generally very interested in love. So, many Girls’ Mangaare love stories.
A classic and stereotypical story of Girls’ Manga starts like this: A girl dashes out of her house in the morning. She has a piece of toast in her mouth, because she has gotten up late in the day and has no time to have breakfast at home. She is hurrying to school. When she turns a corner on the street, she bumps into somebody else and falls down on the ground. She curses the person. However, actually, this is the beginning of her love. The person is a very handsome man (usually slightly rude, but an athletic type). Her anger suddenly, or gradually, turns into love for the man. The love is often accelerated by coincidences, such as: the man is a transfer student and joins her class on that day, or he is a star player of the baseball team of her school, and a few days later the ball he hits happens to hit her by chance.
Anyway, a series of events includes all these elements for a girl to fall in love: an incidental encounter (bumping into the man), surprise (finding the man very handsome), and further coincidence to enhance her interest in the man (baseball hits her). The perfect combination of these elements might have really moved naïve girls fifty years ago, in the early days of Girls’ Manga. Nowadays, however, people find them comical. Actually, some TV programs even present the encounter of the toast-holding girl and the hero as a comical skit. The audience laughs to see the skit. In other situations, when a woman happens to meet a friend on her way to school or her workplace and happens to be carrying (few people would actually have a piece of toast in their mouths, even when they are in a hurry) bread for her breakfast (or lunch), she may joke to her friend, saying “I’m being late!” Since most Japanese people know about the stereotypical beginning of Girl’s Manga stories, the joker expects her friend to understand she’s playing the parody.
The popularity of the scene can be proven by Googling the two words, “mouth” and “toast”. Although the two words should have no other relationship than that toast is eaten with the mouth, a Wikipedia article titled “being-late-girl” appears, explaining the story given above.
I wonder how much people in different cultures understand the meaning of the stereotypical scene, because some part of it is very Japanese. First, students might not rush to school in other countries. In the U.S. for instance, many students will get on school buses. So, for people in the U.S., “rushing to school” is not a common action of students.
About the hero part (like being a star player in the school’s baseball or basketball team), it is unlikely to occur in China. Chinese high schools don’t have after-school athletic activities, because they concentrate on increasing their students’ academic performances. So, Chinese boys have fewer chances to be the type of hero that is liked by dreaming teenage girls (But the Wikipedia article “being-late-girl” has a Chinese version page!).
For these reasons, though non-Japanese may understand the meaning of the toast-girl’s love, they might not find the scene as funny as Japanese people do.
On the other hand, there should be similar parodies in other cultures. A Texas girl might get lost while she’s riding on a horse. A handsome guy appears and helps her. Later, she finds him on the football team at another school. Or a Brazilian girl finds an excellent dancer during Carnival, and later finds the man at a barbecue.
I don’t know whether or not these stereotypical images exist in their cultures (probably not, because I arbitrarily thought of them). However, if they do exist, they may be much funnier for the local people than for us. I’m very much interested in such stereotypical scenes and seeking to collect more examples. Please send me examples from your country!
