> >...humor may gain something in the translation from > >culture to culture. Do any other examples come to mind? I recall seeing some Japanese B movies in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, around 25 years ago. These were intended for a Japanese audience and had no subtitles. In particular, I remember a comedy gangster movie called DOCTOR STRONG ARM (subtitled DOCTOR WHO HAS STRONG ARM). The Baddie was such a grotesque, WW II type Evil Jap (fat, bottle-bottom glasses, nasal talk through buck teeth, pencil moustache, Luger, overdone "We have ways of making you talk!" manner) that if an American filmmaker had created this, the protests would have been extreme. He was intended to be laughed at. Complex choreographed pratfalls, weird juxtapositions, a Buddhist priest's stash of Jack Daniels, funny samurai sword fighting... language was unnecessary to get the humor and the film was, in its little way, a complete success. There is a lot of humor in puncturing stuffed shirts. Perhaps my Jung is showing, but it seems to me that some kinds of humor are a human inheritance, regardless of cultural trappings. Paul E. Clinco ---- To sign off SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]