Comedian John Oliver roasts Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto's use of the phrase "Ya chole". Photo: screen grab
As we've pointed out, popular TV newscaster/comedian John Oliver is fond of poking fun of goofy political stories, not just from his native Britain, or his adopted home country of the US, but around the world. And recently, he set his sights on the president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto.
Oliver took issue with a video released by Peña Nieto's handlers, responding to criticisms of the government's controversial reforms. The video shows two working class Mexicans talking, and when one complains about the reforms, the other shuts him down: "That's enough of your complaints". The video may have seemed like a good idea for the Mexican government when they uploaded it to the internet, but it quickly became a lightning rod for criticisms. Though it has been removed from official government pages, it has been reloaded to the youtube page of well-known Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui. John Oliver proceeded to rip the video. "We get used to politicians telling us: 'We've heard your voice,'" Oliver said. "But they don't usually follow it with: 'And it's annoying, so shut up.'" He also cataloged some of the responses by average Mexicans, including a GIF image saying "That's enough of your [poop emoji] Enrique Peña Nieto." The GIF later animates what appears to be an explosion emanating from the poop emoji. "When a government tells its people to stop complaining, they should know that shit is eventually going to blow up in your face," Oliver remarked.
But the video was noteworthy for the specific Spanish phrase it used. Instead of the more neutral "ya basta", the video uses the phrase "ya chole" (which later went on to become a popular hashtag on Twitter). This is actually a uniquely Mexican slang term, used particularly in and around Mexico City. In all likelihood, Peña Nieto's video included it to try to identify with average people - a move that backfired.
There's actually a fair amount to be said about the phrase "ya chole". First of all, from a linguistic standpoint, it's kind of an outlier. Whereas the more commonly used "ya basta" is based on the verb "bastar", which literally means "to be enough" or "to suffice", "chole" is not actually based on any verb at all. A Spanish-language entry on Word Reference suggests that it is actually derived from the nickname from the Spanish women's name "Soledad". In fact, there are a good deal of Mexican slang words that begin with the "ch" sound, including "Chilango", a term for residents of Mexico City. These have formed the basis for a song by the well known Mexican band Cafe Tacuba, "Ya Chole Chango Chilango". All in all, an important lesson in Mexican slang, which being featured by a well known comedian has perhaps helped to make a bit less boring. Let's hope Peña Nieto has also learned a lesson about trying to be folksy with slang words: it doesn't work. The Daily Show's Trevor Noah compares Donald Trump to Muammar Gaddafi. Image: Comedy Central (screen grab) Last week, Trevor Noah took the reins of Comedy Central's longtime centerpiece of late-night programming, the Daily Show. Though he lucked out in getting such a high voltage gig, the fact that his predecessor Jon Stewart had become such a fixture on the show ensured that his first week on the show would be picked over by a massive chunk of the rest of the media with a fine toothed comb.
One of the first things Noah made sure to do on his first night after the cameras started rolling was to set the record straight on an important point about his upcoming tenure in what has become an American institution: the fact that he's not from America. “So now a job Americans rejected is now being done by an immigrant,” he quipped. But after a week on the job - his second show opened with a bit of surprise about the fact his key card for the office still worked - many onlookers were most impressed by his Thursday show, where he drew on experiences from his native Africa. Noah took aim at Donald Trump, a frequent target of political comedians this year. But he gave his material a distinctive twist. Instead of following the well-worn path other comedians had taken when roasting Trump - the bombast, the hair, or even his slightly awkward time spent singing a cover of the theme from Green Acres - Noah took a different route: he compared Trump to Africa's vast collection of dictators. Trump's take on immigrants ("light xenophobia with just a dash of diplomacy - which is also the title of Paula Deen's new book!") was compared to that of South Africa's president Jacob Zuma. His oddball stance on vaccines was compared to Gambian president Yahya Jammeh, who claimed he could cure AIDS with bananas. His endless bragging about his wealth was mixed in with an edited clip of Uganda's notorious Idi Amin assuring viewers that "I'm very rich". And to close out the segment, Noah noted that, due to Trump's propensity for filing suit, he had to be careful what he said about the magnate-turned-presidential-candidate. "Just like with an African dictator," he pointed out. Though there was certainly a healthy level of skepticism over the first few days of Noah's tenure, his Thursday show seems to have laid much of that to rest. Certainly, a fair amount of the credit for this must be given to the show's world-class writing staff, many of whom stayed on from the Stewart era, but Noah's delivery held its own. And the subject matter of the Thursday show raises an interesting question: does Noah's foreigner status actually give him an advantage? Even before his Thursday Trump take-down, some were already asking this question. After his first show, the Huffington Post ran a video where a group of media analysts picked over Noah's first show. At one point, one of the analysts floated the idea that having an outside perspective on America's issues could give Noah a leg up. The host, a foreigner himself, disagreed. My take on this is that, for comedy, being a foreigner can be both a disadvantage and an advantage. Usually, it's a disadvantage for a long long time, before after massive amounts of immersion in a foreign culture, it finally becomes an advantage. And the effect increases exponentially if you're in a country that speaks a different language. In my experience, learning how to joke with other people in another language can take years, much longer than it takes even to become fully comfortable in conversation. But after a while, once they've mastered the mannerisms and picked up a respectable amount of pop culture references in a foreign culture, outsiders do have, by their nature, an outside-the-box look at customs and social norms that go completely unquestioned by natives. Foreigners have an innate weirdness to them when they first get to a new country. But with time - and if they're funny to begin with - they may learn to channel that weirdness and strike comedic gold. And though Noah didn't have to deal with the language barrier when sitting down in the Daily Show host's chair, foreign languages may have played a part in his ultimate success during his first week. In an interview done after he was named as host earlier this year, he boasts knowing all of eight (!) languages, including Afrikaans (South Africa's unique Dutch-influenced language) and Zulu. It's doubtful that this has helped his material directly; in order to play well with an American crowd, speaking foreign languages is a distant second to being able to whip out a snappy ref to the Kardashians or - as Noah pulled off expertly on his Thursday show - Paula Deen. But that leaves an interesting question: is Noah's material as funny in Zulu as it is in English? We don't know yet. Perhaps he'll give us a taste of his material in Zulu after he's gotten over the opening week jitters. |
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