German sense of humor, can you digest it?

It's a sad movie wrapped in a comedy shell. Female director Maren Ade shows us the family style, feminist culture and cold humor in today's Germany. At the end of the film, in order to let his workaholic daughter know his "sense of humor", the father put himself in a three-meter-high Bulgarian fluffy monster (the traditional Bulgarian Kuker costume to scare off evil spirits), and the audience began to laugh wildly. Then, the daughter ran over to hug her father, and a huge monster hugged the emaciated daughter. The audience was silent, imagining that the father hiding under the fur was crying.

Having lived with Germans for 8 years, I am intrigued by the clear borderline in German family relations. In my experience, the sense of distance between relatives in Germany is very strong. Relatives are reluctant to inquire about each other's private life. It is like the Chinese people who go home during the New Year and are "tortured" by three aunts and six grandmothers. It's a fantasy in Germany. Every Christmas, those dreary family gatherings keep me focused on the food on the table. Their topics tend to be politics, football and some incredibly trivial topics. If you drink too much, everyone will joke about some stupid things happening in the village. Unlike the British self-deprecation, the Germans seem to be more sarcastic about their neighbors.

In the film, the father is portrayed as a somewhat eccentric, mischievous "loser". The daughter is a very "bitchy professional elite". In front of her father, the daughter shows her superiority without any scruples, and in front of others, she is ruthless enough to show her father's most vulnerable emotion (the death of the dog) to her female friends. As a viewer who has been baptized by "good parents" since childhood, this scene deeply hurt me. Indeed, in Europe the highest "right" in the family does not belong to the father. After children become adults, their independence often makes them accustomed to seeing their parents as their "friends", "collaborators" and even "enemies". The Brexit referendum, for example, has caused many children of opposing views to break with their parents. To give another simple example, at the German dinner table, no one would understand the fact that "Kong Rong gave pears". The food distribution adopts an absolutely fair system, and in the end, the excess food is often divided equally again.

And finally about the German sense of humor. Not the same as Hollywood's hot bittersweet comedy (About Schmidt (2002). Germans are also good at cold humor. I understand cold humor as a kind of unbelievably cool performance of the most incredible acts. Nordics are good at this too. (The Idiots (1998); The Hundred Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (2013). In the last 30 minutes of the film, the wailing "The greatest love of all" and the nude party that was German The conflicting sense of humour exploded, can you digest it? As a German daughter-in-law, I can only say that I recommend everyone to stop at it, or you will suffer from depression.

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