‘Alpha males’: what is everyone laughing at?

Although entire libraries have been written on humor, it remains a mystery why we are amused by some things and not others. We know that the context is important, although there are universal humors. The Marx brothers or the proverb of Sancho Panza provoke laughter at any time and place, and there are very local comedians who transcend, such as the very British Monty Python. But this is weird. The normal thing is that humor works by contact. The further apart (culturally) the humorist and the viewer are, the less likely it is that the latter will laugh. Recently, in Berlin, I tried to explain who I was Little of the Causeway to a group of Germans. Trust me, don’t try.

Humor also has a subjective component that cannot be fought against. If something is not funny to you, nobody is going to convince you to laugh. But since above all it is a collective communion, it is very uncomfortable to know that you are the only one who does not laugh at a joke that amuses an entire country. Rarely does one feel like a foreigner.

It happens to me now with alpha males (Netflix). I have tried to understand what so many people are celebrating, when I only see a succession of jokes that are more widely watched than comics, some recycled from gas station cassettes, which smell rancid and even, at times, sexist. I don’t know where the daring, the sophisticated and the parodic are: they are the married by José Luis Moreno packaged in Netflix format, with an excellent production design. Topics about men are like that and women are like that, written lazily. I have nothing against it, everyone there with their laughter. The weird one and the one who is not right is me, but I thought that Spain had left that humor in the last bingo they entered haystacks and Esteso. It fascinates me to see how it survives disguised as postmodernity.

You can follow EL PAÍS TELEVISIÓN on Twitter or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.