This is a transcript of a Subtitle podcast episode
Patrick Cox: Hi, Patrick Cox here and welcome to another lockdown edition of Subtitle, brought to you by Quiet Juice and the Linguistic Society of America.
You know the way the proper reporters say at the end of their reports I’m so-and-so so-and-so in such-and-such-a place. Boston, or whatever.
Well, here’s my location, again: under the blanket.
Yep, it’s the same blanket as last time, fleece, graphic patterns, three shades of purple.
And — just to add to the glamorous scene “chez moi,” right outside there’s a food delivery truck that’s just showed up to drop off supplies, to the 7–11 next door, I think. Idling, as trucks do, kind of loudly.
This is the life.
Today I talk with bilingual comedian Joanna Hausmann, who’s, like the rest of us, stuck indoors. But she’s making jokes about it.
If you haven’t come across Joanna, she’s Venezuelan American, she’s a correspondent on Bill Nye Saves the World on Netflix. And I know her best — I think a lot of people do — from a series of videos she does called Joanna Rants.
Joanna Hausmann in a Joanna Rants video: “So today I want to show you how to identify different country’s accents.
Patrick Cox: This is one of my favorites.
Joanna Hausmann: “So let’s begin with Mexicans. Mexicans sounds like a fast beat poet who’s always out of breath or carrying something super heavy…”
Patrick Cox: You can find a bunch of these videos on YouTube, some mainly in English, some mainly in Spanish.
Joanna Hausmann in a Joanna Rants video: “As far as I can tell, Dominicans only speak one word and it is all of the words. They talk so fast it sounds like verbal cursive. I tried to do this one, but it is too hard. So, I brought in an expert, an actual Dominican. Cubans! Every time I talk to you, I feel like I may have interrupted your dentist appointment. Are you still on a little bit of novocaine?”
Patrick Cox: So, here’s our conversation. First up, Joanna told me where she’s holed up right now.
Joanna Hausmann: I left New York City right before everything sort of hit the fan, to come visit my parents in western Massachusetts. So, I’m in the Berkshires, isolated from any other human being other than my family.
Patrick Cox: So, it’s just the three of you there? You and your mom and dad?
Joanna Hausmann: So, my mom, my dad, my husband and my little cousin, who I have forced to edit my videos for me. Yeah so, we’re a nice group of five.
Patrick Cox: By the looks and sound of it, Joanna has her cousin editing 24/7. She’s churning out a bunch of material. Short gags that she posts on Twitter. A thing about her relationship with her parents — more on that in a bit. And a song in Spanish about the frustrations of staying at home.
Joanna’s always been comfortable with having several audiences. English-speaking, Spanish-speaking: Americans, in the broadest sense — from all over the Americas. She says each audience comes with its own set of expectations. But right now, in this moment, it’s different.
Joanna Hausmann: I always say for comedians, context is so important. Like, you can make a joke for one group of people, and then you can make a joke for another group of people, and it all depends on what context that audience has. And we’re living in this weird phenomenon where everyone sort of has the same context. Perhaps it changes a little bit here and there, but generally you don’t have to explain things to people to say or type a quarantine joke because everyone understands what it feels like. So as a comedian, it’s been a weird environment where I feel like my jokes can hit in the US. It can hit the same in Venezuela, my home country, even though language is different, it can hit the same in Russia. So it’s like the world has become weirdly smaller.
Patrick Cox: That’s really interesting. I mean, your humor plays on difference rather than similarity quite often, right? I mean, like that video about all those different Spanish’s spoken across Latin America and that’s all of a sudden, you’re confronted with this sameness everywhere.
Joanna Hausmann: That’s such an interesting takeaway that I hadn’t even noticed on my own. But you’re so right. My entire career has always been contrasting cultures, whether that be English and Spanish, whether that be, as you said, Spanish accents in Latin America, whether that be a different dictators in Latin America in comparison to some leaders that we have here in the states. But I think within that there’s this universality of the reason why I compared specifically Latin American cultures is to showcase also our similarities in some ways. So, everyone sees Latinos as the same in the states. And pointing out our differences is a way of celebrating our unique, like brotherhood, but simultaneously respecting are different cultures.
Joanna Hausmann in a video: Avocado, nature’s butter. Brunch’s rising star, and the fruit no American can open without slicing their hand apart. Avocado comes from the Spanish word for aguacate, which comes from the Aztec word which means testicle.
Patrick Cox: That sameness and difference. Are there ways that you found maybe when you’ve spoken to relatives in Venezuela or elsewhere about differences in how they’re experiencing quarantine?
Joanna Hausmann: There’s some, there’s just a plethora of experiences within my friends and my family, so I have so many friends from here in the States. And, you know, it’s very funny. I tell them that I’m quarantine with my parents and most of them go like, “Oh, Jesus, really? What a nightmare.” I’m like, no, why would it be a nightmare? In Latin America, we have these multi-generational homes. So, in our culture, if your grandma lives with you and you still live with your parents at 30 like that’s completely regular and normal. The family structure is so deeply ingrained in our culture. And, you know, that’s kind of what happened in Italy, which is the reason why this pandemic spread so viciously is because of these multi-generational homes, the importance of family, the amount of times you see your grandparents and your cousins and your great aunts and your great uncles. So for me, the idea of going through this pandemic without some semblance of a family structure that I’ve lived with my whole life, for me, it just felt impossible, felt so daunting. And then back home in Venezuela, the people that are with the most amount of family members are doing the best. And those that are the most isolated are, are not doing so great. And, you know, in Venezuela, I think it’s particularly hard now that, you know, the light goes out, the water goes out. So on top of quarantine, you have these really difficult barriers to living at least regular quarantine life, which I do not have to go through. I have my electricity, I have my heat, I have my water, my grocery store delivers. You know, I’m so deeply lucky within these constraints.
Joanna Hausmann in a video: “This is my parent’s house. The place I’ve been quarantine for the past three weeks. Now at the beginning of this whole thing I was concerned that maybe my parents would start treating me like a kid again, but it turns out I’ve been parenting my parents”
Patrick Cox: No question Joanna’s lucky. Me too. Anyone who’s not in imperiled in some way or other is lucky. But imperiled or not, many millions of us are spending a lot of time with family. And Joanna, she makes videos of that time.
Joanna Hausmann in a video: All I’m asking for is for a moment for myself with you with me. I’m getting this weird sadistic pleasure of giving my parents a taste of their own medicine and I don’t mean like the nurturing and constant love and support part. I mean like the, the annoying part.
“Ma. Ma. MA!”
“What?”
“Can you help me with the laundry?”
Patrick Cox: The video that you made about parenting your parents. I showed that to my 14-year-old kid. She loves it. She, of course, wants to try it out now on me and my wife.
Joanna Hausmann in a video: (Speaking to her mom) “You look cold. I brought you a sweater.”
(Speaking to her dad) “Oh look at you, look at you when you were little. Look at you when you were little.”
Patrick Cox: But I was sort of painfully aware of that parental way of speaking that you highlight in that, you know, it’s loving and it’s also totally intrusive and a little bit superior. And I think you capture that really well. Yeah, and it certainly made me think about my own parental voice.
Joanna Hausmann: There’s something very, very specific about a way a parent speaks to their child. And I didn’t notice it until this quarantine, when actually not even the quarantine. Right when the pandemic began, I noticed myself worrying so deeply about my parents that I suddenly understood why they said that they are destined to worry about me their whole life. That no matter how big I get; their worry just seeps through all of their experiences. And I think and I think a lot of people in my generation feel worry for their parent’s generation. And I caught myself talking on the phone in a way I did not recognize myself. I was stern and unforgiving, but also loving. And I realized that’s exactly how my parents spoke to me my entire life. When they were afraid for me. So, you know, there’s all these jokes on Twitter. There’s one, one tweet, and I don’t remember who wrote it, but it was it was along the lines of like: “In a crazy turn of events, I am now yelling at my parents for going out.” That really succinctly expresses, I think, this weird switch in generational responsibilities where I think, I’m deeply worried for my parents and I have to be stern with them. And weirdly, the sternness, although in the video is in English, the sternness comes out in both languages very differently.
Patrick Cox: Oh, tell me about that.
Joanna Hausmann: So there’s something about English that’s very cutting. Right. It has a great economy of words. You say exactly what you want very quickly. And the bad words are very staccato. Right. So when I want to tell them, like something which is like an “absolutely not.” English is such an efficient language.
Joanna Hausmann in a video: She’s not coming over. No, Mami, Gabriela is not coming over. Hey Dad, remember when you lectured me for like seven hours because I didn’t know who Warren Buffett was? Bodak Yellow, Cardi B?(Dad) “Who the hell is that?” Oh my god.
Joanna Hausmann: But then when I feel like what they’re doing is not really responsible, but I don’t want to be, too — I realize they’re adults and they’re my parents — and I want to be respectful and I want to be sweeter, Spanish is more of that language where I can cushion it a little bit, where I can say — you know, the word mami is softer for me than the word mom. So I think using these languages differently to, to sort of express this parental feeling I feel for- towards my parents is such a weird, um — I’m having flashbacks because my mother speaks to me almost entirely in Spanish and then my father speaks to me almost entirely in English. And their parenting is so different, and I don’t know if I’ve ingrained that in my head when I use these two languages.
My Spanish — and I think this goes too for a lot of Spanish speakers — but my Spanish is so intrinsically joined to my identity because my Spanish it sounds very Venezuelan. I use very Venezuelan words, which I learned from my parents, which my parents used. So, it is so conjoined with who I am and who my family is. It comes with like this like historical significance to my family when I say a word. Meanwhile, in English, it’s just kind of like directions or instructions. Like, there’s nothing really tied to it. There’s no folklore tied to my English. I didn’t learn English from my grandma who taught me this funny word to express when I’m frustrated. No, it’s just what I learned in school and what I learned in college. And I use it when I write and it’s very efficient and effective and I love it, but it doesn’t come with this emotional baggage that the Spanish does.
Patrick Cox: I can see why you might be possibly using more Spanish right now than English, than you would do normally?
Joanna Hausmann: One hundred percent. And, you know, it’s so funny because my, my husbands from Colombia and we have generally the same Spanish, but like not one hundred percent. Right. You know, our words for toilet or for banana or for annoyance are different. And now I’m in a house where there’s four Venezuelans and one Colombian. So, he’s in a minority. So, my Spanish is just, I feel like I’ve reverted to how I spoke it. Like when I lived back home, because I’ve sort of maneuvered my Spanish to be more universal since I moved to the states, since I have friends from Puerto Rico, from Dominican Republic, from Mexico. You have to you have to cater your Spanish to your audience here. And my Spanish became more just general Latin American Spanish. But here, I’ve just reverted to my high school self. So, I am saying words I haven’t said since I was 18, like slang words. It’s just so ridiculous to see how language morphs to your environment.
Patrick Cox: Right. What kind of words can you give me a couple of examples?
Joanna Hausmann: Sure. Like there’s this -I don’t even think it’s cool to say anymore- but like [says a word in Spanish] is like a word in slang. In 2007 Caracas, which was like, “Oh man, that is intense.” And I think the word comes from some farm utensil. I don’t even know. But it just all the high school kids used to use it. And I used it recently and my cousin who’s younger than me was like, ‘I cannot believe you just use that word. No one uses that word anymore’. Also, the word [says a word in Spanish], which I guess now that I’m like listing all these to you, all of these slang words just mean something that intensifies the sentence it exists in. [says a word in Spanish] Which means “enormous barbecue.” And now I use [says a word in Spanish] again. I haven’t used it since, I don’t know, I had a night retainer. And I, I feel like these words are just rushing back to me because this household has become like a mini Venezuela. Right? Cause I don’t really interact with people other than my husband, who now has become inherently Venezuelan using all the words we do. Now, I’m in a world where, as we’ve talked about context earlier in our conversation, you don’t need context to explain what [says a word in Spanish] is or what [says a word in Spanish] is or what [says a word in Spanish] is. You don’t need- everyone understands what it means. So, all these words are coming out all of a sudden.
Patrick Cox: What about what you watch on TV or video or Netflix or whatever? Are you finding that you’re making different choices either alone or together?
Joanna Hausmann: I think that now there’s like the sense of community in this household. So, we have to choose things everyone likes. I just want to watch a crime doc. Like it’s not uplifting, but at least it isn’t about the sort of existential dread we’re feeling right now. I’m curious to hear what you consume too, because in times like these, things that reflect our reality, the things that we can watch tend to be comedy. The language of comedy has a way of breaking down the severity while making us feel like we’re unified against one enemy. Which is what satire is all about. But when it’s not comedy, when it doesn’t have that like, level of sweetness to it, like I don’t know if I can take this medicine right now. Do you know what I mean? Like?
Patrick Cox: Yeah, yeah.
Joanna Hausmann: There’s just something so wonderfully accessible about comedy during difficult times. But like drama or like a thriller about what we’re going through, that’s just something that I don’t think I can emotionally take.
Patrick Cox: Yeah, totally. Absolutely. I find when in doubt go to Borat.
Joanna Hausmann: Oh. Oh, yes. You know what? That is something that I used to imitate Borat my entire high school life. And people would get annoyed. Like, like my, my brother would be like, “Please stop, please, for the love of God, stop.” But I feel like if I started doing that now, people would find it charming and endearing.
Patrick Cox: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’d been thinking about it for the past week. It’s like, oh, it’s time to watch that for the eighteenth time. This would be the perfect moment.
Joanna Hausmann: It’s such escapism. It really is escapism.
Patrick Cox: So, what do you think? Is it too early to think about what you may be learning from this and, and what effect it might have on your own sort of sense of comedy and your audiences?
Joanna Hausmann: I actually, I’ve learned so much in a month. I’ve learned more than anything, it’s a quote that my friend said to me, which then I realized, I think Voltaire said originally and it’s been used by Lorne Michaels a million times. But there’s this quote, which is, “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” We’re living in a reality where our capacities of creating things that are perfect are so deeply limited. I, I don’t have a good camera here. My and my editing team is busy. I’ve got to make stuff with what I have. And, those limitations are weirdly incredible for creativity because the moment you can’t do it all, your creativity creates solutions that otherwise wouldn’t be there. And so, the saying, “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” has two lessons, which is, one, I’ve learned to be less precious about what I put out into the world. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t post that video that I shot on an iPhone or that weird front-facing video of my mom yelling at me a hundred times in Spanish. What am I doing as I go about my day? There is no reason not to upload it. And then simultaneously, I should be putting more limitations on myself after this is all over because limitations have truly helped me just create without the expectation of perfection.
Patrick Cox: Yeah, I can totally relate to that.
Joanna Hausmann: Yeah right?
Patrick Cox: I’m talking to you with a blanket over my head, with a loud food truck outside. I’m, I’m so far from perfection.
Joanna Hausmann: It’s so far from perfection and yet no one listening to this is gonna say, “I cannot believe he had a food truck outside his house.” I mean, like the level of disrespect. No one, no one’s gonna care if you know, there’s some p’s that pop. Like it, it’s the content and it’s, it’s that feeling of being all connected together that I think is the priority right now.
This episode of Subtitle was reported by Patrick Cox. The podcast version of the story is available here and on Apple podcasts.
Subtitle’s sound designer is Tina Tobey.
This episode was edited by Patrick Cox.
Thanks to our partners at the Linguistic Society of America, the Hub & Spoke audio collective and The World public radio program.
Subtitle is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.