2. 外语
  3. Humour is probably the hardest commodity to export. Jokes that make one country laugh out loud are likely to leave another natio

Humour is probably the hardest commodity to export. Jokes that make one country laugh out loud are likely to leave another natio

admin2010-01-15  46
问题      Humour is probably the hardest commodity to export. Jokes that make one country laugh out loud are likely to leave another nation confused and silent. But humour can also be very revealing, if not always funny. After all, jokes are often just another way of expressing anxieties, fears and even prejudices.
     In Britain, one of the most enduring types of humour is satire. This is the art of making fun of people in positions of power--politicians, celebrities and even royalty--in order to draw attention to their faults.
     While satire is not uniquely British, it does have a special appeal in Britain, and one of the best examples of this is the success of the satirical magazine Private Eye. This magazine has been poking fun at "the great and the good" in British public life for the last 35 years, and its victims admit to reading it and laughing with it.
     One of the magazine’s former contributors, Auberon Waugh, believes the "Eye" is successful because it repeats the best jokes over and over again. "You go back and make the same jokes with a new twist every time, so you are, by the end, talking a private language, and I think readers like that." He goes on to say that "Americans come to London and claim to enjoy Private Eye, yet they can’t understand a word of it."
     But it is not only Americans who have difficulties understanding the "Eye". Its esoteric sense of humour and sometimes oblique references to British news mean that only those people who closely follow the news benefit from the jokes. This is why the magazine has practically no buyers overseas even though each issue sells 180,000 copies in Britain.
     The editor of the "Eye", Ian Hislop, explains how they choose their targets. "Anybody who--in the words of a very old English satirist--is guilty of vice, folly or humbug. That’s them." The Royal Family is always a favourite target. One cartoon strip called "Liz" portrayed them as a rough, working class family from northern England.
     Over the years Private Eye has paid the price for criticising the powerful and has been successfully sued several times. Ian Hislop says there are still "ten or 12" libel writs outstanding. But some say the magazine is not as cutting or even as funny as it used to be. They say it is too incestuous, featuring too much gossip about journalists and not enough hard-hitting satire. So are Ian Hislop and his gang in danger of becoming part of the establishment they claim to expose?
By "victims" in Paragraph 3 the writer means ______.
选项 A、the readers of Private Eye
B、the powerful people satirized by Private Eye
C、the British public
D、the common people exploited by those in power
答案B
解析 第三段说Private Eye的讽刺对象是那些大人物，因此选B。
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