racism and dual reality

theres a concept in magic called dual reality, in which the audience sees one reality, and the participant in the trick sees another reality. for instance, this person might have selected a card from the magician an hour before the performance, and when he goes on stage the magician asks him to think of a card. he might give him a wink or a point but that person will generally think of the card that he merely picked an hour before. the audience, however, will believe that the spectator has merely thought of a card, which makes an effect that much stronger.

in any case, my korean friend brian got me this job delivering chinese food during the weeks (i AM supposedly working on this said magic career i think or i have heard), and i witnessed the following encounter which i felt was funny enough to share and use an example

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russian guy paying brian and about to leave:
"shay shay"

brian (korean)
"shay shay"                       (george is heard in background laughing)


russian guy
"oh, you speak mandarin?"

brian (looking quite shy not making eye contact)
"no"

russian guy
"oh you speak cantonese?"

brian
"no"

russian guy
"what language u speak?"

brian (who speaks some korean)
"i dont speak any language, just english"       george (in background) " hES LYING!!! hahahah"

russian guy (who doesnt notice)
"oh, well, haha, ok bye"
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theres a similar type of dual reality going on here in terms of what the audience sees, and what
is actually going on in a situation.

for brian and myself, there is a dual reality of both of us knowing one truth, that he actually can speak korean and is just so goddAMn tired of having dese conversations w/ white ppl, that he preferred just to say he cant speak any language at all, and me poking fun at the situation without the russian guy actually knowing.

for the russian guy, brian was just some american chinese kid who knew how to say shay shay and was working in a chinese restaurant for his dad or some other reason that entails all chinese ppl working at all chinese restaurants.

the humor here lies in the fact that we both have knowledge that one person doesn't have. it seems that keeping secrets elicits joy and a sort of excitability that tends to make people laugh. if you know someones going to get shocked getting a stick of gum, when they finally pull one out and get shocked, youre probably going to laugh. in fact, you're actually already laughing on the inside in preparation for laughing out loud at the big reveal. this is an interesting thing that humans do (that im not sure other animals do); we have the ability to contain our own laughter when we know a better time to laugh later will come. this seems to do a lot with our ability to think without speaking aloud, and our intellectual capacity to inherently understand when a situation is funny or not.

im not sure if there is a difference between guttural, uncontrollable laughter and intellectually stimulated (and able to be controlled) laughter, but it's an interesting topic that im sure ill delve into in future posts