Yakov Smirnoff
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| Yakov Smirnoff | |
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| Born | Yakov Naumovich Pokhis 24 January 1951 Odessa, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union |
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Yakov Naumovich Pokhis (Russian: Яков Наумович Похис; born 24 January 1951), better known as Yakov Smirnoff, is a Ukrainian-born American comedian, painter and psychology professor. He was popular in the 1980s for comedy performances in which he used irony and word play to contrast life under the Communist regime in his native Soviet Union with life in the United States, delivered in heavily accented English. Yakov has a theatre in Branson, MO, where he performs year-round. Yakov is also a professor at Missouri State and Drury universities where he teaches The Business of Laughter.
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[edit] Life
Smirnoff was born to a Jewish family in Odessa, Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. He was an art teacher in Odessa and continues to paint. He came to the U.S. in 1977 and became an American citizen on 4 July 1986. Smirnoff spent a portion of his early days in the United States working as a bartender at Grossingers Hotel in the Catskill Mountains of New York and living in the employee dormitory.
He was a roommate of comedian Andrew Dice Clay and has appeared in several motion pictures, including Buckaroo Banzai and The Money Pit. Among his numerous appearances on television, he was featured many times on the sitcom Night Court as "Yakov Korolenko". At the peak of his success, he also had a starring role in a 1986-87 television sitcom titled What a Country. In that show, he played a Russian cab driver studying for the U.S. citizenship test. In the late 1980s, Smirnoff was commissioned to provide educational bumper segments for Saturday morning cartoons, punctuated with a joke and Smirnoff's signature laugh. Since 1993, he has been a fixture in Branson, Missouri. He has continued to amass accomplishments including books, CDs, movies, T.V. appearances, a successful Broadway show, As Long As We Both Shall Laugh, and is currently working on a humorous self-help book.
Yakov is a featured writer for AARP magazine, the world’s largest circulation magazine with a distribution of 39 million. Yakov gives readers advice (and a few laughs) in his column entitled “Happily Ever Laughter”. He also guests at the Skinny Improv in Springfield, Missouri on occasion. In May 2006, Smirnoff received a master's degree in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught classes at Drury University along with Missouri State University on this topic.
Yakov is developing a new talk show that is based on the important role that laughter plays in healthy relationships. The show will offer enlightenment gift-wrapped in laughter. Yakov calls it enlaughter-ment. Yakov envisioned the concept for the television show nearly ten years ago and has been developing the pilot for about two years.
[edit] Comedy style
The largest part of the humour of Yakov Smirnoff falls into two wide categories:
[edit] "America: What a country!"
- Misunderstanding of American life and custom through the eyes of a new immigrant. For instance:
- Reading employment announcements of "Part-Time Woman Wanted": "What a country! Even transvestites can get work."
- Upon being offered work as a barman on a "graveyard shift," he remarks “A bar in a cemetery! What a country! Last call? During Happy Hour the place must be dead."[1]
- At the grocery store: "Powdered milk, powdered eggs, baby powder . . . what a country!"
- At the grocery store after finding "New Freedom" Maxi Pads: "Freedom in a box! What a country!"
- "The first time I went to a restaurant, they asked me 'How many in your party?' and I said 'Six hundred million'."
- Bizarre comparisons between the U.S. and Russia.
- "We have no gay people in Russia—there are homosexuals but they are not allowed to be gay about it. The punishment is seven years locked in prison with other men and there is a three-year waiting list for that."[2]
He once told Johnny Carson, "You have such nice things in the U.S.—like warning shots!"[3]
[edit] Russian reversal (“In Soviet Russia article reads you“)
Russian reversal or "In Soviet Russia" is a type of joke originated by Arte Johnson[citation needed] on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, and popularized by Smirnoff, and is an example of antimetabole. The general form of the "In Soviet Russia" joke is that the subject and objects of a statement are reversed, and "In (Soviet) Russia", or something equivalent, is added. For example:
In The Simpsons, as well as Episode #216 of Family Guy, There's Something About Paulie, Peter gets a car with different voices for the navigation system. The voice for Smirnoff in the navigation system says a few phrases:
- In Soviet Russia, car drives you!
- Turn right at fork in road.
- In Soviet Russia, road forks you!
In Season 6, Episode 9 of King of the Hill, Bobby, who wishes to be a comedian, watches Smirnoff (who voices himself in the episode) and writes a joke which he sells to Smirnoff:
- In America, you put 'In God We Trust' on your money.
- In Russia, we have no money!
All of Smirnoff's original "In Soviet Russia" jokes made use of formulaic wordplay that carried Orwellian undertones. For example, two well known jokes of this type run "In America, you listen to man on radio. In Soviet Russia, man on radio listen to you!", and "In America, you watch television. In Soviet Russia, television watches you!" The joke alludes to video screens that both reproduce images and monitor the citizenry, as in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
At the peak of Smirnoff's celebrity in the mid-1980s, he did not say "Soviet Russia"—he said simply "Russia", as the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic had existed since 1917, was still extant, and showed no signs of imminent collapse. Smirnoff added the Soviet qualifier after the fall of the USSR, long after his fame had faded, presumably to specify that he was referring to the communist regime and not the present state.
The joke form has become a staple of Smirnoff's humor, and is widely referenced in television parodies and references as well as many on-line communities. The widespread reference to the jokes has led some linguists to consider the phrases to be Snowclones.[4]
[edit] 9/11 mural
Smirnoff is also a painter and has frequently featured the Statue of Liberty in his art since receiving his U.S. citizenship.
On the night of the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks he started a painting inspired by his feelings about the event, based on an image of the Statue of Liberty. Just prior to the first anniversary of the attacks, he paid US$100,000 for his painting to be transformed into a large mural. Its dimensions were 200 feet by 135 feet (61 m by 41 m).
The mural, titled "America's Heart",[5] is a pointillist-style piece, with one brush-stroke for each victim of the attacks. Sixty volunteers from the Sheet Metal Workers Union erected the mural on a damaged skyscraper overlooking the ruins of the World Trade Center. The mural remained there until November 2003, when it was removed because of storm damage. Various pieces of the mural can now be seen on display at his theater in Branson, Missouri.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Yakov Smirnoff : Comedian Profile
- ^ America on Six Rubles a Day; ISBN 978-0394755236 Smirnoff, Yakov; 1987.
- ^ firstamendmentcenter.org: About
- ^ Language Log: In Soviet Russia, snowclones overuse you
- ^ http://www.yakov.com/images/GAmericasHeartB.jpg
