Summary

Trouble in Paradise is a dysfunctional sitcom set out to explore humor as a mechanism of coping with trauma, pain, and taboos in relation to the Nakba and the Israeli occupation, by posing three sets of jokes ranging from the classical misogynistic genre to anti-jokes and culturally specific humor; in order to examine why Nakba jokes never fully evolved as a genre and entered the Palestinian mainstream. The main protagonists of the film are the artist’s parents who do not speak English and read the jokes from transliterated title cards and have went through the Nakba (1948) and the Naksa (1967) and never shared their memories from these major events.