My biggest problem with ethnic humor is not that it is offensive, but rather that quite often it just isn't funny. I tend to have a knee-jerk aversion to both speech codes and political correctness, but that doesn't mean I like ethnic or racial humor. It seems to me that whether intentionally or not, the genre most commonly works to inculcate or perpetuate stereotypes--many of which are bound to the specific cultures, times, or cultural misconceptions from which they spawned. As time capsules they seem relevant--testimonies to the latent or manifest racial tensions or ethnic hostilities of the day. Nevertheless, from the Polish jokes of the early American twentieth century to the Dave Chappelle Show (R.I.P.), ethnic jokes are a legitimate and longstanding form of comedy, and perhaps the darkest of all genres if we scrape beneath their surface and examine their function.
At their most innocuous level, ethnic jokes assert the real differences between cultures in reductive but not necessarily illustrative ways. When they arise from a heterogeneous multicultural environment--think, for example, of the crowded tenement houses of Manhattan's Lower East Side of the early twentieth century from which so much of American Vaudeville and humor originated--they might actually have the ability to unify differing cultural groups through the humor of shared experience. In contrast, when this sort of humor originates in a more homogenous and isolated setting and as a consequence is based in ignorance, misconceptions might be propagated that result in further dividing seemingly disparate groups.
Not to be overly meta, but here is my joke, which is drawn from Asa Berger's book, Anatomy of Humor (1993):
Q: How does every ethnic joke start?
A: With a look over your shoulder.
In considering ethnic humor, the identity of both audience and speaker must be considered in order to fully realize the joke's work. Is the speaker an insider addressing other insiders--as for example the racial humor of Dave Chappelle that addresses a largely black audience--or is that humor utilized by insiders against outsiders, which defines bigotry rather than humor. Don Rickles is largely thought of as the master of insult comedy. Rickles wields racial, ethnic, and sexual stereotypes against all and for the benefit of all. He embraces the persona of the loveable albeit curmudgeonly bigoted uncle, but perhaps because he laughs at everyone equally (including himself) and utilizes an incessant and rapid-fire approach to insult humor, his performances seem to be beyond reproach. But what if Rickles' jokes only derided one group? Might that change how he is perceived?
This week, I ask that you submit an ethnic, racial, or cultural joke. As you do, ask yourself who the subject/object is and how the joke proceeds from that relationship. Ethnic jokes circle the wagons, demarcating who is in and who is out of a given social group. Decide who is the "in-group" or audience of the joke and who is in the "out-group" and add a sentence to your post as a comment answering those questions.
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Off to the Gallows...
In the book, Comedy after Postmodernism: Rereading Comedy from Edward Lear
to Charles Willeford (2001), Kirby Olsen attempts to articulate the rapport between the
genre of comedy and Postmodernism. Olsen explains
Comedy by definition requires stable referents, norms against which behaviors may be deemed humorous. In the absence
of such norms, it is impossible to define comedy. Some comics responded by
becoming metacomedians whose performances took the
impossibility of being a comedian in the postmodern world as their subject. (107)
Olsen's thesis that comedy is not longer able to be defined in the Postmodern moment due
to the destabilization of norms and normal modes of signification is an important one to
which novels like Joseph Heller's Catch-22 are a testament. A war novel without a clear
moral compass, bedlam (one of the text's most frequently used terms) becomes the new
norm, both to the readers delight and horror. In Catch-22 deconstructs established mores
and leaves ambiguity in its stead. "Insanity is contagious" (22) and during a war, everyone is
insane. But I do not think that Catch-22's humor is as much inane as hopeless. Its zaniness
is rooted in despair when confronting an existential lack of meaning, much like the complex
absurdity of Kafka's laws and insurmountable bureaucracies.
Gallows Humor is a variation of black humor (not the ethnic "Black humor" of Tyler Perry
or the Brothers Wayans) which strengthens the morale of the oppressed person even while
he or she is confronted by an insurmountable or dire situation. A good example of this kind
of humor might be the dubious last words of Oscar Wilde who reportedly asserted from his
deathbed "either those curtains go or I do."Here is an example from a page that I have
found indispensable to my understanding of Gallows Humor which provides a panoply of
examples from all
varieties of media, http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GallowsHumor.
This joke involves two German soldiers near the close of WWII:
Eins: I was thinking, after the war ends I will go for a walk around the perimeter of the
Greater German Empire.
Zwei: Oh? And what are you planning to do in the afternoon?
Told by Germans faced with the inevitable fall of the Reich the tellers would confront the
ineluctability of an undesirable socio-political situation with humor; however, if told by an
American the joke becomes an example of Aristotle's "Inferiority Theory" of humor in which
humor is used to deride the other.
Anyway, for this week, please post an example of "Gallows Humor" in which the joke reveals
a hopeless, morbid, or otherwise undeniable truth.
Thursday, February 11, 2016
"The Second Oldest Profession": Political Humor
Ronald Reagan supposedly once remarked, "It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first." The "first" oldest profession is generally understood to be prostitution and when compared to politics, at least from a moral perspective, one might make the argument that this assertion amounts to an insult against prostitution rather than the inverse. The amount of subterfuge employed by politicians is legendary, and deception for political or personal gain seems the defining characteristic of even the most ostensibly well-motivated politicians.
Political humor is universal in so far as it concerns the polis (Greek for "city," or "state") of which all individuals within a given system in one way or another form a part. Political humor depicts the polis' paradoxical stake in and as well as powerlessness against the secret machinations of their respective political systems. Political humor's unique and frequently transgressive point of critique allows political parties, ruling elites, or even impenetrable bureaucracy to be attacked through a pithy turn of phrase, and this offensive might be waged from any end of the political spectrums. [N.B. I write "spectrums" here in reference to the Nolan Chart (https://www.nolanchart.com/survey-php) which features four axes: "Right" and "Left" but also "Authoritarian" and "Libertarian."] To revisit the Mel Brooks quote with which we began the semester, "Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because
Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with
comedy, they stand no chance." If rhetoric is the art of spinning an untruth to appear veridical,
perhaps comedy's power is the art of disguising the truth as an entertaining lie.
In the U.S. we are currently embroiled in an election year (and from my own perspective a very
depressing one at that). The upside of the rather dismal political reality is that we are constantly
bombarded with many hilarious examples of political humor. One bit that received a good deal of
coverage was Larry David's masterful depiction of Bernie Sanders on Saturday Night
Live in October of 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfmwGAd1L-o
From a political perspective, Saturday Night Live received some flack from the media as well as
Bernie supporters for seemingly delegitimizing the Sanders' campaign through the skit's writing,
while the majority of viewers simply found the bit to be an entertaining and accurate impression of
the Democratic candidate. Memes have also been particularly perspicacious and witty this campaign
season, including the following particularly scathing one that went viral on Facebook a few weeks
ago (Confession: in my own anti-Trump fervor, I even shared this one on my Facebook
wall): "Donald Dump"
This week, I would like you to post an example of political humor. It may be a joke, a meme, a bit, or anything else that may have caught your attention. What does it reveal about the broader but more understated political discourse with which it takes part?
Lastly, I offer a long list of succinct, often humorous but not always accurate illustrations of various political and economic systems using cows as an extended example of more traditional political "jokes" (these were all taken from Daniel Kurtzman at About.com http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/jokes/bljokecowspolitics.htm). A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRAT: You have two cows. You keep one and give one to your neighbor. A SOCIALIST: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor. AN AMERICAN REPUBLICAN: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So what? AN AMERICAN DEMOCRAT: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. You vote people into office who tax your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay the tax. The people you voted for then take the tax money and buy a cow and give it to your neighbor. You feel righteous. A COMMUNIST: You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. A FASCIST: You have two cows. The government seizes both and sells you the milk. You join the underground and start a campaign of sabotage. DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government. CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows. BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, then pours the milk down the drain. AN AMERICAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when the cow drops dead. A FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows. A JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create clever cow cartoon images called Cowkimon and market them World-Wide. A GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves. A BRITISH CORPORATION: You have two cows. They are mad. They die. Pass the shepherd's pie, please. AN ITALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You break for lunch. A RUSSIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka. A SWISS CORPORATION: You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them. A BRAZILIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You enter into a partnership with an American corporation. Soon you have 1000 cows and the American corporation declares bankruptcy. AN INDIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You worship both of them. A CHINESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported on them. AN ISRAELI CORPORATION: There are these two Jewish cows, right? They open a milk factory, an ice cream store, and then sell the movie rights. They send their calves to Harvard to become doctors. So, who needs people? AN ARKANSAS CORPORATION: You have two cows. That one on the left is kinda cute.
Political humor is universal in so far as it concerns the polis (Greek for "city," or "state") of which all individuals within a given system in one way or another form a part. Political humor depicts the polis' paradoxical stake in and as well as powerlessness against the secret machinations of their respective political systems. Political humor's unique and frequently transgressive point of critique allows political parties, ruling elites, or even impenetrable bureaucracy to be attacked through a pithy turn of phrase, and this offensive might be waged from any end of the political spectrums. [N.B. I write "spectrums" here in reference to the Nolan Chart (https://www.nolanchart.com/survey-php) which features four axes: "Right" and "Left" but also "Authoritarian" and "Libertarian."] To revisit the Mel Brooks quote with which we began the semester, "Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because
Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with
comedy, they stand no chance." If rhetoric is the art of spinning an untruth to appear veridical,
perhaps comedy's power is the art of disguising the truth as an entertaining lie.
In the U.S. we are currently embroiled in an election year (and from my own perspective a very
depressing one at that). The upside of the rather dismal political reality is that we are constantly
bombarded with many hilarious examples of political humor. One bit that received a good deal of
coverage was Larry David's masterful depiction of Bernie Sanders on Saturday Night
Live in October of 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfmwGAd1L-o
From a political perspective, Saturday Night Live received some flack from the media as well as
Bernie supporters for seemingly delegitimizing the Sanders' campaign through the skit's writing,
while the majority of viewers simply found the bit to be an entertaining and accurate impression of
the Democratic candidate. Memes have also been particularly perspicacious and witty this campaign
season, including the following particularly scathing one that went viral on Facebook a few weeks
ago (Confession: in my own anti-Trump fervor, I even shared this one on my Facebook
wall): "Donald Dump"
This week, I would like you to post an example of political humor. It may be a joke, a meme, a bit, or anything else that may have caught your attention. What does it reveal about the broader but more understated political discourse with which it takes part?
Lastly, I offer a long list of succinct, often humorous but not always accurate illustrations of various political and economic systems using cows as an extended example of more traditional political "jokes" (these were all taken from Daniel Kurtzman at About.com http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/jokes/bljokecowspolitics.htm). A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRAT: You have two cows. You keep one and give one to your neighbor. A SOCIALIST: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor. AN AMERICAN REPUBLICAN: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So what? AN AMERICAN DEMOCRAT: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. You vote people into office who tax your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay the tax. The people you voted for then take the tax money and buy a cow and give it to your neighbor. You feel righteous. A COMMUNIST: You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. A FASCIST: You have two cows. The government seizes both and sells you the milk. You join the underground and start a campaign of sabotage. DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government. CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows. BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, then pours the milk down the drain. AN AMERICAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when the cow drops dead. A FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows. A JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create clever cow cartoon images called Cowkimon and market them World-Wide. A GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves. A BRITISH CORPORATION: You have two cows. They are mad. They die. Pass the shepherd's pie, please. AN ITALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You break for lunch. A RUSSIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka. A SWISS CORPORATION: You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them. A BRAZILIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You enter into a partnership with an American corporation. Soon you have 1000 cows and the American corporation declares bankruptcy. AN INDIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You worship both of them. A CHINESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported on them. AN ISRAELI CORPORATION: There are these two Jewish cows, right? They open a milk factory, an ice cream store, and then sell the movie rights. They send their calves to Harvard to become doctors. So, who needs people? AN ARKANSAS CORPORATION: You have two cows. That one on the left is kinda cute.
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Toilet or Scatological Humor
On the one hand, toilet or scatological humor is ostensibly that genre of comedy with the most stigma: In polite society one must refrain from even mentioning bodily functions, let alone performing the communicative act of joking about them. On the other hand and rather paradoxically, scatological humor is that brand of comedy that figures most prominently into many of the most revered works of the literary canon. From the Greek playwright Aristophanes to Chaucer to Rabelais to Shakespeare to Rowan Atkinson's persona, Mr. Bean, the fart joke seems a stinkily ascendant art form.
Despite their ubiquity, I am not sure that I have ever found toilet humor very funny, but as the father of a young child, my understanding of the genre has broadened. Scatological humor allows us to chuckle about something taboo, and perhaps in this case Lord Shaftesbury's "Relief Theory" of humor seems the most compelling understanding of how the joke functions. The theory was later adapted by better known thinkers like Sigmund Freud and the American philosopher John Dewey. The "Relief Theory" of humor suggests that when we laugh, laughter releases nervous energy that had otherwise been applied toward repressing certain psychical mechanisms. (From Freud's perspective this made the world of comedy akin to that of the world of dreams as in these two seemingly liminal spaces repressive mechanisms lost their hold; for more, see his intriguing and thoroughly readable Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious [1907].) Thus, when I joke by even saying the "potty word" of "poop" with my four-year-old daughter, perhaps we both laugh because of the seemingly transgressive nature of the word. She is not allowed to use it at school for one reason or another because it is taboo, but as her mother and I explain to her, at home only the context renders it taboo. If we are eating dinner together, "poop" should most certainly not be mentioned; however, at any other time the saying of the word (within moderation!) is fair game.
Louis C.K. explains to Jon Stewart why fart jokes are funny [Louis C.K.: "You don't have to be smart to laugh at farts, but you have to be stupid not to."]
As the great Roman playwright Terence (185-149 BCE) famously wrote in his play, Heauton Timorumenos, "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto," or "I am human, and nothing human is alien to me." If humor bridges the gap between human experience and our collective fears about the human condition, then any subject matter that we encounter seems within the domain of the joke.
This week I would like you to share your favorite examples of scatological humor. The jokes can be as offensive or harmless as your stomach (or bowels) can handle, as long as they pertain to the more disgusting, corporeal aspects of human experience, i.e. peeing, pooping, puking, et al. I also request that we hold off on sex jokes this time around, but do not worry, their time will come (pun VERY much intended!!!).
Q: Why don't you fart in church?
A: Because you have to sit in your pew.
Despite their ubiquity, I am not sure that I have ever found toilet humor very funny, but as the father of a young child, my understanding of the genre has broadened. Scatological humor allows us to chuckle about something taboo, and perhaps in this case Lord Shaftesbury's "Relief Theory" of humor seems the most compelling understanding of how the joke functions. The theory was later adapted by better known thinkers like Sigmund Freud and the American philosopher John Dewey. The "Relief Theory" of humor suggests that when we laugh, laughter releases nervous energy that had otherwise been applied toward repressing certain psychical mechanisms. (From Freud's perspective this made the world of comedy akin to that of the world of dreams as in these two seemingly liminal spaces repressive mechanisms lost their hold; for more, see his intriguing and thoroughly readable Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious [1907].) Thus, when I joke by even saying the "potty word" of "poop" with my four-year-old daughter, perhaps we both laugh because of the seemingly transgressive nature of the word. She is not allowed to use it at school for one reason or another because it is taboo, but as her mother and I explain to her, at home only the context renders it taboo. If we are eating dinner together, "poop" should most certainly not be mentioned; however, at any other time the saying of the word (within moderation!) is fair game.
Louis C.K. explains to Jon Stewart why fart jokes are funny [Louis C.K.: "You don't have to be smart to laugh at farts, but you have to be stupid not to."]
As the great Roman playwright Terence (185-149 BCE) famously wrote in his play, Heauton Timorumenos, "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto," or "I am human, and nothing human is alien to me." If humor bridges the gap between human experience and our collective fears about the human condition, then any subject matter that we encounter seems within the domain of the joke.
This week I would like you to share your favorite examples of scatological humor. The jokes can be as offensive or harmless as your stomach (or bowels) can handle, as long as they pertain to the more disgusting, corporeal aspects of human experience, i.e. peeing, pooping, puking, et al. I also request that we hold off on sex jokes this time around, but do not worry, their time will come (pun VERY much intended!!!).
Q: Why don't you fart in church?
A: Because you have to sit in your pew.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Your Favorite Joke
Do you have a favorite joke? If so, why is it your favorite joke (yes, I know that explaining why a joke is funny has to be the least funny human activity, but humor me...pun intended)? Do you have it memorized, is it a comedian's signature bit, or did you learn it from a parent or a friend?
For my part, I do not have a relationship with any joke in particular as the humor that most appeals to me often lacks a referent and it seems that such a degree of absurdity does not conform well to the tightly-constructed genre of the joke. What do remain for me are comedic memories of individual bits from sketch comedy, which frankly tends to be my favorite genre of humor.
In the late 1990's (damn it, I am dating myself with this one...) when MTV was still generally quite cool and had a panoply of interesting programming, there was a sketch comedy show called The State. This was the heyday of the sketch comedy troupe and The State began as the comedy troupe of a bunch of NYU students and their friends (including producers David Wain and Michael Showalter who have subsequently become machers in the entertainment industry). There was a recurring bit called, "Old Fashioned Guy" in which a Southern gentleman in a seersucker suit (played masterfully by Thomas Lennon of Reno 911) would state, "Call me old fashioned, but I..." and continue by sharing something absolutely non sequitur. Here is an example:
Old-Fashioned Guy
I am not sure why this bit has stuck with me. Watching it again many years later, I hardly chuckled, and there have been so many things that have certainly made me laugh much more for altogether different reasons, but perhaps I didn't laugh this time because I knew what to expect. Perhaps it was the paraprosdokian or "unexpected quality" of the humor that made me laugh as an adolescent. Now that I know what to expect, "Old-Fashioned Guy" has simply become a delicious bit of nostalgia.
In any case, if you do have a favorite joke or bit, please post it here and if possible try to articulate why it is your favorite.
For my part, I do not have a relationship with any joke in particular as the humor that most appeals to me often lacks a referent and it seems that such a degree of absurdity does not conform well to the tightly-constructed genre of the joke. What do remain for me are comedic memories of individual bits from sketch comedy, which frankly tends to be my favorite genre of humor.
In the late 1990's (damn it, I am dating myself with this one...) when MTV was still generally quite cool and had a panoply of interesting programming, there was a sketch comedy show called The State. This was the heyday of the sketch comedy troupe and The State began as the comedy troupe of a bunch of NYU students and their friends (including producers David Wain and Michael Showalter who have subsequently become machers in the entertainment industry). There was a recurring bit called, "Old Fashioned Guy" in which a Southern gentleman in a seersucker suit (played masterfully by Thomas Lennon of Reno 911) would state, "Call me old fashioned, but I..." and continue by sharing something absolutely non sequitur. Here is an example:
Old-Fashioned Guy
I am not sure why this bit has stuck with me. Watching it again many years later, I hardly chuckled, and there have been so many things that have certainly made me laugh much more for altogether different reasons, but perhaps I didn't laugh this time because I knew what to expect. Perhaps it was the paraprosdokian or "unexpected quality" of the humor that made me laugh as an adolescent. Now that I know what to expect, "Old-Fashioned Guy" has simply become a delicious bit of nostalgia.
In any case, if you do have a favorite joke or bit, please post it here and if possible try to articulate why it is your favorite.
Friday, October 19, 2012
The Tour of the Absurd
While many of the jokes that have found their way to this archive could be rationalized (i.e. we could even if heavy-handedly, explicate why they are funny), the focus of our jokes this week will be those that are completely absurd and whose humor defies logic. I begin with one that I heard years ago from my wife:
Boy: Daddy, I want a cookie!
Father: No hands, no cookie.
Boy: Daddy, I want a cookie!
Father: No hands, no cookie.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Animal Farm...
From one of my favorite comics, Mitch Hedburg, on the differences between frogs and bears:
"I like to talk about the differences between frogs and bears. When there’s a frog around I don’t have to hang my sandwiches from a branch. A frog knows they are for me. He’d rather have a fly, ‘cause a fly zigzags and my sandwiches do not. Unless I go like this. When I want some honey on some toast I don’t have to squeeze a plastic frog.” -Mitch Hedberg
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