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Monday, November 28, 2022

Do you really think that's funny?

 


Wait. First let’s agree on a definition of joke.  Merriam-Webster says a joke is “something said or done to provoke laughter, especially, a brief oral narrative with a climactic, humorous twist.”

Cambridge says a joke is “something, such as a funny story or trick, that is said or done in order to make people laugh.”

Well, both definitions are a bit broad for my purposes. Let’s say a joke is a very short story with a surprise ending at which people are meant to laugh. That fits inside both definitions, and I’d like to stick with the verbal joke for now, although pranks often elicit laughter just like a “A priest, a rabbi and a minister walk into a bar” short story joke.  (I’m so naïve; I recently had to ask a high school student what he meant when he said that students “pranked” a teacher.  Prank has a verb form??  Who knew?)

(I could stop here and ponder what happens physically when we laugh, or why certain utterances precipitate that odd laughter phenomenon, but I won’t …  well, except to say that laughter, like a good fart, seems to be therapeutic, physically and psychologically, and so the creator didn’t ponder long before deciding that mankind would be better off with these …  what, capabilities?  As we all know, farting and laughing each have the unique ability to trigger the other. An evolutionary bonus!)

But back to the joke.

(I just noted that my editing-help software underlined fart and farting to warn me that, “This language may be offensive to your reader.”  If that is your reaction, please read the words as flatulence and flatulating.  Editing-help software seems to feel you won’t be offended by this nomenclature for the release of gas through the nether channel. This is possibly a joke but would likely rate only a 2.5/10 on the United Nation’s Joke Funniness Scale (JFS).

I will be using the JFS throughout.

Again: Let's get back to the joke.

One species of joke is the pun, a very mild verbal irony such as, “When is a door not a door?”  and the answer, “When it’s ajar.”  Puns seldom reach higher than 2/10 on the JFS, unless they reach a more complex level of the ironical as in “I wondered why the frisbee looked bigger and bigger as it approached, and then it hit me,” in which the “it hit me” idiomatic expression must be appreciated for the verbal irony to register.  I would give this pun a rare 4.2/10 on the JFS.

Puns are sometimes characterized as children’s jokes, but then, children need to laugh too, don’t they?

The English language has characteristics that make it a smorgasbord of pun possibilities.  So many words share a sound with other words, for instance, that puns come far too easily.  The Biblical "Balaam’s Ass" is a case in point.  Not that puns don’t exist in other languages: a German cartoon has a hiker sitting under a road sign announcing Essen, eating a sandwich.

At a higher level on the JFS scale are the situational ironies, where the hearer is led (often at great length) down a path that has to take him/her/their self to a certain ending … and then finds him/her/their self in a completely unexpected place. I give the following joke a 7/10:

A Priest, a minister and a rabbit walk into a bar and seat themselves on bar stools. The waiter asks, “So what brings you out here on a cold and rainy winter’s evening, to which the priest replies, “I’ve been hearing confessions for hours and I needed a break.” The minister offers, “I’ve been working for days on a sermon I just can’t get right, so I came here for a much-needed break.”  The bartender says, “And you, Mr. Rabbit. Why are you here?” to which the rabbit replies, “Spellcheck.”

I’ve rated this joke high on the scale because fancying myself a pretty smart, above average knowledgeable, sophisticated guy, I got it right away, while assuming that a mass of others would need to have it explained. That makes me arrogant and self-absorbed and possibly delusional, but the arrogant, self-absorbed, delusional population also need to laugh, don’t they?

Situational ironies tickle our funny bones, but they sometimes (or often?) include a sizeable bit of the banana peel syndrome, which is the sadistic laughter arising from relief, relief that the person slipping and falling after stepping on a banana peel may well be hurt, but the injury and humiliation is not being suffered by us. It’s what allows us a chuckle when a man with dementia puts his underwear on over his pants.  We might well say that anyone laughing at such a consequence of one of mankind’s most debilitating afflictions is an as**ole and a misogynist.  On the other hand, we all know that our laugh-centres are triggered by situational irony like a teenaged boy’s erection is triggered by, well, by a limitless banquet of suggestive thoughts and imaginations ... and peeking.  

You can hurt yourself by suppressing laughter—even when aroused by misogyny. [i]

The banana peel joke has a more sinister side. It lends itself to disguising either self-loathing or self-aggrandizing by making others the victims of the banana-peel or the underwear-over-pants populations, usually casting ethnic, class, or religious groups as subjects of such short-story jokes. The more people I’ve implicated in the underwear-over-pants group, and the clearer the distinctions between me and them, the better.

The self-imprecating, banana peel joke says, “My people have got some idiosyncrasies, but look what good sports we are about it.”  As a misogynistic put-down, “The Polish man built the roof of his house first so he wouldn’t get rained on while putting up the rest of the house,” has the necessary irony of a reasonable joke, but the added ethnic tag is only necessary if the teller has a need to gain self-esteem by a comparison to certain others.  It’s the strategy of appearing taller by standing next to a short person.

Monty Python’s Flying Circus used to take situational-irony jokes to the level of absurdity. I remember laughing like a hyena at their antics while my wife sitting beside me was cracking not so much as a hint of a smile. “That’s not funny, that’s just stupid.”  It’s not that she’s without a sense of humour, it’s just that we don’t necessarily find the same situations funny.  We talk about “English humour,” or “Cree humour,” and people who’ve experienced those cultures know what we mean … sort of. What we laugh at says something about us that could be telling.  I imagine an aptitude test for the purpose of a job interview that would consist of ten jokes that the applicant would rate on the JFS scale, and which would yield a composite score resulting in, “You’re exactly the person we’re looking for,” or its opposite. [ii]

A branch of joke telling especially dear to those who make a living in what we call comedy, is satire.  Broadly speaking, satire points out flaws in institutions or persons using the basic format of the situational-irony joke. The irony may also be contained in sarcasm, the taking down of a person or institution with a deprecatory joke.  “In order to be recognized, a woman must do her job twice as well as a man. Fortunately, this is not hard.”  This is sarcastic satire; the institution being brought down a peg is maleness.  The sarcasm lies in the irony of the last phrase: one expects, “... so women must work hard,” when the opposite forms the gotcha punch line.

               “Mr. Churchill, you are drunk!”

               “I know ma’am, and you are ugly. Thing is, in the morning I’ll be sober!”

This epithet attributed to Winston Churchill (misquoted a bit here) can rightly be called sarcastic, but it’s not satire.  Had an observer noted that, “Miss Farley, MP, addressed the prime minister in slanderous terms, but expressed her gratitude later for the fact that her misguided diatribe was not heard by him owing to his inebriated snoring,” that would have qualified as sarcastic satirical comedy.

Writing good comedy, creating a memorable joke are not easy assignments.  In part, that’s probably related most closely to the fact that there aren’t any original options evident.  Every short story—and that includes every joke—is founded on human behaviour and as the preacher in Ecclesiastes says: “What has been, will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9, NIV) Indeed, a joke that is a “new thing” and not just another, slightly different way of telling an old joke, is rare.  Of course, the spellcheck joke above had to wait for the computer to emerge, but if your story joke involves a human misunderstanding of a concept and doing or saying the exact opposite of whatever is accepted as normal is the result, well then you have the forever core of what tickles our funny bones: a verbal or situational irony.

I grew up in a home where jokes were valued, at least if they were “clean jokes.”  Dirty meant sexual, blasphemous or unchristian, a vast field of prohibitions that would have effectively gagged almost any stand-up comic doing the circuits these days.  I would, for instance, never have dreamed of telling my mother this joke:

Mother Superior arrives at the Pearly Gates and St. Peter challenges her with a skill testing question before allowing her to pass through.

   “What was the first thing Eve said when she saw Adam?”

   Puzzled, the Mother Superior responds, “Wow! That’s a hard one!”

   And St. Peter says, “Good answer. Enter into your eternal reward.”

We boys, of course, repeated dirty jokes all the time, hoping to chip away, no doubt, at the shell containing us with our pooled ignorance and undefined longings. Someone must have made the connection among “dirty” jokes, deathbed and black humour, sarcasm and satire with the literal fears that haunt us every day.  I’d call it our “whistling through the graveyard” response. Perhaps, even, it’s fear that is the thread tugging on our funny bones. [iii]

A friend has said more than once that she laughed so hard, she peed her pants. In our family (as, no doubt, in any functioning family) laughter has been known to be so spontaneous and infectious that it’s called a laughing fit.  Laughter feels good, next only to singing in its therapeutic benefits. Or maybe, it’s the other way ‘round.

I wish that every parliamentary session, every sermon, every chapter of the Bible, every school day, every birthday celebration and funeral, every newscast would end with a rousing belly laugh.  Since March 2020, we’ve been suffering through a laughter famine. Enough already!



Finally, I’ve translated an item from a German website headed “Deutsche Witze,” (German Jokes) Rate it on the JFS scale, identify the irony, think about the ethnic content, whatever you like. Any sarcasm, satire here?

A native German drives into a gas station. He notices that some of the numerous attendants are wearing green and some blue overalls. “Why is everyone walking around in either green or blue overalls?” the German native asks the owner.

“Well, the ones in green are Czechs. They’re so stupid I have to label them.” He walks up to one in green and says, “Hey go home and see if you’re there!” The Czech jumps on his moped and drives home.

The German citizen says, “Wow! He really is stupid. He could so easily have phoned!”


[i] I decided to do some research on this latter point, then changed my mind.

[ii] I decided to do some research on this latter point, then changed my mind.

[iii] I decided to do some research on this latter point, then changed my mind.




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