weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) (02/14/86)
This article contains analyses of rape/black/Jew/shuttle/gay/handicap/ethnic
jokes. Of course, no offense is meant anywhere. Strong language pops in now
and then, unrotated. Joke punchlines are rotated, since most of them are all
so hoary.
(Actually I think these disclaimers before discussions are stupid. In
discussing an xxx-bashing incident, as opposed to a mere joke, no one
believes for a minute that the speaker secretly condones the violence.
Sure, I really do enjoy nasty jokes at someone else's expense, but it's
not because I condone or enjoy the nastiness. That's the raison d'etre
of this posting! I wish the assumption that everyone out there is intel-
ligent and mature [like me!] were based on something.
(I object to the smiley face convention by the way. They do not allow for
true sarcasm, and usually are used when tongue-in-cheek is obvious anyway.)
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I'm quite disappointed with all the recent explanations of why certain jokes
were funny. They explained the mechanics, but missed the heart of the matter. So here goes.
Humor comes from many sources. The most important one in jokes seems to come
from the omission of essential information until the punchline. The listener
then gets to retroactively and rapidly revise his understanding of the story.
The more incongruous the difference between the original perception and the
corrected one, the funnier the joke.
Consider the prostitute "rape" joke. If one tells the story in historical
sequence, and ends with the prostitute saying "I've been raped", one has
very little humor. Some people might still find it funny, because there
*is* an incongruity between the prostitute's view and ours. But the humor
in the original joke is much more than that little misinterpretation! As
we hear the joke, we form a mental image of a woman going into a bank and
getting bad news. The punchline reveals an entire history behind the story
that was not told, completely different from the tame one that was implied.
And on top of that we get the incongruity. That's what makes the joke funny.
But for those who didn't think it was funny the first time, it's too late
now. You can't read it again in all innocence the way you did the first
time. I don't think it's a question of not having a sense of humor that
impeded Adrian Kent's understanding of the "rape" joke, but autodidactic
revulsion at political incorrectness. If I were conditioned into vomiting
every time I heard the word "Belgium", I seriously doubt I could find any
joke funny whose punchline is "Belgium".
(I discuss the question of jokes and stereotypes infra.
(I also find the assertion in some of the previous postings that the joke
teller has the same view of rape--something that's trivial--as the prostitute
very insulting. And if you are going to go bend your nose all out of shape,
why not discuss the trivializing of women as prostitutes?
(Frankly, I think AK was trying to score points against Woolley over in
net.abortion, and had worked up to a nice mouth foam at the sight of the
"rape" joke. Reread the original posting.)
Let's consider another joke that has been denounced as sexist. "If we can
send a man to the moon, why can't we send them all?" The humor comes from
the totally different meaning of the two clauses, the obvious invalidness
of the implicit logical deduction, and the not-so-subtle hint to malekind.
The different meanings come from the pointed play on sexist language. "man"
at the start has the general meaning of all man-oops- of all peoplekind,
but at the end of the joke it has been exposed as referring to those of us
with testicles. I find that funny! (I also find it a lot more convincing
re the nature of sexist language than any straightforward feminist expose.)
I think the other two points are clear. Who is so foolish to believe that
it's a question of will power, not feasibility? And who can't smile at
the implied desirability of an all-woman parthenogenetic world?
I can only feel sorry for Jym Dyer and his narrow views. It's a wonderful
joke.
Let's consider another rape joke that hasn't been flamed yet. If AK (or
someone else who did not like Fr. Woolley's) DID find it funny, I'd like
to hear about it. The joke I'm refering to is the Alaskan hazing joke.
[If you did not read it, go over to net.jokes NOW and key backwards on
"funny rape joke". It's about 100-200 jokes old. As I give away the
punchline in my discussion, and this joke depends much more heavily on
ignorance of the true story than Woolley's, so read it first.]
If the hazing joke were told as a news story, there would of course be a
reaction to the absurdity of the bestiality, and humorous contempt at the
stupidity of the hazee. But the punchline would be redundant and unfunny.
And we would not have a *joke*, just a bizarre little story revealing yet
another dimension of dumbness.
(Personally, I sympathized with the poor polar bear. Such arctophobic
jokes offend me deeply, even if they are funny.)
Onwards to stereotypes. I of course find them quite harmful and insulting.
Not just explicit ones, but the little ones that color our thinking sotto
voce. But that doesn't mean they aren't funny!
I do not go around thinking blacks are shiftless. I know there are people
who do, and I have nothing to do with them. I am aware that blacks don't
have that choice, and that my sympathies are rather worthless. But when I
saw the Kinney shoes and the 1 white man with xxx black men jokes, I found
them funny. They are rude and offensive *and* funny. The Kinney shoes
loafers was a double entendre, depending on the listener's ability to supply
the blacks == loafers stereotype. That's part of what makes it humorous,
the fact that the *listener* has to complete the joke. A pun about lazy
workers and Kinnery shoes is less offensive, but not as funny either. In
the 1 white man jokes, part of the humor is the recognition that all too
often the 1 white man and xxx black men situations are true. (Black crook/
white lawyer, black prisoners/white warden, etc.) In a future egalitarian
society, these jokes will die, unless the described situations are turned
into stereotypes.
I have heard rednecks tell black jokes, and they just weren't funny. The
hatred and odiousness were clearly the point of the joke, and they scared
me more than anything. But in a more civilized context, where the point
is to be funny, not harmful, the very same jokes *are* funny, partly for
the reasons outlined supra. Consider "Why do black people smell? Fb
oyvaq crbcyr pna ungr gurz gbb." The point is to be funny, not harmful.
I know blacks I can tell that joke to, and they grimace, but they also
laugh! *We* know the facts of the joke are stereotypes, not truths. Of
course, a redneck who tells that joke and believes it is accurate can't
be funny, except to his fellow idiots.
There was an earlier posting discussing rude Pakistani jokes circulated by
violent bigots in England. He included one rotated with warnings about its
extreme offensiveness. I found the joke funny, since here on the net, safe
in this quiet terminal room, the harmful context was gone. And I'm certain
if I read it in the middle of the situation, I would find them funny. But
I know if one of these bigots was *telling me the joke in person*, I'd run
for my life. I don't want to wait to see his reaction when he finds out
that I'm ----- or ***** or ^^^^^. The only sort of argument these modern
Nazis understand is the one with a baseball bat.
(Actually, I've never heard a blackneck tell red jokes. I wonder why not.)
The most offensive and insensitive jokes I know of are the Jews as Holocaust
victims jokes. These is *not* a stereotype but an historical metonymy. There
is nothing funny about Jews going into ovens, but there can be (rude) humor
in the backwards realization that in a joke about Jews, which could have been
about anything from big noses to extreme cheapness ("Why do Jews have such
big noses? Nve vf serr."), the true point suddenly is an unfunny reminder of
the Holocaust. The reminder is unfunny, but the *joke* is still funny. For
example, "What is the difference between a Holocaust victim and a pizza?"
cannot really have a funny punchline, but "What is the difference between a
Jew and a pizza?" *can* have a funny punchline: "Cvmmnf qba'g fpernz jura lbh
chg gurz va gur bira."
Exploding teacher jokes, whose *punchline* reveals the connection with the
Challenger tragedy, are similar. ("What's the difference between a teacher
and other people? Bgure crbcyr qba'g fcbagnarbhfyl pbzohfg.") (Of course,
you were tipped off here, so don't complain!)
(I don't think anyone's complaint, though, is that the shuttle jokes aren't
funny, in vivid contrast to the "rape" joke complaints.)
Gays as AIDS victims are a borderline case. On the one hand, most(?) people
know that gay != AIDS, yet hysterical AIDS fears have been turning into rampant
homophobia everywhere. Thus "What do you call a crippled gay? Ebyy-NVQF." is
half metonymy, half stereotype. (It is also a joke on handicap stereotypes.)
In contrast, "How do you get four gays on a barstool? Ghea vg hcfvqr qbja", is
pure stereotype. Part of gay stereotype humor is that all of us *could* put
things up our asses, unlike all the other stereotypes, giving the joke a strong
visceral feel.
Finally, there are all those ethnic jokes. (I will use 'Albanians' as a
model ethnic. If there are any Albanians reading this, fuck it if you can't
take a joke!) It's hard to call it a stereotype that Albanians are stupid
morons, since that's not what I think generic Albanians are like. It's more
of a joke convention, that Albanians == total morons underlies the upcoming
joke. ("How do you sink an Albanian submarine? Chg vg va jngre.") They
lose their humor rather rapidly, because the expected equation becomes too
monotonous. Black and Jew jokes have lots of avenues for offensiveness, so
they maintain their freshness and humor a little longer.
Indeed, the only humor I find left in ethnic jokes is the metahumor. Who
likes to pick on whom? The Americans pick on Italians, the English on the
French, the Hawaiians on Portuguese, the Japanese on the Koreans, the Poles
on the Ukranians, the French on the Belgians, etc. Nice little planet we've
got going, eh? And where do they come from? I suspect Italian jokes come
from the dismal Italian army in WWII and film portrayal of Italians in WWII
films, but I don't really know.
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Really, there is a simple way to deal with all these jokes you don't like.
UNSUBSCRIBE TO NET.JOKES AND GO AWAY! Thank you. I don't care if the jokes
get ruder or not, but I wish they would get funnier!
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I'd like to conclude with two examples of real-life humor that illustrate my
original thesis.
I once told three friends the shaggy dog story about General Minh from South
Vietnam. Two were listening to the joke, but the third wasn't really listen-
ing, apparently assuming I was telling some boring war story. The third, by
the way, had the ability to willfully not laugh or even snicker at jokes, no
matter how funny they were, and usually engaged it whenever *I* told a joke.
But this time he was unprepared. The awful pun came, the first two friends
groaned, but the third one suddenly caught on that something funny happened,
and started putting the joke and the pun together all at once. He was in
stitches like I had never seen him before or since.
At a mathematics colloquium discussing recent theoretical physics, the speaker
was dropping facts like the current theories in vogue are all 10-dimensional,
but last year's were 26-dimensional, and other fun stuff. This was all beyond
most of the mathematicians' comprehension, but one of them asked if we could
get the smallest of hints how they came out with those dimensions. She told
us that we should notice 26 minus 10 is 16, and that instead of subtracting 16,
she and her colleagues had tried adding 16 originally but of course that didn't
work. This was nonsense (there are reasons, and they require a PhD in math or
physics and a lot of hard thinking to begin to understand), but it was said
with a totally straight face, and she continued the talk without dropping a
beat, much to everyone's puzzlement. During the rest of the talk, occasional
snickers broke out as people caught the allusion. (And if you don't catch it
yourself, there is no point in explaining it--it wouldn't be funny!)
ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720apak@oddjob.UUCP (Adrian Kent) (02/15/86)
In article <11841@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) writes: a long article in the continuing rape/.. joke controversy. I only excerpt and comment on isolated pieces of it below. >Consider the prostitute "rape" joke [..discussion follows ..] >.. That's what makes the joke funny. >But for those who didn't think it was funny the first time, it's too late >now. You can't read it again in all innocence the way you did the first >time. I don't think it's a question of not having a sense of humor that >impeded Adrian Kent's understanding of the "rape" joke, but autodidactic >revulsion at political incorrectness. If I were conditioned into vomiting >every time I heard the word "Belgium", I seriously doubt I could find any >joke funny whose punchline is "Belgium". Why why why why why? No matter how many times I say it's not true, people seem to need to believe that I automatically react against the word 'rape' in a joke. I don't. >(Frankly, I think AK was trying to score points against Woolley over in >net.abortion, and had worked up to a nice mouth foam at the sight of the >"rape" joke. Reread the original posting.) Never let a smear go unanswered, Michael Foot used to say. (Much good it did him.) I profoundly disagree with Fr. Woolley's views on abortion, but what I'd actually been trying to do in that debate was understand them better. There was (and is) nothing synthetic in my reaction to the rape 'joke'. >Let's consider another joke that has been denounced as sexist. "If we can >send a man to the moon, why can't we send them all?" The humor comes from >the totally different meaning of the two clauses, the obvious invalidness >of the implicit logical deduction, and the not-so-subtle hint to malekind. >I find that funny! I too. >Let's consider another rape joke that hasn't been flamed yet. If AK (or >someone else who did not like Fr. Woolley's) DID find it funny, I'd like >to hear about it. The joke I'm refering to is the Alaskan hazing joke. I know it better in the version involving a crate of whisky, tiger and maiden, but I do find it funny. Now what? >There was an earlier posting discussing rude Pakistani jokes circulated by >violent bigots in England. He included one rotated with warnings about its >extreme offensiveness. I found the joke funny, since here on the net, safe >in this quiet terminal room, the harmful context was gone. And I'm certain >if I read it in the middle of the situation, I would find them funny. But This explains a lot. I don't want to be unnecessarily insulting, but I can't imagine that anyone with normal human empathy would find the Pakistani 'joke' funny. I mean that quite seriously. Maybe I know forty or fifty people well enough to be reasonably certain about their reaction to something like this. I can think of one who might laugh, and he's (as far as I can tell) completely without feeling for other people (he's also a racist, but that's by the way). Are the people I know that atypical? I leave it to the net to decide. The ROT-13'd 'joke' is repeated below. Again, I warn that I consider it EXTREMELY OFFENSIVE TO HUMAN BEINGS, ESPECIALLY PAKISTANIS OR VICTIMS OF RACIST ASSAULT. Jung'f genafcnerag naq yvrf va n thggre? N Cnxvfgnav jvgu gur fuvg xvpxrq bhg bs uvz. >Exploding teacher jokes, whose *punchline* reveals the connection with the >Challenger tragedy, are similar. No, they're not. They're not hate-filled or propagandistic. That makes a great difference. Humor, like art, cannot be completely divorced from it's social context. Things which are aimed by the powerful to attack the weak tend not to be funny, for example. The Challenger jokes are just gruesome: in so far as they have an underlying purpose it seems to be mockery of death. I found one or two of them funny. >Really, there is a simple way to deal with all these jokes you don't like. >UNSUBSCRIBE TO NET.JOKES AND GO AWAY! Thank you. And the endless, boring, essentially totalitarian refrain. Maybe you don't like people analysing and criticising the subtext of some postings to net.jokes. But we're going to do it anyway. You _could_ always unsubscribe to net.jokes.d (and net.women, and any other forum in which discussion takes place), if you don't want to read it. >I don't care if the jokes get ruder or not, but I wish they would get funnier! likewise redoubled in spades. Adrian Kent
mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks) (02/16/86)
Sequence of a typical dialogue:
A: <posts offensive or putatively offensive article, probably
a joke in net.jokes>
B: Has anybody noticed that offensive joke by A? Look, it's
offensive for the following reasons: _____. Really, A, please
think about it, and try to clean up your act. Now that I've
pointed out the offensive subtext in your joke, you might want
to really examine your attitudes, and see if you really
mean to imply these things about <women, men, blacks, Poles,
prostitutes, astronauts ...>
C: Hey, B, you ***hole! Who the hell are you to censor A?!! I
thought the joke was funny, but anyway the real issue is
censorship. When will all you ****heads learn that net.jokes
is A TOTALLY OPEN NEWSGROUP???!
B: But I wasn't censoring or trying to. I didn't write to A's
administrator, etc. I was just pointing out the offensive
content, for two purposes: to ask A to think about whether
he/she really means those offensive implications, and if so
to try to change his/her mind. And to point it out to
other readers.
D: Calm down, B. No reason to get so excited. Just for the
record, I <do, don't> think the joke was funny, and also
I <do, don't > think it was offensive. But don't you know
that if a topic offends you all you have to do is use your
n key? Or in extreme cases, set your kill file to ignore
postings from A.
B: But my purpose in objecting was not just to get A to stop
posting these, in order to spare myself the offensive jokes.
There was something else at stake, educating other readers
and perhaps A him/herself. This is distinct from both
censorship and merely sparing myself offensive jokes.
E,F,G,H etc in an endless chorus: (1) Egad! Censorship! (2)
Learn to use your 'n' key.
K: Actually, B, let's discuss whether the subtext you saw
was really there. On your reading ____.
L: I think the subtext B pointed out was really there, but it
needn't be taken as offensive. It depends on where you
stand on the following issue: ______.
B: Ah, some intelligent discussion from K and L. But you're
both wrong, because the subtext and implied attitude really
were there, since <reply to K>, and it is reasonable to regard
that as offensive, since <reply to L>.
K,L: <more discussion>
C,D,E,F,G,H -- Oh, this is so boring. When will you learn to
use the 'n' key? When will you learn that net.jokes, net.flame,
etc is a totally open newsgroup? When will you stop repeating
your pointless discussion over whether A's joke was really
offensive? Oh, this is so boring. When will you learn to
use your 'n' key? Censorship! As bad as Russia! Oh, this
discussion of whether a joke is offensive is getting so
boring. Can't B,K, and L stop repeating themselves. When
will you learn to use the 'n' key? Censorship!
B,K,L : <trying to carry on the discussion rationally, can't be
heard over the static>
--
-- Mitch Marks @ UChicago
...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar