#2: You Don’t Get The Joke (Probably)

Just when you thought you had a totally normal sense of humor,¹Okay, if you’re a fan of this podcast, it’s possible you already realize that your sense of humor veers a bit toward The Quirky. you read some joke from the past that doesn’t make any sense at all. Trying to translate a joke from another point in time can teach us a lot about the cultural contexts of past people. That process also reveals something about ourselves. A lot of what we find funny in the here and now depends on the symbols that we’ve grown accustomed to at different points in space and time.

Sources Used

• Opening Historical Joke
  • From Caricature: Wit and Humor of a Nation in Picture, Song and Story (New York: Leslie-Judge Company, 1911), 36. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Caricature/qDxHAQAAMAAJ  
• Culture
  • My working definition of culture for this episode was inspired by anthropologist Harry Sanabria’s longer and more robust version. See Harry Sanabria, The Anthropology of Latin America and the Caribbean (New York: Pearson Allyn and Bacon, 2007).
• Peter Porcupine
  • From The American Magazine of Wit: A Collection of Anecdotes, Stories, and Narratives….(New York: H.C. Southwick 1808), 67–68. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_American_Magazine_of_Wit/SdIxAQAAMAAJ
• Bogan Etiquette
  • Reesa, “Bogan Jokes,” 22 Mar, 2013 at https://netrider.net.au/threads/bogan-jokes.149331/ .
• Chinese Dog Covered in Excrement
  • Quoted in Christopher Rea, “Jokes [chapter]” in The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laugher in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 17. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1963383.6 .
• Sumerian Flatulence
  • Reuters, “Oddly Enough: World’s oldest joke traced back to 1900 BC,” 31 July, 2008. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-joke-odd-idUSKUA14785120080801, accessed 27 Dec., 2022.
• English Chandler
  • In Ornatissimus Joculator, or The Compleat Jester (London: W. Ornley, 1703), 103. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Ornatissimus_Joculator_Or_The_Compleat_J/6rVbAAAAQAAJ
  • “Week” in 1708 edition of the Dictionarium Anglo Britannicum, https://www.google.com/books/edition/Dictionarium_Anglo_Britannicum_Or_A_Gene/0VoJAAAAQAAJ
• Audio recordings of Sen. Beauregard Claghorn & the Fred Allen Show can be searched by episode title at https://archive.org  . Specific episodes used were:
  • “Picadilly” 3 February, 1946
  • “Break the Contestant” 9 May, 1949
• Oysters
  • Sheri Castle, “Can You Really Only Eat Oysters in “R” Months?” Southern Living, 18 March, 2022, https://www.southernliving.com/food/seafood/oysters/oysters-months-with-r , accessed 28 Sep., 2022.
  • Halle Marchese, Mary-Lou Watkinson & Natalie Van Hoose, “Only eat oysters in months with an ‘r’? Rule of thumb is at least 4,000 years old” November 20, 2019, University of Florida, Florida Museum, https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/oysters-in-r-months-rule-4000-years-old/ accessed 28 September, 2022.
  • Releasing-of-gonad quotation and related physiological information about oyster reproduction: University of Maryland, Center for Environmental Science, Horn Point Laboratory Oyster Hatchery, “Oyster Life Cycle” https://hatchery.hpl.umces.edu/oyster-life-cycle/ , accessed 28 September, 2022.

• 1
  Okay, if you’re a fan of this podcast, it’s possible you already realize that your sense of humor veers a bit toward The Quirky.