[lit-ideas] Re: OLD JOKES
- From: "Julie Krueger" <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 01:33:37 -0500
<<Most of us don't download music--and we have memory of LPs--a term a
younger friend of mine hadn't heard at all. >>
My children (now 13 & 15) had no clue what I meant when I said "I sound like
a broken record".
They were also stunned to tears by the revelation that Mom didn't have a VCR
or DVD player growing up; nor a microwave, a cordless phone, etc. ( "Mommy!
Where did you live ... Africa?!?!) They were genuinely horrified. Of
course, they were 7 & 5 at the time.
<<Are there universals of physical humor, like the banana peel flop? I'll go
with that. But once language gets into the mix, humor has an expiration
date. Insider ethnic jokes turn to nostalgia once the older generation of
mamacitas dies off. Those grown kids nod to each other in recognition at
funny spanglish sayings. >>
I'm not sure about that .... Gary Larson of Far Side fame is one of those
who seems to me to brek the assumed barrier of linguistic vs. physical
comedy. One of my long-standing favorite cartoons of his is sans caption,
and merely depicts a penguin crossing a treacherous sheet of ice, and
suddenly out of nowhere, stepping on a banana peel and falling. Is this
merely physical humour? Is a text caption necessary? No. Would the
cartoon work w/out cultural idioms?
Julie Krueger
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