Repurposing a Joke.

 

Jokes are often micro fiction—very short, short stories—but they share some characteristics with longer stories. Most folks label a story as good if it keeps its promises and meets expectations. They may label a story as great if it exceeds expectations, but when it subverts or twists or upends expectations it can be brilliant or terrible depending on who reads it and how. These subversions are the basis of a lot of humor.

Humor often relies on surprise, particularly the upending of expectations. Two different people can tell the same joke, and for one teller, it falls flat while for the other it invokes laughter. That is a separate, story-telling issue. When the joke is written as micro fiction, as many jokes are, then whether it strikes someone as humorous depends on the reader as much as the writer.

This is why explaining a joke often destroys the humor. Explanations eliminate surprise.

Recently, I’ve posted a few repurposed old jokes on Facebook, rewritten as political humor. As expected in this age of hyper-partisanship, some readers thought them funny, others did not. This got me thinking about humor based on upending expectations on old jokes, on jokes that have been repurposed.

Consider, the very old joke, SetUp (SU): “Why did the fireman wear red suspenders?” Punch Line(PL): “To keep his pants up.”

Why was this joke funny when it was new? If the setup had been “Why did the man wear suspenders?” then, IMHO, the PL wouldn’t be funny. The details that it was a fireman and the suspenders were red, leads the listener to believe that something special is required for the answer. Then the mundane answer in the Punch Line subverts expectations and produces a humorous surprise.

A more common example is (SU): “Why did the chicken cross the road?” (PL): “To get to the other side.” This joke is similar in set up and punch line to the fireman joke. “Why did the girl cross the road?” with the same punch line would not be funny.

Yet repurposing the chicken joke makes the old new again. One of the first versions I ran across of updating the chicken and the road joke, IIRC, was a riddle in a Poul Anderson fantasy although I do not know whether Anderson was the first to use it, and my repetition here is not verbatim. Hero’s Riddle: “Why did the chicken cross the road?” Troll’s Reply: “To get to the other side.” Hero’s comeback: “Wrong. The chicken crossed the road because it was too far to go around.”

Notice that the hero’s comeback subverts the expectations for a very old joke, and IMHO, produces an even funnier joke. I modified Anderson’s version for use in a calculus class by adding a single word. (SU) “Why did the asymptotic chicken cross the road?” (PL): “Because it’s too far to go around.” However my version depends on the listener having some concept of asymptotic behavior, but that was my intention because it was a math class.

My favorite subversion of the chicken and the road is also mathematical for which I’ve inserted one extra word for emphasis. Again, notice, if you are familiar with the math terminology, the subversion of expectations that upend the PL and produce the humor. (SU): “Why did the topological chicken cross the Möbius strip?” (PL): “To get to the other … uh … never mind.”

 If you do a web search for “Why did the chicken cross the road jokes,” you will find dozens of variations including some with recent political commentary.

Here is a version which I have not seen elsewhere, and so I believe it to be an original from me. (SU): “Why did the red chicken cross the road?” (PL): “Because it saw the blue jay walking.”

“Because it saw the blue jaywalking.”

“Because it saw the Blue Jay walking.”

Get it? Get it?

Sigh. I guess you just had to have been there….