The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #125075 Message #2769895
Posted By: Jim Carroll
20-Nov-09 - 01:08 PM
Thread Name: BS: How long after can one make jokes about
Subject: RE: BS: How long after can one make jokes about
Lox,
Thanks for that, will read it through fully later, but it appears to be as thoughtful an analysis of satire as I have come across in a long time.
I believe that humour is one of the most potent ways of putting across a message (good or evil) - the systematic ridiculing and sterotypiing of the Jews by the Nazis paved the way into the gas chambers for 6,000,000 of them and enabled the majority of the German people to either pass by on the other side or pretend it wasn't happening.
In 1968 a friend and I were somewhat aimlessly hitching across central Europe and found ourselves (unintentionally) in Czechoslovakia on the day they re-opened the border following the Soviet invasion. In Prague we were befriended by a group of students who found us somewhere to stay, (in extremely difficult circumstances) showed us the cheapest places to eat and regaled us with stories of recent events (including photographs).
They also told us literally dozens of jokes on the situation, some crudely anti-Russian to the point of racism, but others incredibly sophisticated and powerful; it is these that remained in my memory down the years rather than the factual accounts.
A couple of quick ones.
A secret service agent in Prague walked into a bar and, as the place was quiet, got chatting to the barman.
At one point the barman said, "What's the difference between the East and the West?"
"I don't know".
"In the East we have freedom of speech, in the West they have freedom AFTER speech".
The SS man laughed and said, what's the difference between this bar and you?"
"I don't know".
"This bar will be here tomorrow; you are coming along with me."
And
A secret service man shared a flat with a teacher in Brno.
One day the teacher came home, thoroughly depressed, threw himself into a chair and said, "I can't take any more of this paranoia. "Today I asked my class. "Who assasinated the Archduke Ferdinand?" and Pavel Hasek put his hand up, leapt to his feet and said "It wasn't me sir"".
The secret serviceman poured him a drink and packed him off to bed telling him not to worry about it.
A few days later the SS man said to the teacher "By the way, Hasek did assasinate the Archduke Ferdinand; he confessed under interrogation".
Jim Carroll