Official "all-Greek-to-me Fiction Literature and Cinema" Thread

ewmayer · 2013-05-14, 21:11

Thx for the interesting links ... I'm actually very interested in whether there are similarly ancient "highly conserved jokes". I strongly suspect typically sophomoric yuks involving bodily functions, sex & sex organs, funny-shaped body parts and people doing stupid things (or having things done to them ... "hey Zog! Spear tip's untied! Ha - made ya look!") have been getting told around campfires for as long as proto-humans have had brains capable of humor, and language organs to tell jokes and laugh with. Admittedly there is little or no evidence of such in cultural artifacts such as cave paintings and rock etchings (e.g. "For a good time, drag Oona into cave") ... perhaps the difficulty of executing such in the pre-magic-marker era made them be reserved for more serious matters.

By way of evidence of an ancient oral tradition, I can offer only contemporaneous behavior amongst very different cultures: For example, a couple years back there was a reality-TV show featuring a couple of white-bred British lads who go to live amongst a deep-woods tribe of Papua New Guineans. Said tribe being one which still preserves the tradition of men wearing only a decorative penis gourd held by a thong. One of the very early episodes shows 4 or 5 of the tribesmen squatting around a fire, discussing (in their native tongue, rendered via subtitles) how to teach the newcomers to make and fit their own penis gourds. They're handing around a just-hollowed out gourd one of them has made for himself, and one of the guys says "you know I need a much bigger one than this" and starts giggling, followed by big laughs from all. Classic locker room humor, sans the modern innovation of the locker room.

LaurV · 2013-05-28, 08:59

@ewmayer
You have to see the "Quest for fire" movie. One of my favorites, ever. There should be a version on the web (torrents?) with the comments of the makers (directors, etc) as additional sound tracks. That is a must to watch/listen.

xilman · 2013-05-28, 09:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Thx for the interesting links ... I'm actually very interested in whether there are similarly ancient "highly conserved jokes".

Cuckolding jokes are almost certainly very ancient. These days they are generally called travelling salesman jokes; I suspect that wandering hunter jokes were told millennia before the development of farming.

Practical jokes of the ambushing kind, such as leaping from cover and shouting "Boo!" in a human context, pre-date Homo sapiens. Our cats play them all the time and I've observed young wild animals do the same.

ewmayer · 2013-05-28, 19:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by LaurV

@ewmayer
You have to see the "Quest for fire" movie. One of my favorites, ever. There should be a version on the web (torrents?) with the comments of the makers (directors, etc) as additional sound tracks. That is a must to watch/listen.

Saw it in college - classic. Me and the buddy I saw it with still joke about the "caveman fireside p0rn0" scene. That inspired my pet speculation that the stereotypical "fertility goddess" statuettes may in fact be ancient analogs of modern day bathing-beauty pinups and "Miss July" foldouts. (The ideal of sexual beauty having evolved from something more obviously associated with fertility to today's second-hand-indicators-of-fertility.)

chalsall · 2013-05-28, 19:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Saw it in college - classic.

Have you seen Mel Brooks' "History of the World Part 1"?

The parody of Kubrick's opening scene to "2001: A Space Odyssey", and the entire movie, was very amusing.

A classic....

ewmayer · 2013-05-28, 19:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by chalsall

Have you seen Mel Brooks' "History of the World Part 1"?

Seriously? You are in doubt that someone like me has seen that movie? "The jig is up - and gone!"

Although with Brooks I have to say, much of the schtick is too broad for my taste - yes, yes, we *get* that Dom DeLuise is supposed to be a gross parody of a Caligulesque Roman emperor, we got it after you had him fart loudly for the 106th time...

kladner · 2013-05-28, 21:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by ewmayer

..... we got it after you had him fart loudly for the 106th time...

Such things were good enough for Lyndon Johnson and George W Bush. It almost seems that the higher the position to which one "ass-ends", the more puerile one's private humor becomes.

ewmayer · 2013-05-28, 22:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by kladner

Such things were good enough for Lyndon Johnson and George W Bush. It almost seems that the higher the position to which one "ass-ends", the more puerile one's private humor becomes.

The "Pooter principle"?

chalsall · 2013-05-28, 22:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Seriously? You are in doubt that someone like me has seen that movie?

Sorry...

I don't watch many movies -- I read books instead.

I almost walked out of the most recent Star Trek movie because it was too dependent upon an earlier movie. (Edit: I was stopped from walking out by my girlfriend, who informed me it would be impolite of me to leave her there during the show; I would have left if I was not so constrained.)

IMO, the most recent Trek movie is a complete load of crap!

ewmayer · 2013-05-28, 22:59

Perhaps I'm just showing my age in "not getting it", but I shall never walk into the latest Star Dreck movie because the hyperactive preview ads show it to be yet another unmitigated CGI-crapfest like nearly all instances of the modern Fantasy/SciFi genre.

...but I was referring specifically to the "Comedy not featuring entirely unfunny persons such as Adam Sandler, Chris Farley and Martin Lawrence who inexplicably are labelled 'comedic' actors" genre, of which I believe I make sufficiently frequent quote and paraphrastic usage around here to deserve the 'avid fan' label.

chalsall · 2013-05-28, 23:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by ewmayer

...but I was referring specifically to the "Comedy not featuring entirely unfunny persons such as Adam Sandler, Chris Farley and Martin Lawrence who inexplicably are labelled 'comedic' actors" genre, of which I believe I make sufficiently frequent quote and paraphrastic usage around here to deserve the 'avid fan' label.

Sorry.

I wonder why a movie has not been made of any of Neal Stephenson's nor Dan Simmons' nor William Gibson's books.

Perhaps because film couldn't do the stories justice?

2013-05-14, 21:11	#1
ewmayer ∂²ω=0 Sep 2002 República de Califo 2²×2,939 Posts	Official "all-Greek-to-me Fiction Literature and Cinema" Thread Thx for the interesting links ... I'm actually very interested in whether there are similarly ancient "highly conserved jokes". I strongly suspect typically sophomoric yuks involving bodily functions, sex & sex organs, funny-shaped body parts and people doing stupid things (or having things done to them ... "hey Zog! Spear tip's untied! Ha - made ya look!") have been getting told around campfires for as long as proto-humans have had brains capable of humor, and language organs to tell jokes and laugh with. Admittedly there is little or no evidence of such in cultural artifacts such as cave paintings and rock etchings (e.g. "For a good time, drag Oona into cave") ... perhaps the difficulty of executing such in the pre-magic-marker era made them be reserved for more serious matters. By way of evidence of an ancient oral tradition, I can offer only contemporaneous behavior amongst very different cultures: For example, a couple years back there was a reality-TV show featuring a couple of white-bred British lads who go to live amongst a deep-woods tribe of Papua New Guineans. Said tribe being one which still preserves the tradition of men wearing only a decorative penis gourd held by a thong. One of the very early episodes shows 4 or 5 of the tribesmen squatting around a fire, discussing (in their native tongue, rendered via subtitles) how to teach the newcomers to make and fit their own penis gourds. They're handing around a just-hollowed out gourd one of them has made for himself, and one of the guys says "you know I need a much bigger one than this" and starts giggling, followed by big laughs from all. Classic locker room humor, sans the modern innovation of the locker room.

2013-05-28, 08:59	#2
LaurV Romulan Interpreter "name field" Jun 2011 Thailand 10100001110110₂ Posts	@ewmayer You have to see the "Quest for fire" movie. One of my favorites, ever. There should be a version on the web (torrents?) with the comments of the makers (directors, etc) as additional sound tracks. That is a must to watch/listen. Last fiddled with by LaurV on 2013-05-28 at 09:00 Reason: link

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2013-05-28, 22:59	#10
ewmayer ∂²ω=0 Sep 2002 República de Califo 2²×2,939 Posts	Perhaps I'm just showing my age in "not getting it", but I shall never walk into the latest Star Dreck movie because the hyperactive preview ads show it to be yet another unmitigated CGI-crapfest like nearly all instances of the modern Fantasy/SciFi genre. ...but I was referring specifically to the "Comedy not featuring entirely unfunny persons such as Adam Sandler, Chris Farley and Martin Lawrence who inexplicably are labelled 'comedic' actors" genre, of which I believe I make sufficiently frequent quote and paraphrastic usage around here to deserve the 'avid fan' label.