Like most good nerds, I enjoy ridiculous amounts of meta jokes.
I’m also a big fan of anything layered joke-wise. It’s hard to craft a joke that is funny on multiple levels. Though easy to design a joke that has multiple levels, it’s not as common that they’re all actually funny. (With puns, this rule tends not to apply.)
I’ve been thinking far too much lately about two of my favorite examples of the above:
- From “Thirty Minutes over Toyko“, the season finale of The Simpsons 10th season,
Marge: “You liked Rashomon.”
Homer: “That’s not how I remember it.” - From “Kidney Now!”, the season finale of 30 Rock‘s 3rd season,
Milton Greene: “A guy crying about a chicken and a baby? I thought this was a comedy show.”
I love the first one because it’s a joke utterly in-keeping with Homer’s character. He says nonsensical and utterly random things, so his saying “That’s not how I remember it” doesn’t have to mean anything more than Homer being Homer. Its meta reference and next level of joke are ramped up by understanding that Rashomon is a story about differing perceptions and accounts of the same events. In the film version, all three characters remember the same day and same events differently. Homer, thus stating he doesn’t remember the movie the same way Marge does is an homage to the Rashomon Effect itself. I believe it was (but can’t quite remember, as I’ve read at least three books about The Simpsons) Planet Simpson that cited this sort of joke as being the cornerstone of the Simpson universe. They’re jokes that work as one-offs but to the person examining them at a meta level they work amazing wonders.
And the second one. Man. The first time I watched that episode I almost didn’t catch it. The show had moved on about three minutes before it sunk in. See, it’s important to note that Alan Alda played Milton Greene. And it’s important to have an understanding of how M*A*S*H ended via “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen.” And if you’re upset that I’m about to spoil the finale of a show that ended thirty years ago, I hate you. (Not really, but you may be a little too concerned with spoilers.) Hawkeye finally cracks up because he has seen a woman kill a chicken with her bare hands in order to achieve the quiet that Hawkeye himself demands from a bus full of people who wish to avoid capture or worse. It’s only later, as he is forced to recall the event further that he remembers it was the woman’s very human baby that she killed by smothering it. He sobs significantly. It’s actually one of those supremely emotional and affecting moments that later seasons of M*A*S*H was so well known to throw at the audience. (Yep, I’ve seen every single episode.) In the context of 30 Rock, the joke is funny just because Tracey is crying over a somewhat elongated setup about a chicken and a baby. New guy Milton wanders by and appears confused at the lack of comedy. But the extremely explicit M*A*S*H reference takes it over the top. A wonderful fellow WordPress user, @(Peel Slowly) wrote about this joke in detail. (BTW: I was in my twenties when that 30 Rock episode aired and I feel kinda proud at having caught the joke so quickly. But then again, I absolutely love M*A*S*H.)
So, anyway. There are many, many, many, infinite numbers of this type of joke already out there, and this is usually the type of humor I most enjoy. (That and making awful puns.) These two jokes just happened to be very strongly in mind this week and I wanted to share.
Dumpster Jedi 