Catherine, I apologize for the late reply. Just wanted to say thanks very
much for
your post about the "levels" found in jokes and poetry. I like your sketch
of levels, although
I'd be less inclined to associate taboo jokes (the dick and fart jokes you
mention)
with mere surface or plainness or lack of complication or smallness. I
think of Aristophanes'
wonderful use of butts in _The Clouds_ (in which he has Socrates' students
using their
rectums as telescopes, butts pointing to the skies, in order to observe
heavenly bodies)
or Carol Ann Duffy's extended dick joke sonnet "Frau Freud," or Bernadette
Mayer's
extended narrative about fucking over and over in the shower (and
everywhere else) or Ron's
long "Sunset Debris," which plays off cocks, coming, and the act of
fellatio (among other things).
It's true the very simplest taboo jokes rely on the mere mention of a taboo
word or idea, but
what I'm saying I guess is that I think dick jokes or fart jokes or cunt
jokes -- even in their raunchiest
form -- are very complex (especially socially) and do say something
sufficiently grand -- or at least
sufficiently destructive. Aren't taboo jokes meant in many ways to drive
away a particular kind
of audience -- or to mime the act of driving away an audience? My point?:
though the packaging
of even a minimalist taboo joke can be quite scant (say, providing a
moniker to one's own genitalia,
by which I mean referring to one's own pooty by a proper name, for
instance), this act in itself
is amazingly complicated and, well, profound. At least to someone born with
my taste, which is,
when it comes to jokes, maybe a bit, umm, forgiving.
Anyway, thanks: I'm grateful for the sketch.
Gabe
At 11:48 AM 7/17/00 -0700, Catherine Daly wrote:
>there are "levels" to jokes
>there are "levels" to poetry
>
>A first level joke is generally a dick joke or a fart joke. It exists on
>the surface, and is
>(male) physical. These we put in movies for 14 year old boys. I say
>"we", though only the
>boys here are writing movies.
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