Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Elephant joke
An elephant joke is a joke cycle, almost always an absurd riddle or conundrum and often a sequence of such, that involves an elephant. Elephant jokes were a fad in the 1960s, with many people constructing large numbers of them according to a set formula. Sometimes they involve parodies or puns.
An example of an elephant joke is:
In 1960, L. M. Becker Co of Appleton, Wisconsin, released a set of 50 trading cards titled "Elephant Jokes". They were recorded in mid-1962 in Texas[citation needed] and gradually spread across the US, reaching California in early 1963. By July 1963, elephant jokes were ubiquitous and could be found in newspaper columns, and in Time and Seventeen magazines, with millions of people working to construct more jokes according to the same formula.
Both elephant jokes and Tom Swifties were in vogue in 1963, and were reported in the US national press. While Tom Swifties were marketed to literate adults and gradually fell out of fashion over subsequent decades, elephant jokes have lasted among younger audiences, circulating through generations of schoolchildren.
Prolific science fiction writer Isaac Asimov was of the opinion that these jokes are "favorites of youngsters and of unsophisticated adults". However, he finds one joke uncharacteristically sophisticated enough to include in his book of favorite jokes. The joke was told in the aftermath of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, who had walked into Dallas police headquarters carrying a gun:
Elephant jokes rely upon absurdity and incongruity for their humor, and a contrast with the normal presumptions of knowledge about elephants. They rely upon absurdist reasoning such as that it would be the relatively incidental evidence regarding the smell of an elephant's breath or the presence of footprints in the butter that would allow for the detection of an elephant in one's bathtub or refrigerator. One key to the construction of an elephant joke is that the joke answers are somewhat appropriate if one merely overlooks the obvious absurdities inherent to the questions. If elephants were capable of climbing trees and if painting an elephant's toenails was an effective camouflage mechanism, then red would be the appropriate color for a cherry tree. If the common connotation that questions requesting the time are expected to be answered in terms of hours and minutes is ignored, then by the implied destruction of one's fence from being sat on by an elephant, it would be time to build a new fence. The appropriateness of the answer, when accounting for the absurd incongruences existing between the implied premise of the question and the normal assumptions said question invokes, distinguishes elephant jokes as jokes rather than nonsensical riddles.
Elephant jokes are often parodies of conventional children's riddles. Consider the following commonly recited child's riddle:[citation needed]
Traditionally the challenge of solving this riddle relies on recognizing the ambiguity stemming from the riddle being generally shared aloud as opposed to in writing. Thus the appropriate homophone, "red" or "read", must be inferred. If "red" is assumed, then the problem arises regarding whether or not any object satisfying the condition of being "red all over" would necessarily preclude said object from also satisfying the requirement of being "black and white". However, if instead "read" is assumed, then there is no implied mutual exclusivity preventing a solution, conventionally a newspaper, from satisfying both required conditions. Compare the traditional riddle, which is solved by a well-known item that can be reasonably determined from the riddle, with the elephant joke parody:[original research?]
Hub AI
Elephant joke AI simulator
(@Elephant joke_simulator)
Elephant joke
An elephant joke is a joke cycle, almost always an absurd riddle or conundrum and often a sequence of such, that involves an elephant. Elephant jokes were a fad in the 1960s, with many people constructing large numbers of them according to a set formula. Sometimes they involve parodies or puns.
An example of an elephant joke is:
In 1960, L. M. Becker Co of Appleton, Wisconsin, released a set of 50 trading cards titled "Elephant Jokes". They were recorded in mid-1962 in Texas[citation needed] and gradually spread across the US, reaching California in early 1963. By July 1963, elephant jokes were ubiquitous and could be found in newspaper columns, and in Time and Seventeen magazines, with millions of people working to construct more jokes according to the same formula.
Both elephant jokes and Tom Swifties were in vogue in 1963, and were reported in the US national press. While Tom Swifties were marketed to literate adults and gradually fell out of fashion over subsequent decades, elephant jokes have lasted among younger audiences, circulating through generations of schoolchildren.
Prolific science fiction writer Isaac Asimov was of the opinion that these jokes are "favorites of youngsters and of unsophisticated adults". However, he finds one joke uncharacteristically sophisticated enough to include in his book of favorite jokes. The joke was told in the aftermath of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, who had walked into Dallas police headquarters carrying a gun:
Elephant jokes rely upon absurdity and incongruity for their humor, and a contrast with the normal presumptions of knowledge about elephants. They rely upon absurdist reasoning such as that it would be the relatively incidental evidence regarding the smell of an elephant's breath or the presence of footprints in the butter that would allow for the detection of an elephant in one's bathtub or refrigerator. One key to the construction of an elephant joke is that the joke answers are somewhat appropriate if one merely overlooks the obvious absurdities inherent to the questions. If elephants were capable of climbing trees and if painting an elephant's toenails was an effective camouflage mechanism, then red would be the appropriate color for a cherry tree. If the common connotation that questions requesting the time are expected to be answered in terms of hours and minutes is ignored, then by the implied destruction of one's fence from being sat on by an elephant, it would be time to build a new fence. The appropriateness of the answer, when accounting for the absurd incongruences existing between the implied premise of the question and the normal assumptions said question invokes, distinguishes elephant jokes as jokes rather than nonsensical riddles.
Elephant jokes are often parodies of conventional children's riddles. Consider the following commonly recited child's riddle:[citation needed]
Traditionally the challenge of solving this riddle relies on recognizing the ambiguity stemming from the riddle being generally shared aloud as opposed to in writing. Thus the appropriate homophone, "red" or "read", must be inferred. If "red" is assumed, then the problem arises regarding whether or not any object satisfying the condition of being "red all over" would necessarily preclude said object from also satisfying the requirement of being "black and white". However, if instead "read" is assumed, then there is no implied mutual exclusivity preventing a solution, conventionally a newspaper, from satisfying both required conditions. Compare the traditional riddle, which is solved by a well-known item that can be reasonably determined from the riddle, with the elephant joke parody:[original research?]