British scientists announced they had found the world’s greatest joke after completing the largest hunt in the giggle business. The British Association for the Advancement of Science examined some 40,000 jokes submitted over the Internet from seventy countries that received some two million votes. The project was led by Richard Wiseman, a physiologist with the University of Hertfordshire. The jokes were assessed using a five-point scale, ranging from not too funny to very funny. The wisecrack pronounced the best came from Garpal Gossel of Manchester. Here is the joke:
Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other man pulls out his phone and calls emergency services and gasps to the operator: “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator in a calm, soothing voice replies: “Take it easy. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the hunter says, “OK, now what?”
The best wisecrack from Scotland is about a man saying he wants to die peacefully in his sleep, the way his granddad did. Not yelling with horror like his passengers did.
The one from England is about two weasels sitting on a bench. One says, meaning to hurt the other’s feelings, “I have slept with your mom.” Then both weasels are very quiet, awaiting each other’s response. The aggressive one tries again, in a louder voice, “I have slept with your mom.” The other one finally replies, “Daddy, you’d better go home, you’re drunk.”
Take one from the United States. Two men are playing golf when they notice a funeral procession by the golf course. One of the players about to swing his stick takes off his cap, shuts his eyes, and bows. The other player says, “By God, it’s the most touching gesture I have seen in all my life. You must be a very kind- hearted man.” To which the other replies, “Indeed, we have been married for 35 years.”
The one from Belgium: Why are the ducks web-footed? It is so they can put out a fire. Why are the elephants flat-footed? It is so they can trample ducks trying to put out fires.
The joke-hunt project came up with other interesting findings. The German respondents characteristically appreciated all wisecracks, naming no winner. Their Irish, British, Australian, and New Zealander counterparts preferred puns.
The Day did its own research, on a far smaller scale, asking its experts whether they thought there were national/ethnic specifics in laughter and also what kinds of jokes they considered most understandable in Ukraine.
Valery CHYHLIAYEV, actor:
Here’s one joke. A farmer is standing on the porch and notices the neighbor’s cat steal out of his barn. Its belly is packed so hard it can’t squeeze through a hole in the fence. The farmer shouts to his wife, “Just look at that cat, it’s grown so fat catching and eating our mice!” Another one. A villager says to his friend, “What kind of an outhouse d’you think you made? Everyone can look inside; you didn’t even bother to make a door.” His friend replies, “So what? Is there anything to steal so I should have a door and a lock?” And the third. Two village buddies are walking through the woods at night, headed home. The one walking behind suddenly picks a heavy stick and hits the one in front on the head. The man falls, out cold. He comes to in the morning and sees his friend sitting nearby, smoking. “Hey, why did you hit me? We’ve been friends since we were kids.” The man is genuinely puzzled, “I though you’d understand. Look at it this way. There were just the two of us walking in the woods in the middle of the night. You were ahead. How was I supposed to know what dark ideas you might be contemplating?” This is what I call ethnic humor.
Naturally, every country has its own sense of humor. The Brits often laugh at jokes we Ukrainians would not consider funny at all. And vice versa. There was a Soviet motion picture titled The Illich Barricade. It was shown at a film festival abroad. It has a scene in which a girl opens a tap and there is no water. The Western audience responded with a guffaw. They thought it was funny. Everyone laughs at things the way he is taught to understand them. Humor always has something grotesque about it, some overstatement. Take the Ukrainian jokes I mentioned. They reflect the innate Ukrainian thriftiness and caution, a reflection of what has been done to this nation and what this nation has done to itself. Most Russian jokes are expansive, free, and easy. Why? Because it is in their nature. Vast expanses, an opportunity to do as one pleases and damn the consequences. One can mourn them later. Everything is done in jumps, short summer, quick harvesting. We in Ukraine have chernozem black soil. And we also had the Tatar invasion. Most of our jokes are excerpts from history, myths, and parables. They reflect the destiny of this people.
Les PODERVYANSKY, artist and playwright:
There are ethnic distinctions, of course. There are German, Polish, Ukrainian, Jewish, and other senses of humor. However, trying to figure it out, dissecting it, studying its anatomy is far too complicated. I can’t, anyway. I’d never be able to tell precisely what makes me laugh or frown. Different things make people laugh in different countries. There is no universal sense of humor. The Ukrainian sense is rooted in our national character. In fact, I know only one decent Ukrainian joke. All the rest are dirty — well, maybe there is a point there... All Ukrainian jokes have a certain aspect you won’t find in any Russian, Jewish, or others. One thing I can surely trace in all of them is what I call the “clean bill of national health.” It includes self-ridicule. When you can poke fun at yourself, you have a clean bill of spiritual health... I don’t know purely Ukrainian jokes, say, about the Moldovans, but the Russians have them. They have one hell of a lot of jokes portraying other ethnic groups as perfect idiots, highlighting Russians as the salt of the earth. I think that our jokes do not focus on others. Well, we have anecdotes about Russians and Jews, but never portraying Ukrainians as superior in any way. There is no humiliating understatement. We have no jokes about Russians, Ukrainians, and Jews being at odds over anything. In Russia, the reverse is true. Here you find jokes about Russians, Jews, and Germans arguing about something, with the Russians invariably winning. We have no such jokes.
Oles BUZYNA, journalist:
As a boy, I was baffled by the German sense of humor. I was at a Young Pioneers camp in East Germany. We competed in a race in which every contestant had to run keeping a coin squeezed between his buttocks. As a contestant reached the bucket, he had to sit on it and let the coin drop inside. The Germans in the audience roared with laughter, they thought the whole thing was so funny. We didn’t, we were surprised. Indeed, there are different senses of humor; there are peoples with a keen sense of humor and without any. The Japanese are known to have no sense of humor at all. They don’t laugh at things the way we do. They treat everything very seriously, theirs is a fundamental approach. They gather to watch sakura, the slaughtering of a pig. Can you picture Ukrainians doing that?
Among the specifics of Ukrainian humor is an undeclared ban on poking fun at the authorities. Actually, we have no political anecdotes, probably because our politicians cut such dreadfully dull figures. They’re all faceless, always keeping themselves in check, looking very introverted. Deep inside, they contemplate all kinds of schemes, of course, never allowing anything to show. I remember visiting Andriyivsky uzviz and noticing Matryoshka sets of dolls portraying Putin, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, but none even distantly resembling Kuchma. We have practically no political cartoons. Well, if I were a politician of note, I guess I’d love to see myself there... I don’t like Ukrainian “village jokes” and I hate watching that Dovhonosyky TV program. It has nothing to do with Ukrainians. Same with Virka Serdiuchka, the wisecracks are too primitive. Ukrainians have long since changed for the better. Time to stop ridiculing their provincialism. They show a Ukrainian country bumpkin. Characters like that are nonexistent. Have you ever seen anyone clad in a vyshyvanka shirt or blouse, sitting by a village home with a thatched roof, except in a movie or television program, or maybe at an official function, as part of the entertainment? Yet the image is actively propagated, perhaps because the channels are under non-Ukrainian control...
The greatest Ukrainian joke? I think it was Mykola Zhulynsky’s attempted reform of the Ukrainian orthography. Best described as grim humor, considering that half the residents of Ukraine speak Russian and 35% use the surzhyk, an atrocious mix of illiterate Ukrainian and Russian, laced with Yiddish vulgarisms. Introducing new grammar rules under the circumstances would be an atrocity against the Ukrainian people. (Polls carried out by the National Academy’s Institute of Social Studies and SOCIS point to 74% of the population having a “free command” of Ukrainian and 22% stating a “more or less adequate command” — Author) The kind of Ukrainian orthography we have now is more or less practicable and comprehensible. I think that most Ukrainians have long forgotten about the usage of the consonants ґ and г at the beginning of certain nouns... I don’t think that we have Ukrainian jokes. Rather, we have common Soviet anecdotes. The only Ukrainian jokes I know of are about the vuiko [Western Ukr. term literally meaning uncle] and Moskal [meaning Russian].
Oleh FIALKO, film director:
There is no doubt about ethnic/national peculiarities. After all, we know that there are different British, French or Ukrainian senses of humor... This can be illustrated in different ways. A lot of people believe that our sense of humor is rooted in the notion of fatback. I don’t think so. Humor specifics stem from the national mentality. Considering the times we live in, I think that Ukrainians crack the best jokes with enough under their belts. There is ample evidence. Remember the one about one man eating fatback and the other bananas — but fatback is fatback! Being starved somehow dulls one’s sense of humor. There are lots of political jokes. Take one about two village buddies. One says, “Ivan, I walked down to the pond the day before yesterday and saw a Moskal fishing. I barked like a dog, he got scared, jumped, fell into the water and drowned. I went down to the pond again yesterday. Guess what? I saw twelve Moskals fishing. I crept up to them and barked twice. They got scared and drowned, every one of them. And I walked down there today and found 123 Moskals fishing. I barked and barked, had them all drowned.” His buddy says, “Oh, come off it, where would you find 123 Moskals in our village?” To which Ivan replies, “Well, maybe not that many, but I hate them so, I see double when I see one!”
A jingo patriot will say that we attribute to our people something they don’t actually have, but a sage will only smile. Our humor has a special punch line, it is given to overstatement, in contrast to, say, British understatement. But of course, it’s hard to say which of the jokes is the greatest. Personally, I’m convinced that there’s a definite dramatic aspect to every Ukrainian folk wisecrack; there’s always some dramatic contrast, counterpoint if you will. The best Ukrainian jokes always have a plot and sudden bends.
Volodymyr BYSTRIAKOV, composer:
There are different kinds of jokes; some are simple, others stupid, still others are refined, more to the point. I remember being with international companies and telling jokes to which half of the audience would laugh and the rest would remain with solemn faces — given rather adequate interpretation. Now let me tell you a popular joke. I love it. A couple of guys are standing in front of Verkhovna Rada. Suddenly they see a hang-glider fly over them and crash into the wall, the pilot’s lifeless body flopping to the ground. One of the onlookers asks the other, “Petro, what was it?” The other one replies, “Never mind: such a country, such terrorists.” This joke reflects people’s attitude toward political events. Speaking of mentality, here’s another: “Tests have been run on a new product and proved its effectiveness. It’s called synthetic fatback.”
At one time, after we could afford to trade jokes with a certain degree of freedom [under Gorbachev, that is]. Khazanov [stand- up comedian] was extremely popular. His popularity has dwindled since, but we have Zadornov [another Moscow-based comedian mainly quoting from Soviet and post-Soviet ads, relating his experiences in the West, comparing them to post-Soviet realities] instead, his jokes about our mentality are very much to the point and quite entertaining. Things change with time, as does popularity with audiences.
Olha BALAKIREVA, sociologist, Social Monitoring Center:
I don’t know about any such research. I have never heard of such studies — except perhaps studies on the family, dealing with criteria when partners choose each other on the basis of may the best man win. I remember sense of humor being mentioned among winning traits. A similar approach is practiced when analyzing all those “ideal politicians,” more often than not during an election campaign. What I mean is that the sense of humor, as a trait, is defined according to certain rules. However, I don’t know about any special studies in the sphere of humor.
