Category Archives: Humor

Purple Passion

Nationality: Singaporean
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: USA
Primary Language: Malayalam
Language: English

Due to the length of this story, a transcript is not provided. Instead, the audio clip of the Purple Passion story is attached to the Folklore database article. (Link)

Context: This informant is a nineteen year old college student, attending school in the US, but originally from Singapore. This anti-joke was told to me by the informant in a college dorm room. The informant made sure to take long pauses and deliberately spoke in an awkward manner to further extend the length of the anti joke. This, in turn, made the lack of a punchline all the more frustrating.

Background: My informant heard this story from  one of his friends while sitting at a bar. He appreciates this story because of how elaborate it is. The story weaves an intricate web of events, all centered around the use of a single term – “Purple Passion”. His story, by its end, is nearly ten minutes, and yet, it has no punchline. Instead it ends abruptly and unsatisfyingly, and the reader reacts accordingly, with anger, surprise, and frustration.

Analysis: Purple Passion is an expertly built anti joke, that, when properly delivered, demonstrates the efficacy of such constructs. In wasting the time of its subject so expertly, the story actually has a greater chance of spreading itself. Since ones time is wasted, telling the story to another person might appear to “settle the score”, and thus leads to its continued retelling. I personally enjoyed the story to the end, as it’s structured in a very deliberate manner – it is constantly building up to an ending, before suddenly turning the boy, and, by extension, the listener, towards another false objective.

The New Priest

Nationality: Czech
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: N/A
Performance Date: 4/13/18
Primary Language: Czech
Language: English, Spanish, French

Informant: So.. I have a joke about a priest if you want to hear it.

Interviewer: That sounds great.

Informant: So there’s a new priest that is taking over a church after another priest that is retiring. The old priest is teaching him about how he runs the church. “The most important part” he says “is the confessional. For small sins, I give one Lord’s prayer, for larger sins, I give two, and for really big ones I give three. If you have any questions, ask the warden, he’s been working here with me for a really long time so he knows almost everything.” So, one day, long after the old priest has left, the new priest has a woman in his confessional, who says “I had oral sex.” The new priest isn’t sure how bad this sin is, so he goes and asks the warden: “What did the old priest give for oral sex?” The warden replies “I’m not sure about other people, but to me he gave a fidorka (traditional Czech snack).”

Context: My informant is a nineteen year old Czech national attending school in the United States. He’s lived in Prague for most of his life, and Czech is his first language. The interview was conducted face-to-face in a college dorm room.

Background: My informant heard this joke from one of his friends. According to him, the Czech populace tends to be agnostic or atheistic, so jokes making fun of religion or religious figures are not uncommon. However,  these jokes are not mean spirited, but rather are used to criticize an institution which was normally difficult to criticize for much of Czech history.

Analysis: This joke is evidently poking fun at the church, but when one delves slightly deeper into its wording, there is a greater underlying significance. The joke references the older priest, supposedly a veteran cleric of the church, who, despite being a seasoned clergyman, still needs sexual satisfaction. The price of that satisfaction aside, it outlines an element of the Catholic church in particular – that is, the supposed abstinence of clergymen – and suggests that, perhaps, the clergy are not so pure after all. Here, we see the role of folklore in questioning larger institutions, their inner-workings, and their greater cultural roles.

“Yike”

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Portland, OR
Performance Date: 26 Mar 2018
Primary Language: English

COLLECTOR: “So what’s the difference between ‘yike’ and ‘yikes’?”
INFORMANT: “Asking that’s a little yike, isn’t it?”
C: “Sure, but it’s for the archives.”
I: “Alright. Well… ‘yikes’ is just the word, right? Like you say it whenever—whenever something kind of bad happens. But ‘yike’ is more specific. You only say ‘yike’ to people who know what it means.”
C: “And what does it mean?”
I: “I mean, it’s like ‘yikes’ but for, um, like, cringey things, not just any bad stuff.”
C: “Can you give an example?”
I: “Um, like if we were sitting here and overheard someone say something kinda racist or sexist—especially if we knew he said a lot of kinda racist or sexist things, like, regularly—I might turn to you and raise my eyebrows and say ‘yike.’ I guess.”
C: “So there’s a context of an ‘in’ crowd required to say ‘yike’?”
I: “Sure. I don’t really know if anyone other than our friends use it. But, um, yeah, there are definitely like ‘yikey’ people we all know about.”

This piece of folk-speech was shared by a high-school friend of mine whom I called him to ask if he could think of any folklore from or our time in together. The slang exclamation “yike” and its associated adjective “yikey” came up. As his explanation of the term suggests, like a lot of folk-speech, its precise definition proves difficult to nail down, seeing as using it relies heavily on the participants in the conversation and the conversation’s context. Generally, ‘yike’ seems to be used by my informant’s group of friends heavily involved in social justice, to respond in a sarcastic manner to people who are slightly racist, misogynist, or just less-informed than them about social issues. Thus, saying ‘yike’ not only comments directly on something, but establishes a bond of recognition and respect between those saying it, who are aware enough to point out when others are acting or speaking unthoughtfully.

Practical Joke with Easter Eggs

Nationality: Mexican-Armenian-American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Irvine, CA
Performance Date: 27 Mar 2018
Primary Language: English

“So, every year, on my dad’s [the Armenian] side of the family, we’d hides eggs with money in them. But half the eggs would have nothing in them, and we’d put all these on the ground and all the ones with money in them up in trees, so only the older kids could reach them. And it was a kind of practical joke on the younger kids. And we’ve been doing this for like twenty years… It all arose because my grandparents loved competition.”

This piece of religious folklore came from a classmate with whom I exchanged lore. She noted that both sides of her family, although ethnically separate, had developed very similar variations on the traditional Easter egg hunt. Both draw a clear age line, separating the ‘children’ from the ‘adults.’ The former naively hunts for plastic eggs, hoping for reward and enjoying the fun of the chase, while the latter, more experienced and understanding, are privy to extra information, enjoying the fun of the hunt vicariously as their labor pays off.
As this religious folk tradition/ritual is also a children’s game, it works like many folk children’s games to help kids explore social structures. By creating a firm distinction between searcher and hider, the child/adult distinction, which is normally rather blurry, is made concrete and tangible for the smaller family members. Although they enjoy hunting for eggs, the can also excitedly anticipate the day when they will graduate into the grown-up world and gain the associated knowledge—be allowed to hide eggs.

Mexican-American Variation on the Easter Egg Tradition

Nationality: Mexican-Armenian-American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Irvine, CA
Performance Date: 27 Mar 2018
Primary Language: English

“So, I have a big family on my mother’s [the Mexican] side. So every year, we have an easter basket that looks like a laundry basket, and the people who get to hide the eggs are the ones who have graduated from being little kids. It’s usually around sixteenish, and it’s an unwritten rule that once you turn sixteen you can no longer look for eggs. And then the two oldest boys hide the trick eggs up in trees. But the emphasis is less on it being a practical joke and more about growing up.”

This piece of religious folklore came from a classmate with whom I exchanged lore. She noted that both sides of her family, although ethnically separate, had developed very similar variations on the traditional Easter egg hunt. Both draw a clear age line, separating the ‘children’ from the ‘adults.’ The former naively hunts for plastic eggs, hoping for reward and enjoying the fun of the chase, while the latter, more experienced and understanding, are privy to extra information, enjoying the fun of the hunt vicariously as their labor pays off.
As this religious folk tradition/ritual is also a children’s game, it works like many folk children’s games to help kids explore social structures. By creating a firm distinction between searcher and hider, the child/adult distinction, which is normally rather blurry, is made concrete and tangible for the smaller family members. Although they enjoy hunting for eggs, the can also excitedly anticipate the day when they will graduate into the grown-up world and gain the associated knowledge—be allowed to hide eggs.