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"These two dissidents walk into a pub..." - Humour under dictatorships

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:52 / 22.12.04

An Iraqi friend of mine told me this joke then other day, that was doing the rounds under Saddam...

One day, God decides he's had enough of Saddam, being the bad man he is, so he sends the Angel of Death to take his life. The Angel of Death is naturally a bit daunted by the prospect, and expresses his reservations to God.
God says "don't worry, all you have to do is wait till he's sleeping. Then you can do it."
So the Angel of Death goes to Earth, waits until Saddam's asleep, and goes into his room. Just as he's about to kill him, Saddam wakes up and beats the Angel of Death senseless.
The Angel returns to God, all bloodied and bruised. "What happened?" says God.
"He woke up before I could do it" replies the Angel.
At which God looks at him in terror. "You didn't tell him I sent you, did you?"

Which I liked quite a lot. And it got me thinking... since humour is often a way of dealing with the bad things in life, there's probably quite a rich vein of jokes of this ilk. Not quite sure what my point is exactly, but I found this concept fascinating.

09:57 / 22.12.04

off track a bit here, but if you factor Southpark into the equation, Sadam's got God and Satan under the thumb...

18:14 / 22.12.04

Well, it's not exactly under dictatorships, but it counts. Not a great rendition, but I'm sure there are funnier details I've forgotten.

A tourist gets into a cab outside East Berlin airport. The driver clicks on the meter without talking to him and drives off. Minutes later the cab pulls up at his hotel and the guy gets out, giving the driver a generous tip. Later in the hotel bar he gets talking to the locals about politics and how everything has been since the fall of the Wall. "Sure, things are great now, everyone has found something to do even if it doesn't make much money. The GDR army are all in the construction industry now, the beggars are tour guides. That sort of thing."
The tourist thinks for a while.
"That's interesting, I guess the taxi driver I had earlier must have been one of the city planners from when everything was controlled by the state, so he knew where to take people, yes?"
The local looks askance at him.
"You don't know who got the taxi jobs?"
"No. Why?"
"Stasi. After all, they all know exactly where you live."

[B'dum. T'sh]

Brigade du jour

18:17 / 22.12.04

That's good, I like that one!

Better get some Blair jokes ready for when Britain is a totalitarian dictatorship. Or so Peter Hitchens says, anyway, so it must be true.

19:19 / 22.12.04

There was a paper about Jewish jokes under the Nazis that I read a while back. I'll try to dig it out, but I remember at least one.

A sees B eating a lot of herbs and spices one day. "What are you doing that for?" A says.

"Well," says B, "if they're going to make me into soap, at least I want to smell nice."

Some more Holocaust humour here:

As Hitler's armies faced more and more setbacks, he asked his astrologer, "Am I going to lose the war?"
"Yes," the astrologer said.
"Then, am I going to die?" Hitler asked.
"Yes."
"When am I going to die?"
"On a Jewish holiday."
"But on what holiday?"
"Any day you die will be a Jewish holiday."

Goebbels was touring German schools. At one, he asked the students to call out patriotic slogans.
"Heil Hitler," shouted one child.
"Very good," said Goebbels.
"Deutschland über alles," another called out.
"Excellent. How about a stronger slogan?"
A hand shot up, and Goebbels nodded.
"Our people shall live forever," the little boy said.
"Wonderful," exclaimed Goebbels. "What is your name, young man?"
"Israel Goldberg."

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:35 / 22.12.04

That's a good article.

I liked this part:

During the Holocaust, humor served three main functions. First was its critical function: humor focused attention on what was wrong and sparked resistance to it. Second was its cohesive function: it created solidarity in those laughing together at the oppressors. And third was its coping function: it helped the oppressed get through their suffering without going insane.

Especially the last bit. Remember how in "Life Is Beautiful" Benigni's character uses slapstick and the like to shield his son from the horror of their situation?

07:41 / 23.12.04

Yeah I loved that movie. Great line when (after spending a lot of their time lugging anvils about) everything was going nuts at the end and he decided to make a break for it, and he says to one of his mates just as he's leaving: "I'll see you after the war; we can start an anvil factory".

21:20 / 23.12.04

Back in the days when there was a U.S.S.R., a man was standing in line for bread. After standing in the same line for for hours, he gets fed up and screams, "I have had enough! I'm going to kill Gorbechev!" and storms off.

Half an hour later the man returns, dejected.

The other people in line ask, "Well? Did you kill the Premier?"

The man sighs and says, "No, that line was even longer than this one."

unheimlich manoeuvre

23:57 / 23.12.04

sorry, I don't know any dissident jokes so I hope you don't mind if I mention theory. Benigni mentioned above reminded me of Zizek's (warning pretension alert) article Laugh yourself to Death. Extract follows.

...

The success of Benigni's Life Is Beautiful seems to mark the beginning of a new sub-genre or at least a new trend: the holocaust comedies. It was followed by Jacob the Liar with Robin Williams, the remake of the old GDR classic about the owner of a small shop in the ghetto who pretends to have a hidden radio-receiver and regularly tells his terrified fellows uplifting news about approaching German defeat that he allegedly learned from the radio. Forthcoming is the American release of the Rumanian The Train of Hope, the story of the residents of a small Jewish community who, when the Nazis occupy the country and plan to transport them to the extermination camp, organize a fake train with Nazi guards, board it and, of course, insteads of the camp, take the ride to freedom. Significantly, all three films are centered on a lie that allows the threatened Jews to survive their ordeal.

The key to this trend is provided by the obvious failure of its opposite, the holocaust tragedy.

ONLY NICE THINGS

00:43 / 24.12.04

Another one from the old USSR:

Two KGB officers are sitting on a train.

"So, where are you going?" asks one.

"Minsk, to see my brother," says the other.

He said Minsk, thinks the first,which means he's going to Omsk. But this train only stops at Minsk. Why is he lying to me?

04:56 / 25.12.04

My Mid-East politics professor told a variant of this in class a few weeks ago:

A journalist did a story on gender roles in Kabul several years before the Afghan conflict. She noted that women customarily walked about 5 paces behind their spouse, as a sign of submission to the superiority of the husband.

She returned to Kabul recently and observed that women still walk behind their husbands, but now seem to walk even further back and are now happy with the old custom.

The journalist approached one of the Afghani women and asked. "With the removal of the Taliban and the new government recognizing the equality of women, why do you now seem happy with the old custom that you used to try and change?"

The woman replied, "Land mines."

01:15 / 28.12.04

I remember Ian Hislop did an interview a while back. He had discovered a satirical magazine published by WW1 soldiers whilst they were entrenched. Apparently it read like something out of Blackadder Goes Forth. But it inspired him more for the emotional resilience it suggested on the part of the soldiers, than the humor per se.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

00:52 / 26.08.05

Just read another one: Bloke walks into a post office in Moscow, post-Revolution.
"These Lenin stamps are crap- they don't stick properly" he says.
The guy behind the counter replies "That's because you're spitting on the wrong side".

01:59 / 26.08.05

An apparently true story:
A member of Reagan's Cabinet had the opportunity to attend a party in Moscow after the rise of the Oligarchs/fall of the Soviet Union. Commenting on the luxury cars, clothing, and other obvious trappings of wealth, he said, "It was just like a Hollywood party, only without Communists."