Aristocrats-blogging

Slacktivist has a great post on The Aristocrats, the movie and its subject, the age-old dirty joke.

Julia and I saw the The Aristocrats last Sunday. It's a wonderful movie, even if you don't know (or like) the joke.

As you may have heard, The Aristocrats is a documentary featuring 100 retellings of the same joke.

Here are the bare bones: Family asks agent to consider their act, agent says he doesn't do family acts but agrees to let them demonstrate, [act of unspeakable obscenity, incest is non-negotiable, may also feature scatology, beastiality, emetophilia, etc.], agent says "That's a hell of an act, what do you call it? Family member answers "The Aristocrats."

Honestly, the joke isn't funny. In fact, that's probably why it's a perennial favorite with professional comedians. If you can make this joke funny, you could probably get laughs by reading a tax return.

The joke is like a lot of jazz standards. Tunes like Autumn Leaves aren't that interesting until you've heard at least 20 different versions. Once you know that a work is a standard, you can step back from the material itself and concentrate on the artist's interpretation. The movie features The Aristocrats as told by a mime, a magician, a tumbling act, the editorial staff of The Onion, the animated cast of South Park, and a huge variety of standup comics.

The butt of the joke varies, but aristocrats are seldom the target. The most frequent objects of derision psychopathic talent agents and/or his self-deluded showbiz victims.

Alternative punchlines include "The Sophisticates," and my personal favorite, "The Debonairs." In vaudeville every fleabitten sex show needed a classy name. Maybe the joke remains funny because the self-promotion never ends, even if each generation of entertainer adopts its own flavor of conceit. My favorite contemporary example a name/act mismatch is a band called Morbid Napalm out of Fort Huron Quebec. (That's a shaggy dog story for another day.)

Most overrated rendition of The Aristocrats: Gilbert Gottfried. Sure it was gutsy to tell an unexpurgated version at the Friar's Roast days after 9/11, but his elaborations are boring and his delivery sucks. He can't keep a straight face.

Rendition most deserving of wider recognition: Jason Alexander. This version is great because it attends to a frequently neglected aspect of the joke: choreography. The Aristocrats is infinitely funnier when the comic describes something that could plausibly be construed as an act.

Comments

[Amanda]

Reminds me of a night when we had another couple over for cocktails and conversation and music and the wife went to the bathroom and her husband followed her and said to her, "Wouldn't it be funny if like you squatted and I peed between your legs and joined streams?" Kind of Ghostbusters style, if you will. And they were laughing so hard they came out and told us and before it was all over, we had concocted a new Olympic sport--Stunt Pee. And, as you'd suspect, the biggest laugh lines were the stylistic stuff, such as when I described the costumes as spangled tights stuff like ice skaters wear, but with the crotches cut out.

[mudkitty]

How decorous.

[Julian Elson]

Could it be that the Aristocrats joke is funny to jaded comedians because it *gasp* subverts the genre?

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Heh. Which genre?

[Walt]

Julian: No.