A few months ago, on another message board, I saw an animated smiley that depicted one face whipping out a dead fish and smacking another face in the eye with it.
I thought it was just an isolated, bizarre, random joke, until I began seeing the occasional reference to people slapping other people with fishes on online message boards and in the writings of a humor columnist or two. I have also heard that this strange act is referenced in the Veggie Tales movie that is currently in theaters.
I had never heard of this until a few months ago, and I have no idea what significance, if any, it has. Where and when did jokes about people slapping other people with dead fishes originate?
an even earlier reference than Monty - in the comic strip Prince Valiant once threw a fish at a fellow Viking as a good humored insult between two good friends. Now - did that come from some old Norse comic strip tradition, or did the comic strip author watch Monty Python?
The Python sketch is from 1972, the Prince Valiant occurrence would be dated somewhere between 1937 and today. There’s also lots of fish in the Asterix the Gaul comics, the first appeared in 1961. Most of Unhygienix’s fish seems to end up in someone’s face. (“So you think my fish isn’t very fresh, do you? :mad:”)
Dern, femtosecond beat me to it. It’s a common device in Asterix.
The phrase “It’s better than a slap in the face with a wet kipper” has been around for decades, at least.
What gets me it the “soft and cute” connotation I get from it. Then I get “realistic” and realize it’s about the equivalent of hitting someone with a blackjack. A whack with a 15 pound salmon, anyone?
The internet version was helped along immensely when Khaled Mardam-Bey coded it into his Internet Relay Chat client program, mIRC. By default, one of the script commands was “<My User Name> slaps <Someone Else’s Username> around for a while with a large trout” (or somthing to that effect).
Believe it or not, the wet fish pre-dates Monty Python and even comics from the 1930’s. In Proust’s novel, Swann’s Way, Dr Cottard compliments Odette by saying “I’d rather have it in my bed than a slap with a wet fish”. Two lines further on, the narrator refers to the statement as “that old joke”. More research needed!
So literally, that’s “I’d rather have it in my bed than thunder”, which doesn’t seem all that funny to me but then I’m not French. The English translator (in 1981, apparently) rendered the idiom loosely as “than a slap with a wet fish”.
Interestingly, the phrase “a slap in the belly with a wet fish” goes back at least to 1932; in 1954 the full phrase “better than a slap in the belly with a wet fish” is described as “an old saying of the sea”.
So I am venturing a guess that the wet-fish face-slap phrase originated as an American idiom in the early 20th century.
There are several variants on the “better than” theme - “better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick” is another common one, but people are always making up more extravagant ones for comic effect.
Fun Factoid regarding the Python film: according to Michael Palin, they rehearsed the bit late in the day, including his limp-as-a-dishrag plunge into the water just a couple of feet below. When they returned the following day to film it, they discovered the water level had been lowered by a couple of yards (IIRC), and Palin was understandably nervous about repeating his face-down flop.
He decided it was best to just go for it, and as we have seen ever since, the result was hilarious. And he survived.
Minor note: lots of actions and behaviors have deep histories, HOWEVER…
most of the time, the people referring to them, and acting them out, are only aware of the most recent “inspiration.”
So the technically deep history really isn’t meaningful. Monty Python may be the most recent popular recorded source for the idea of slapping a person with a fish being a funny thing to do, but chances are good that someone you see doing it, are only aware that it’s thought to be okay to do for humor, and have no direct knowledge of Python at all.
Since I can’t find a way to make a fresh post I’ll begin by replying to someone else’s. As I recall from childhood when I was at “The Home” in Knighstown, IN call ed I.S.S.C.H, I had one of the best house parents of the whole establishment who was originally from Wales and spoke with a deep Irish accent. In fact so much so a I recall her saying several times… "Oh Mr. **** yourdddd such a filthy brrrrute ya ardddd… I awtta be a wallupin’ ya upside da head wid a dead CARp fish I will I will I will I will. And also from the movie The Perfect Storm which the 3 brothers characters were from Irish decent and at one point on board they actually beat each other with a fish. So I’m thinking that this comical gesture come from way WAY further back than any Hollywierdo move can portray. This is my input on the matter if/any at all matters. Maybe it had something to do with the Great Potato famine… who knows??? Either way getting hit with either is probably a sign from God.