Sometime in the 1970s, when I was a kid, I read a paperback collection of Mad magazine articles from the early '60s. One was a newspaper-style comic strip, “Hyman Rickover and his submarines.” A new nuclear sub is being launched. One of the female guests asks, “Tell me, Admiral Rickover, what is it like when you’re down in a nuclear submarine?” Rickover replies, “I don’t know. I’ve never been on one.” “You’ve never been on a nuclear submarine?!” “That’s right. Mainly because I’ve never been invited!”
At the time I didn’t really get this. I figured the joke, such as it was, was purely whimsical, based on the wild improbability of the principal architect of America’s nuclear submarine force never having been “invited” on board one. Much later I figured out what they were getting at: Hyman Rickover was Jewish. In the early ‘60s, Jews, even rich and prominent Jews, were “not invited” to a lot of things. I read in David Brooks’ Bobos in Paradise that that’s one of the things about upper-class America that profoundly changed in the social upheavals of the '60s. Before then, a rich WASP boy and a rich Jewish boy might live in the same neighborhood and grow up together as best friends, but when they reached their teens, their lives diverged: Henceforth they would go to different prep schools, different colleges, and end up working in different banks or law firms – some of which were all-gentile, others all-Jewish. Some hotels were “exclusive,” meaning Jews couldn’t stay there, forget about Negroes. And Jews would never be welcome at elite WASP country clubs. Barry Goldwater once was denied entry to a country club golf course – he replied, “I’m only half Jewish! Can’t I play nine holes?”
Have any of you had experiences like this? You’re reading something or watching a movie and some obvious joke is made, or some apparently significant point is made, and you don’t understand what it’s about until years later.
The Simpson’s bit where Lisa traumatizes Bart against cupcakes. There’s the scene where he reaches for the cupcakes, and then falls to ground twitching. I had no idea that this was a spoof of ‘A Clockwork Orange’, and never noticed how much the cupcakes looked like breasts, until someone here wrote about it.
It was already one of my favorite bits, even though I didn’t get the reference!
Another Simpsons reference I didn’t get until later:
It’s in the episode “Bart Simpsons vs. Australia”. Early on he’s calling all of these countries in the southern hemisphere to test the Coriolis Effect to prove Lisa wrong. One call he makes shows an old Adolf Hitler going to his carphone. A man rides by in a bike and says, “Buenos noches, mein feuher!” I didn’t get this on several levels (for instance–Germany isn’t in the southern hemisphere, why are they showing Hitler alive…I don’t get it) until I watched the movie “The Boys From Brazil” a couple of years ago.
I don’t understand why I didn’t get the joke because I had known that “The Boys From Brazil” was about Hitler clones before I ever saw the movie and I had seen the Simpsons episode more than a few times!
Q. Do you have a match (A fellow asks his friend for a little piece of wood that catches on fire)?
A. Not since Superman died (His friend misunderstands, thinking that the fellow is asking if he has an equal. He has no equal since Superman died)
Around 1960, when I was about 10, I saw the Ernie Kovacs shows being broadcast at the time. I saw a skit that I thought was moderately funny. It had no dialog and was set to music I didn’t recognize.
I saw the skit again one evening in 1977 when it was broadcast on PBS, and I’ll describe it fully now. I must emphasize, I now recognized the music. The music started out quietly and spooky. A surgical operation was beginning, and the usual visual cliches were used.
[spoiler]This went on for a minute or two, when the music suddenly became lively, and the doctors and nurses appeared to be laughing under their masks. Then the music became triumphant, and the camera revealed not an operating room, but a dining room table, and the operation was really the carving of a roast turkey.
The next day at work, after morning break, I thought to myself, “Hmm, that sketch was funny. Operating room, roast turkey, music by Igor Stravinsky from his ballet “The Firebird”. Yeah that was…” Then, out loud I screamed “OH NOOOOOOO!!!”
It took me over twelve hours to make the connection between “roast turkey” and “Firebird”, the real point of the joke!
At one time I e-mailed my story to his widow, Edie Adams, via the Ernie Kovacs Fan Club. She got a big kick out of it.[/spoiler]
There’s an exchange in the Firesign Theater’s “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers”:
Adolf: Where’s Georgie?
Eleanor: He’s upstairs making Porcelina* make the bed.
cut to
Porcelina: Oh, Georgie! Oh, Georgie! Oh, Georgie!
Eleanor (calling upstairs): George? George Tirebiter?
George: Coming, mother.
Now, I knew that George and Porcelina were supposed to be having sex, but it was quite some time before I realized that Georgie’s line was something other than a reference to the old Henry Aldritch radio shows**.
*I forget her actual name, so I’m using this.
**And, yes, I was one of the few of my generation who knew about Henry Aldritch.
I grew up on his movies and always loved them, but as a young kid I only understood the sophomoric potty-humor and puns.
Later, I guess starting around the age of 10 or 12 I started to get more of the adult humor.
Then much later I finally started to get the Jewish humor. See, I grew up in North Carolina and never even met a Jew until I went to Miami when I was 20. I barely even knew what a Jew was other than that they believe in the Old Testament but not the New Testament, which meant basically nothing to me because I didn’t believe in either one.
I don’t get it. Who was Henry Aldritch? And what does this bit refer to if not Henry Aldritch? I have the album you’re quoting (“Where’s your school spirit?” “In the backseat! Want a snort?”), but I thought the skit was based on the Andy Hardy movies with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. (None of which I’ve ever seen, except by way of a Carol Burnett parody skit, but some things you just know about, you know?)
Animaniacs had an entire episode that was basically an Apocalypse Now parody. I didn’t get it at the time, as I was 10 or 11, and I didn’t see the movie for another 7 or 8 years.
There was a bit in the Coneheads movie where one of them takes a condom out of its package, puts it into his mouth and begins chewing (mistaking it for chewing gum), even inflating it (trying to blow bubbles) a couple times. I was eight or ten at the time, watching this with my entire family and extended family (it was Thanksgiving or Mothers’ Day or somesuch), and at this point in the movie I burst out laughing.
Everyone (well, the adults at least) looked at me with this embarassed look on their faces, and one of my parents said, “What’s so funny?”
I said, “Don’t you get it? He thinks it’s gum, but it’s really a BALLOON!!! AHAHAHA!!!”
It’s never been mentioned again. Didn’t figure it out until I caught the movie again on TV a couple years later.