Now What?

“How can we be so serious with the world when the world itself is so ridiculous?”
~ Kakuzō Okakura

Inspired by Kakuzō Okakura, a Zen Buddhist, writing in the early twentieth century, I set out to create a series of fine digital prints at the height of the pandemic’s 2020 summer surge, consistent with the suffocating sense of absurdity enveloping us during that uncertain time. 

I wanted to infuse this work, titled HINDSIGHT [is 2020], with this same affect of hallucinatory befuddlement. Thus, in its statement of purpose, I planned to include a joke to underline this theme. So I set out on Google to find one.

My first search turned up “The Funniest Joke in the World”. This was the title of a 1969 Monty Python sketch about a joke so funny that anyone who heard it would literally laugh themselves to death. 

Not bad, I thought, considering the fact that by this time so many in the United States were already dead from COVID19, having simply refused to be vaccinated – believing, unfortunately, the virus to be nothing but a joke. 

After due consideration, though, the joke I finally selected would be the similarly titled “The World’s Funniest Joke”: winner of a British research project, aimed at isolating the one joke, worldwide, across linguistic, cultural, and demographic boundaries, that made the most people laugh. 

Appropriately, it served both as a joke and, in a larger sense, as an allegory, representing the world’s slapstick response to the pandemic. And, in that sense, to me it became a joke that was no longer a joke at all. Rather, it had transmogrified into a trenchant allegory, distilled into a few simple lines of text, a cautionary tale whose moral is cleverly revealed by way of a non sequitur at the end.

E.B. White wrote that “Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better, but the frog dies as a result.” In a world, already ridiculous enough, perhaps, spending so much time ruminating over how to turn a joke into something greater than the sum of its parts is carrying things a little too far. Perhaps, a joke, in the end, should simply be just that, a joke: a sow’s ear, never a purse. Or…not. Maybe, instead, the secret of every great joke lies in its ability to resonate with some deeper meaning, tuned to common human concerns and shared experiences, meanings meant to be discovered if only one were given to look beyond the laughter.

Which brings us back around to “The World’s Funniest Joke”: appended to an artist’s statement, written for the sake of propriety and tradition that includes, nonetheless, mention of the extermination and dismemberment of a metaphorical frog. 

No matter, “The World’s Funniest Joke” justifiably stands, or pratfalls, on its own merits, and, if for nothing else, it makes a suitable read for those who relish a good punchline. 

Without further ado, then, here, ladies and gentlemen, it is:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other hunter whips out his cell phone and calls emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?" 

 The operator says, “Calm down, calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." 

The phone then goes silent, after which the operator hears a gunshot. Some seconds later, the caller is back on the phone.  

“Okay”, he says, “now what?”