Reverse engineering jokes

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on April 22nd, 2010

We read the rest of the Institute of World Politics essay on ridicule as an instrument in the war on terror. It’s good reading.

One of the references was to Castro, from Luis E. Aguilar’s “Chistes”-– Political Humor in Cuba, published in 1989.

Jokes and contempt know no philosophy and a good laugh, even of the gallows humor variety, spread virally, is almost impossible to control. Russian émigré comedian Yakov Smirnov often referred to the Soviet government’s “Department of Jokes” that censored all spoken and written humor. While we have found no evidence of a Soviet unit with that specific name, we do know that the Communist Party Central Committee’s Propaganda Department and the KGB Fifth Chief Directorate respectively set and enforced ideological discipline in which a “Department of Jokes” or its equivalent would reside. “No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled,” Czechoslovakian novelist Milan Kundera wrote in The Joke, “because laughter is the rust that corrodes every thing.”

Fidel Castro understood the principle when, six months after seizing power in 1959, he had signs placed in all official buildings that read, “Counter-revolutionary jokes forbidden here.” One of the first Cuban publications that Castro shut down was Zig Zag, a magazine of humor.

Upon reading this, we looked up “Chistes,” but did not find it. However, we put it together that “chistes” is Spanish for “joke.” At least we think it is. At least it seems to be to Cubans.

We did find a bunch of websites devoted do jokes… all in Spanish. One of them, called “Chistes Cubanos,” had nothing but Cuban jokes– jokes told by Cubans, mainly to ridicule Fidel Castro.

We hit Google’s “Translate this page” button and hilarity ensued… but not because the jokes were particularly riotous (some were!), but because the translation was, in many cases, flawed. We then read a few aloud and tried to reverse engineer the joke and determine just what the punchline was.

Here’s our favorite, called “MOSCOW CIRCUS”:

A Cuban wanted to escape from the island and he came off with the Moscow Circus, visiting the island said. To make your plan monkey dressed up and went into the cage of animals. I was already leaving the island with the circus, when it gets to the tamer and lions in the same cage the monkey!. The type, desperate, starts yelling HELP, HELP! and try to remove the monkey suit, when one of the lions he says: – Twitter, be quiet or we fuck off the island at all!.

We’re still stumped.

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