Sad Attempts at (Insider) Humor Rectified (With Your Aid)

A comment on a thread about (this-is-not-a-theme) another The Narrative hits close to home.  Its author, the self-styled "Cowboy," claims "absolute moral authority," because he's an English professor.  I have my doubts, as might you after you read his riff on Jeff Foxworthy's "You might be a redneck if..." routine:

You might be an English Department professor if...

Before I get started, who says "English Department professor"?  None of the "English Department professors" I know would call themselves or their fellows that.  It's the equivalent of a "knowledgeable" baseball fan complaining about opposing teams "sacrifice walking" Barry Bonds.  Cowboy's unfamiliarity with the lingo gives up the game from the start.  But humor him, as he's about to humor us:

You might be an English Department professor if...

You think Marx was reasonable—

Your last article was on the literary value of a grocery list—

You believe Moby Dick isn't worth reading—

But that the Porky's movies are culturally revealing—

Your superpower is the ability to make students hate great literature—

You think Sylvia Plath is anything other than just sad—

You hate, and I mean really hate, Ted Hughes but can't name one of his poems.

You think the culture wars are over ... and you won.

You think a rifle is the same as a shotgun.

You can look in the mirror and say any of these without cracking up:

"Visual rhetoric."

"Cultural studies."

"Technological literacy."

"Gender studies."

"Queer studies."

"I am a specialist in post-Imperialist Jamaican Feminist and Transgendered Literature."

"I am qualified to teach undergraduate survey course to your undergraduate English Majors."

I'm hard pressed to find a decent entry into this mess of stupidity, so I'll start with the obvious: the Porky's movies are culturally revealing, in that they reveal something about the culture which produced them.  A work need not be artistic to be culturally revealing.  Consider the popularity of the equally (if differently) odious Left Behind series.  It's no more literary than Porky's, but it's certainly culturally revealing, given that its popularity accompanied (or pushed, or was driven by) a swell of evangelicalism. 

Of course, attempting to provide an intelligent account of why popular things are popular, now or historically, falls under the rubric of "cultural studies," i.e. the phrase no one but an "English Department professor" can look in a mirror and utter without laughing.  Like "but shrug ant farm," the phrase is inherently funny.  Only, what's so funny about that? 

Granted, Foxworthy's shtick is inherently unfunny.  I only think this because I'm an elitist, obviously.  I don't know from low humor.  I'm all like "if it lacks the pathos of the Sad Clown, it will win no chuckles from me."  Still, assuming there's a universe in which the likes of Jay Leno are funny, "cultural studies" isn't a funny punchline.  I spent ten minutes looking in the mirror saying it, and not only was it not funny, it got progressively unfunnier before teetering into absurdity as I stood there saying "Chet.  Chet.  Chet." 

Then I laughed.

So I thought we'd be able to generate a Foxworthian list that does Cowboy and Foxworthy one better by actually being funny.  I'll start us off:

You might be a current/future English professor if...

No one understands you when you talk about Rimbaud.

Comments

[happyfeet]

Niceness counts you know. People have feelings, but anyway... Leo Dicaprio played Rimbaud in a movie, so he's not all that obscure. He had to make like he was putting it to David Thewlis. This haunts me.

[happyfeet]

Also, Rimbaud didn't write in English, so English Lit professors really have no business discussing him, you stupidhead.

[SEK]

happyfeet, I must say:

You might be a current/future English professor if...

Niceness counts, you know.

Doesn't quite cut it. We need more strict, stringent, angry, comp. instructors. "Niceness" is a quality that should be limited to grandmothers and puppies. It's not sound criteria for English profs.

As for English profs and Rimbaud, well, just because they ought not be teaching him -- which claim's itself debatable, esp. if you buy into classical theories of liberal education, which includes training in languages other than English -- doesn't mean they don't read him. Most of the folks I know have, and most of the people they've talked to outside "English Department professors" about him are confused.

They're waiting for explosions ... but alas! they never come.

[Adam Kotsko]

There's more than one Porky's movie?! Why was I not informed?

[happyfeet]

Oh. Ok. But you think about what I said mister.

In the spirit of things, I'd say using the word "alas" and decorating it with italics and an exclamation point is very English Department professory. Glenn Reynolds uses the alas thing sometimes, and I always kind of trip over it, cause it's not very law professory.

[Joseph Kugelmass]

(2) Holden Caulfield is described by you as an "anti-hero," but really, deep down, he doesn't strike you so much as an anti-hero as he does a hero that you could be starting tomorrow. Because you already feel that way.

...Honestly, this is the second post now on conservative blogging that has mainly just left me very confused about what conservative bloggers are even talking about or arguing about. The themes come across clearly enough (sorry for commenting here about the Protein Wisdom post rather than the eventual comment on which you based your amusing post), themes like inaccuracy and hypocrisy on the part of the Left, but the counterstrikes are based on such faulty logic that it's hard to grasp them. For example, in one post you have the idea that a contest for hottest DC insider is relevant to the overall quality of American journalism. In another, you have some guy who is apparently thoroughly untroubled about gender roles acting as though all conservatives feel the same way, and then (strangely) bringing teaching into the conversation out of nowhere. Which is how we get to that comment.

[Sisyphus]

You might be a current/future English professor if...

It takes you twenty minutes to figure out you don't mean the same thing as your friends when you say "Of course I like Jameson"

You have ever taken a marker to the "Thank's Come Again" sign on a McDonald's door

You think words have precise meanings and

Care about parsing out what those meanings are

Reading what dead people have written about Tristram Shandy sounds like fun

You have ever written a poem, a filk, or sang something by Emily Dickinson to the tune of "Gilligan's Island"

It pains you deeply when students throw away their essays without reading the comments

You have been caught in the hallways discussing the latest NYT article in terms of rhetorical analysis

You have gone to a Halloween party dressed as your favorite literary character, author, or theorist

(you are "The Crazy English Professor" if you have shown up to teach class dressed as the above)

You can't help making snarky puns on Shakespearean phrases when the context comes up

You can't pay (or find?) your credit card bill but your subscriptions to the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly are up to date (NLR and The Nation work as well)

Likewise you can drop $300 on books in a single trip but you gripe about the cost of an oil change

The poem about the pike makes you smile, "Lovesong" makes you shiver, "Daffodils" makes you cry

(and I have to agree with him that Moby Friggin' Dick is not worth reading. Bleah!)

[Jeff G]

Why didn't you just pose these "doubts" to "Cowboy," Scott?

Oh, and Mr Kugelmass? The whole "I'm at a loss to figure out what conservative bloggers are getting at, given their faulty logic (which there's no need to actually point out, you see - their being conservative, and so the faulty logic, wink wink nudge nudge, being understood by all the right kinds of people as a given" pose is really rather trite.

You may or may not know that Scott here has guest posted at the site. As have other liberals. So you might want to avoid the broad brush.

Or not. The bemused dismissiveness seems to play well here, after all, and one need not trouble a winning formula.

[ben wolfson]

You have ever written a poem, a filk, or sang something by Emily Dickinson to the tune of "Gilligan's Island"

That would be "sung", Mr or Ms Correct-the-Apostrophes.

[tomemos]

Why didn't you just pose these "doubts" to "Cowboy," Scott?

Gosh, why not indeed? The guy took the trouble to write out a whole list of Foxworthy-esque, hyperbolic criticisms. That at least deserves to be taken seriously.

Incidentally, which "humorous" construction will die first--"You might be a _____ if" or "Got _____?"

[Ahistoricality]

(I'm rooting for "Got ____" to die first, and I suspect it'll go the way of "where's the beef?" Foxworthy's thing, whatever else you think about it, is a great way of recycling old jokes and stereotypes and nearly infinitely flexible. Now, on to the fun:)

.... you know what Gertrude Stein said about Hemingway. (bonus points if you care)

.... have ever applied Aristotle's poetics to a movie, cable series or State of the Union speech.

.... have ever read a work from which Shakespeare stole material.

.... are sure there's one author who captures the spirit of every age (and none so well as the one on which you wrote your dissertation).

.... can't imagine not reading recently published "lost" works.

.... have cartoons on your door which lampoon the President as well as those lampooning poor semicolon use.

.... have struggled over the grammar of a "you might be a ______ " joke.

[Sam]

Delurking to add (because this happened to me this week): you have been carrying on a weekly conversation with someone for many years, often on the topics of Coleridge, Plato, or who should win the Booker (and who was robbed) - and just found out they don't actually read books. Ever. Which means perhaps the talk has been one-sided...

[Richard Scott Nokes]

Porky's is, incidently, a Canadian film, and for about two decades wore the mantle of Most Successful Canadian Film Ever! It has since been knocked off by a more recent film, though I can't remember which.

You wrote, "the Porky's movies are culturally revealing, in that they reveal something about the culture which produced them." Agreed. I would also like to add that nothing irritates my Canadian friends and relatives more than seriously discussing what Porky's reveals about their culture, which is of course why I enjoy doing it so much.

Porky's -- the Citizen Kane of Canada. Discuss.

[Karl Steel]

Snapshots from my life, since my semester starts at 8am tomorrow.

...you've not yet read several of the books on your intro to Western Lit course, but you're sure you already know more about them than your students do [in my case: Emma and Moll Flanders]

...you apologize on the first day of a Bible as Literature course for not knowing Greek (here you labor over whether or not you should say "Koine"), Aramaic, or Hebrew, but you're nonetheless sure you know more about the Tanakh than your students who routinely read Hebrew

..you think the very best introduction to a Medieval Lit survey is Chaucer's "The Former Age," whose obscurity you think is best illustrated by the fact that there have been probably fewer than 20 articles published on it in the last 100 years.

[sorry. Not very funny, but certainly very emblematic. I'm no Sisyphus. And Jeff G: it may be "trite," but in this case, as in most: the shoe fits. Have a Ball.]

(and re: Cowboy's profession. I suppose he could be an English Professor. After all, GWB is President. But he's not exactly the brightest bulb in the barrel, the sharpest monkey in the basket, &c. I squabbled with him here and found his reading comprehension skills pretty sad (e.g., compare his comment 36 to my 50).

[Rich Puchalsky]

Jeff G: "You may or may not know that Scott here has guest posted at the site. As have other liberals. So you might want to avoid the broad brush."

It just introduces more confusion to consider why
Scott has ever bothered to do so, given the vapidity of your posts and your commenters. It seems to have originated in a feeling that Atrios was picking on a fellow English dude, and I assume that Scott can't admit that he's since learned that Atrios was correct in this case.

At any rate, I can't suggest more for the thread, not being now nor ever having been an English professor. But with regard to "It takes you twenty minutes to figure out you don't mean the same thing as your friends when you say 'Of course I like Jameson'", I once read most of a Sean McCann Valve post about Bill Burroughs thinking that he was writing about E.R. Burroughs.

[Jonquil]

You have read every single word of any of the following:

* Ralph Roister Doister
* Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia
* The Faerie Queene
* Pamela
* In Memoriam
* The Anatomy of Melancholy
* Trollope's Complete Works

... and enjoyed it.

* You have had students complain bitterly that your course was supposed to be easy, so that they could concentrate on their *real* coursework.

[Joseph Kugelmass]

Jeff G,

The whole "I'm at a loss to figure out what conservative bloggers are getting at, given their faulty logic (which there's no need to actually point out, you see - their being conservative, and so the faulty logic, wink wink nudge nudge, being understood by all the right kinds of people as a given" pose is really rather trite.

Actually, misquoting me (scare quotes and everything) and dropping half my comment (where I do explain what I mean) is pathetic. Yeah, I realize that Scott has posted at Protein Wisdom. The fact that you seem to think Protein Wisdom deserves a gold medal for it doesn't prove much besides the known fact that Scott makes occasional, valuable contributions to political debate online.

[Rich Puchalsky]

"The fact that you seem to think Protein Wisdom deserves a gold medal for it doesn't prove much besides the known fact that Scott makes occasional, valuable contributions to political debate online."

And the other known fact that Scott's model of Internet interaction is the blind stumble into the snake pit.

[Sisyphus]

And the other known fact that Scott's model of Internet interaction is the blind stumble into the snake pit.

He is good at that, isn't he? Makes for entertaining reading.

And I had to look up both Burroughses just now.

[Rohan Maitzen]

You may be an English professor if...

...intermittently everyone wants you to tell them why Jane Austen is so popular (no matter what your actual area of specialization).