Soudobé dějiny

With Humour on the Lips Across Contemporary History

The subject of the review is the book "Stretnú sa v lietadle…" Politický vtip v druhej polovici 20. storočia a v súčasnosti ["Three Blokes Meet On a Plane..." Political Jokes in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century and Today] by Slovak ethnologist Eva Šipöczová. The reviewer first reminds us that folk humour has long been a privileged object of interest of folklore studies and ethnology and that historiography only recognized its research potential in connection with methodological innovations in the second half of the twentieth century. He points to the basic works on this topic produced in Czech history in recent decades, and then introduces in detail the content of Šipöczová's book and her main findings. Šipöczová's research is based on an ethnological or historical-anthropological perspective. She first situates folk comicality within broader narrative cultural frameworks, then summarizes the genesis of anecdotes as a genre from the remote past to the present, discussing their motivation, targeting, and formal construction. She then studies the "casuistry" and typology of political jokes in Czechoslovak (and, Czech and Slovak) society through the changing times and political conditions up to the present day. In so doing, she proves that folk creativity in this respect by no means disappeared with the end of the communist regime but finds "fertile ground" also in the conditions of democracy. The reviewer considers the last chapter, in which Šipöczová presents an analysis of Internet memes and humour disseminated through the online environment, to be pioneering and particularly inspiring. The added value of the book is the reciting of many contemporary anecdotes.

Keywords: political jokes; folk humour; Czechoslovakia; communism; Czech Republic; Slovakia; historical memory; memes