2002 FIFE FOLKLORE CONFERENCE EXPLORES HUMOR ˜ PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS OFFERED
What’s so funny, and why? This year‚s Utah State University Fife Folklore Conference, June 3-7, might answer those questions as participants and presenters explore the nature and significance of humor in our lives. As part of the conference, two public events will be offered. On Tuesday, June 4, University of Utah professor Meg Brady delivers “From Parrots to Potatoes: Discovering Humor in All Those Old Familiar Places,” at 7 p.m. On Thursday, June 6, Jim Kimball will present “An Evening with Uncle Golden,” at 7:30 p.m. Both events take place in the Eccles Conference Center Auditorium on the USU campus, and both are free.
“The Evening with Uncle Golden‚ should be especially interesting to the local community,” said USU professor of English, folklorist, and conference organizer Barre Toelken. “Even people who are not Mormons have heard the J. Golden Kimball stories. He was kind of a maverick and always had something good to say, but very often said it using swear words. He had a real sparkly personality; people loved him. He died in the 1930s, and people are still telling stories about him.
When asked how this year’s topic for the Fife conference was selected, Toelken responded that “humor was bound to come up sometime. Folklore and humor lets us hit a wide variety of culturally different materials, and at the same time focus on a topic that‚s interesting and that everybody knows at least a little bit about.”
“It will be a week of fun as well,” continued Tolken. “That doesn’t always come as part of the guaranteed load of an academic class.”
Toelken‚s interests lie in Native American humor.
“Different cultures tell different kinds of jokes, and one of the ways you can get access to the way in which a culture responds to things like what‚s normal and what‚s not, is to take a look at the things they joke about,” he said.
Native Americans tell jokes about issues that provide incongruities for them, including relations between Indians and whites, said Toelken.
“Just the other day I heard this one,” continued Toelken. “A Native American grandfather takes his young grandson out to the edge of a cliff and raises his hand and gestures across the whole country side and says, One day, my grandson, none of this will belong to you.‚
“It‚s the stereotypic scene where you think somebody’s going to pass on a legacy to a kid, but this is a legacy made up of land that was stolen.”
Professor of anthropology at UCLA Elliot Oring will open the conference Monday, June 3. Oring, an expert on the folklore and function of humor, will present a talk entitled “What is Humor?” According to Oring, “the close examination of humor raises some interesting intellectual questions about a practice we engage in almost every day and yet don‚t give much thought to.”
Oring acknowledges that it is something of a mystery why we find some things funny.
“Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer, once wrote a short story on the origin of humor in the world, the conclusion of which was that it was of extraterrestrial origin,” said Oring. “Finding an appropriate incongruity is at the core of recognizing and perceiving humor. For something to be recognized as humorous there has to be something there that is incongruous in some respect, but appropriately related.”
Oring offered as an example the joke about the man who worked in the garment district who was walking through the garden with his son. The boy points to a flower and asks, “What kind of flower is that?” to which the father responds, “What am I? A milliner?”
“What’s incongruous here,” said Oring, “is that the question the child asks is perfectly appropriate. And the father’s answer, though seemingly incongruous, is also appropriate, since in his business, the garment industry, only those who make ladies‚ hats would be likely to be familiar with floral types.”
Other speakers and topics for this year’s Fife Folklore Conference include USU professor of English Jan Roush on military humor; USU professor of English Jeannie Thomas on “Dumb Blondes and Dan Quayle: The Construction of Stupidity;” University of Wisconsin professor of Folklore and Scandinavian Studies Jim Leary on “Farmer Jokes and Farmer Joking;” and USU poet and folklorist Star Coulbrooke on “The Humor of Menopause.”
To register for the Fife Folklore Conference, call 797-0423. For more information about the conference, contact Barre Toelken at 797-2728.