The Eternal Gag:

The timelessness of body humour

​Why is the lowest hanging fruit always the most tempting? Probably because it's the easiest to get. Since the dawn of humour, bad jokes about the body have proliferated.  From bawdy, to raunchy, to downright rude, base humour gets right to the heart of what it means to be human. It zeros in on the more unpleasant and indelicate aspects of life: urges, purges, and the parts we would often prefer to keep private. 

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Humour about the body is so effective and enduring because we are all the literal butt of the joke. We cringe at bathroom humour, yet know intimately where it's coming from. Such humour preys on the conceptual boundaries we carefully construct to separate ourselves from the broader kingdom of beasts. It knocks us down to size, and in doing so reminds us that our perceived superiority is merely the sum of less grandiose parts.   

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