Why did the chicken cross the road?

aurora

ik was als een bum geboren, ik leef als een bum,
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Was it really to get to the other side in the literal sense of going from one side of a road to another?

I would like to propose that this is not entirely the case. There is at least one other way to interpret this joke: namely, that the "other side", in this instance, is another side dish of chicken.

Imagine that the chicken here has already been cooked in whichever way you, the reader, wish. Personally, I imagine it to have been roasted and to remain a whole chicken. However, as this is a joke, the laws of our reality do not necessarily apply. In this instance, the chicken is still very much alive and capable of thought and movement. Movement such as moving from dish to dish.

The chicken has already been served with one side dish. It could be any side dish that goes with chicken, but let us say for the sake of argument that the side dish is some mashed potatoes. However, a short distance away from the platter upon which the chicken has been served is another platter with the side dish already prepared - in this case, roasted carrots - but with no chicken. Both of these platters are on a table, and between them is a gap which the chicken could use to cross from platter to platter. For our intents and purposes, this is the "road" featured in the original joke.

The chicken, which, I will remind you, has already been cooked yet can still move and think, does not want to be served with the mashed potatoes. It wants to be served with the roasted carrots. Therefore, it wants to get to the other side. To do this, it can simply move itself from one side to the other via getting off the platter, crossing the part of the table that separates it from the desired side dish, and then climbing onto the roasted carrots platter to position itself there.

In this way, the chicken has "crossed the road to get to the other side", but this has all played out in a way completely different to what one might expect from the original joke.

I conclude by saying that there are perhaps even more ways of interpreting this joke beyond what I have outlined here, an interpretation I consider to be robust. This is but one of them.
 
TheSnoom said:
Hello Smogoff, I have a quick query.
Let’s say hypothetically I was somewhere in Moscow, and hypothetically I was running away from the hypothetical Russian and Italian mob because I hypothetically hit their bosses with a hypothetical car. So hypothetically I’m in my hypothetical hotel room on the top floor of a 30 floor building. Hypothetically if all I have is a bar of soap, a golf club, some hemorrhoid wipes, a small dog, some pillows, and a Glock 9mm, and the mob is surrounding the building, hypothetically how fucked am I? Hypothetically speaking
Click to expand...
 
Interesting interpretation. The visual of a cooked chicken being a prima donna about its "side" is truly sublime. I tip my trillby to you, ma'am. Like you, I have a fondness for this joke. In fact, it is one of my favorite pieces of literature and I've thought it at about length. Here's my take:

Let us start with what crossing a road means. You start at one of the parallel sides to the road, and progress to the other. Simple. Yet, this is not really what a road is for, is it? In fact, the presence of a road makes this more difficult than if there was nothing there at all! No, a road is for traveling; to cross it is to not use it for its intended purpose.

Now let us examine the animal. A chicken is the archetypal bird, but more specifically than that it is the emblem of cowardice. I then propose that the titular chicken is no animal at all, but a person who is habitually cowardly. And what do cowards do? Nothing - that is the act of cowardice! To go back to the road, that is essentially what crossing a road is - nothing. It is entirely unrelated to what could be defined as progress along a road.

With the premise established, let's move on to the punchline. "To get to the other side." Hah! If one of my students wrote this tautological fluff I'd fail them in an instant. But I think this is entirely by design. That said tautological fluff is the only reason that can be mustered for crossing a road is evidence enough that there is no real reason to cross a road. Thus, I believe that the purpose of this joke is to condemn cowardice. In essence, the chicken is the joke. Shed your fear of progress, young chicken, and start making real action - see what lies down the road of life.
 
I argue that the joke outlined by this thread is, in fact, a stellar example of post-modern comedy, but that it is (ironically enough) hampered by its own popularity.

You see, the joke is deceptively simple. Why does anyone cross a road? The answer is certainly not "to stay on the same side from whence one came" - that would be foolish and contradictory. We can also rule out the answer "to stop at some point in the middle, on neither this side nor the other" - to my mind, this does not imply that the road has been crossed, thus wholly betraying the central premise upon which the exercise is built! Therefore, the only logical answer must surely be "to reach the opposite side of the road, in some capacity" - which can, of course, be simplified to the form as it is classically expressed.

The punchline, then, can be nothing else if it is to conform to our view of existence, built as it is on empirical evidence (NB: for the purpose of this exercise, I am assuming a revised variation of the Descartian model, whereby the only certain a priori knowledge is the famous Cogito in its simplest form) - to cross a road, one must inevitably reach the other side. But how does this connect us to the rest of the joke? And, perhaps more importantly, from whence does the Funny come?

To answer that, we must first look to the very concept of a joke, specifically the traditional one-two punch of a structure. This system hinges to an almost comical degree upon some sort of shock value or twist within the punchline - the answer to the question proposed by the set-up - and, as such, requires to surprise the joke's recipient. Our joke, with its deeply obvious and necessarily true punchline, would seem to subvert this entirely; is it thus bereft of any and all comic value?

Well, no. The joke expressed above is a magnificent example of an anti-joke, whereby the audience's expectations are subverted entirely; instead of a traditionally funny punchline, predicated upon (e.g.) wordplay or common ridicule, the only logical and true answer is laid out in stark form. This, in and of itself, is funny - the very idea of a joke is being toyed with, averted for the sake of an even bigger, overarching comic thrust! In this way, the joke is a spectacular ideal, a dazzling representation of an alternative comedy route - in a sense, crossing its own road into a brighter future!

But this crossing of the comedic Rubicon is, as it stands, widely misrepresented and misunderstood. Somehow, despite the very concept of an anti-joke being predicated on an innate understanding of joke structure, our joke is often one of the very first made available to students and spectators of the comic arts. What sense does this make? If one has no knowledge of the Funny beyond this joke, then the joke simply does not function as intended! All one could take from it is that, yes, even in the realm of comedy, the simple laws of metaphysics hold true. What sort of comedy is that? It simply does not work - our current timeframe strangles the joke, beats it to death before it can be truly understood by the audience it so desperately craves. This cannot continue!

So what are we to do? Well, in truth, I do not know. How can a joke be stopped? The only real solution I see is to stop its telling to children, at least until the point at which they are able to understand its central conceit. This, however, would be nigh- impossible to impose; there seems to be no way forward. Barring a large cultural shift, I rather fear that the joke will continue to be trodden down, its true genius lost to the masses, those glazen-eyed, slack-jawed cattle we call the public.

To sum up, I state that the cultural dominance of this supreme anti-joke inadvertently renders it almost pointless; we must simply resign ourselvea to this going forwards, and hope that the public find their way to anti-jokes regardless.
 
By Subverting The Anti-Joke “Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road” Has Become The First Anti-Anti-Joke

why would you ever tell this joke? there’s no reason to, it’s just too far out there. but it would be funny
 
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