Italian joke

Three business men go to Switzerland for a meeting. One is American, one is German, and the third is Italian. While they are eating, they hear "ring, ring" and the American twists his pinkie and puts his thumb to his ear and starts talking. [the joke teller should do this] The Italian's jaw drops:

"what is that?"

"why, that's my cellular phone...I just had a little computer chip installed into my little finger and my thumb, and when it rings, all I have to do is twist my finger and talk into it."

The Italian doesn't say anything...Five minutes later, again they hear, "prrr,prrr" and the German twists his earlobe and says, "hello....OK, thank you very much."

The Italian can't believe what he just saw, so the German explains too that this is just a very small cellular phone that's just a computer chip installed in his ear. When it rings, he just twists it and talks.

The Italian doesn't say anything, but five minutes later, he farts.

"Excuse me guys...a fax is arriving."

ANALYSIS

I heard this joke about four years ago, in the summer of 1993, in Rome. It was told to me by my father's best friend, the Marquee Paolo del Penino. Paolo, like my father, is an old Italian aristocrat who rejected traditional values in favor of living a good life and criticizing certain backward qualities in the Italian mentality. He told this joke at a dinner when someone showed up with a tiny cellular phone.

In fact, to fully appreciate the joke, one should be aware of Italians' obsession with cellular phones as a status symbol. Just having a phone is not enough--it has to be small. The smaller your phone, the more important you must be, since new technology is always expensive, and the technology to make smaller and smaller phones is always being updated.

This joke is a reductio ad absurdum of this mentality. The American and the German, whom the Italians always consider to be technologically superior, have gone so far as to have their phones incorporated into their bodies. The Italian doesn't want to be outdone, so he takes a natural bodily function and says it is actually a way he has of receiving faxes.

The trend in Italy for cellular phones has died down a bit, but this joke retains its humor for those who haven't heard it. It also translates well into English, since the imagery of receiving a fax out of one's ass is funny regardless of the aforementioned facts of Italian society. The joke can be told in any situation that jokes are being told, and it is not very "dirty", so it can be told to just about anyone.

Informant Data:

Myself

Male, 22

Italian American Student

Italian, English, Spanish, French

Berkeley, California

October 20, 1997