How do you make a dead baby float?

How do you make a dead baby float?
Take your foot off its head.

I couldn’t help staring at the web page that I had just opened up with pure regret and disgust. Why would anyone find this sort of joke funny? Yet as I ran through the rest of the Google page, I found it hard to ignore the tiny line of words “About 63,800,000 results (0.17 seconds)” glaring at me directly below the search phrase “dead baby joke”. Ten seconds later, I rapidly typed in the phrase “Chinese humor” and pressed search. Google sent back “About 18,800,000 results (0.36 seconds)”.

While the jokes themselves struck me as bad taste, I found it amusing that these sorts of jokes flourish in such large numbers in the United States. Is it because only Americans are capable of comprehending dark humor? I believe not. Take out the revolting parts, the “joke” in the “dead baby” series isn’t really clever and requires only very basic common sense to understand. It would also be silly to say that it is of cultural or historical significance to Americans like many jokes about the American Dream are. The “dead baby” jokes appeal to only a limited proportion of the population, and it is not hard to find people in America who would dislike it as much as I do. So why is this sort of dark humor that is enjoyed by only a minority can be so well known and widely spread in the United States? As I came to this question, I couldn’t help picturing what the fate of such jokes would be had they originated in China.

Other than in philosophy or biology class where discussion of the topic is obligatory, people in China, especially the elderly, avoid talking about death. When such a topic becomes inevitable, we speak with full respect and politeness, always careful to use the words “deceased” and “passed away” rather than “died.” Under such conditions, you can probably picture the consequences a poor kid who happened to come up with a “dead baby” joke would suffer if the joke ever slips into the ears of his parents, teachers or other elderly. This would be dealt as a serious assault on morality. Even if the kid managed to sneak past the elderly and post the joke onto the web, the “super efficient” Chinese government online security people would probably list the joke into its filter system before it has the chance to spread and affect the morality of other Chinese youngsters.

The emphasis on individualism and freedom that constitutes an important part of American culture has not only produced distinctively American jokes, but has also to a significant degree, tolerated the existence and spread of particular types of humor that may not be accepted by the general public. Thus, the proliferation of “dead baby” jokes in the United States does not necessarily imply that its popularity is due to a lot of Americans who find the jokes funny. Is there a chance that the millions of youngsters in China who have become increasingly open to all sorts of culture and ideas would also enjoy the jokes? Possibly, but we won’t be able to find out, at least not for now.