Arnold Zwicky's Blog

My 7/22 posting “Oh that’s good” looked at Archie Campbell’s That’s Good / That’s Bad joke routine from the tv show Hee Haw. Now Tim Evanson points out a somewhat later appearance of the routine, in an episode of The Simpsons.

(#1) From “Treehouse of Horror III”, The Simpsons S4 E5 (first aired 10/29/92)

At the House of Evil “YOUR ONE STOP EVIL SHOP”, the set-up for the routine:

Homer: Do you sell toys?

Owner: We sell forbidden objects from places men fear to tread. We also sell frozen yogurt, which I call “Frogurt”.

And then the routine:

Owner: Take this object [a Krusty the Clown doll], but beware it carries a terrible curse…

Homer: [worried] Ooooh, that’s bad.

Owner: But it comes with a free Frogurt!

Homer: [relieved] That’s good.

Owner: The Frogurt is also cursed.

Homer: [worried] That’s bad.

Owner: But you get your choice of topping!

Homer: [relieved] That’s good.

Owner: The toppings contains [the food preservative] potassium benzoate. [Homer stares, confused] That’s bad.

Homer: [worried] Can I go now?

In a flickr illustration:

(#2)

The joke routine has then been popularized twice so far in American popular culture. It almost surely had some history in the US before Archie Campbell, probably in vaudeville, but I don’t know anything about it. Nor do I know anything about appearances of the routine (or close analogues of it) in other English-speaking cultures, or in other languages. (Just to remind you that this routine is distinct from the Good News / Bad News routine.)

Bonus: the wily Chinese ancient. A complex stereotype, realized in popular culture in many forms — Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan, in particular. And now the wily and ominous House of Evil shopkeeper:

(#3)

Some features to note: long hair, drooping mustache, pointed beard, and bushy eyebrows, all white with age; yellow eyes; nearly toothless (only a few yellowed teeth remaining); long pointed fingernails, like claws; a noble hat resembling Qing Dynasty headgear, with a gold button on top; traditional jacket and trousers, in Chinese red; socks and sandals. Missing from this image: the long pipe — presumably an opium pipe — that the shopkeeper is smoking in the video clip.

As for the pale blue skin tone, I don’t know — maybe a signal that he’s a cartoon character and not a representation of a real person. Like having four cartoon fingers on each hand instead of five.

This entry was posted on August 26, 2019 at 10:02 am and is filed under Context, Formulaic language, Jokes, Movies and tv, Pop culture, Pragmatics, Race and ethnicity, Routines and rituals, Stereotyping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.