The most offensive joke in history, “The Aristocrats,” was weaponized in a documentary film directed by Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette, the talking member of Penn and Teller. By then “The Aristocrats” was at least fifty years old, and was a legendary after-hours joke that comedians shared but never performed in public, usually vying to see who could spin the most disgusting version of the story.
Though “The Aristocrats” spread through the vaudeville/comedians’ world like mycelium, it didn’t poke its fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) head above ground until it starred in that movie, which did a limp $6,132,550 at the box office, a number that indicates most people avoided the movie like it was a poisonous mushroom, even though it featured more than one hundred of the biggest names in entertainment, from George Carlin, Whoopi Goldberg, and Drew Cary to Gilbert Gottfried, Bob Saget, Paul Reiser, and Sarah Silverman telling, analyzing, and deconstructing the infamous joke.
If you are one of those fungus-phobic individuals, fear not. You are about to lose your virginity, and it won’t hurt a bit, unless you bust a gut laughing.
“The Aristocrats” begins with a man walking into a talent agent’s office. “I’ve got this great new act that I think you’re going to love,” the man says.
The talent agent asks him to describe the act, and the man begins, “First my wife and I walk out on stage. We take off our clothes. We commence to have torrid, no-holes-barred, blood-drawing sex . . ..” The man continues to describe in the vilest language imaginable acts of incest, bestiality, corporaphilia, sodomy, cock fingering, pedophilia, and worse. These acts involve not only the man and his wife but also their two, pre-teen children, the family dog (who in some versions is crippled), and one or more of the couple’s parents and/or grandparents, at least one of whom is in a wheelchair. When the man finally stops, the agent says, “Wow! That’s an unusual act. What do you call yourselves?”
“The Aristocrats.”
Next Rachel Maddow: Why lesbians find “The Aristocrats” joke offensive.
© The fine fucking print: The editorial content on this page is fictional. It is presented for satirical and/or entertainment purposes only. We cannot be held responsible for the actions of anyone who takes this sort of shit seriously. We also do not wish to be held responsible for any copyrighted material that sneaked onto this page when we weren’t looking. If you can prove that anything on this page belongs rightfully to you, we will happily take it down and return the unused portion. No questions asked.
