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‘Why the Boys Miss America’
That was the caption that Milt Guss, a newspaper guy with whom I worked in the Far East, wrote for this photograph of Bob Hope and a Miss America performing at a USO show at a firebase in Vietnam in 1970.
It was a great caption — and Milt was a great caption writer — because it captured the moment beautifully in only five words. But it also worked because of the clever double play on the word Miss.
I bring this up to the erudite readership at TMV because I’m interested in whether anyone is aware of the term for this kind of word play and whether any studies have been done about how the brain processes it.
Lemme know, okay? Any links are appreciated, as well as other examples.
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16 Responses to “‘Why the Boys Miss America’”
Perhaps “mondegreen” applies here (although not quite, as Miss America stays the same).
Anyhow, a mondegreen is the “mishearing” of a phrase in which the brain interpolates other similar sounding material to create meaning.
Classic one: Jimi Hendrix’s “Scuse me while I kiss the sky” being misheard as “Scuse me while I kiss this guy”.
Musicians and writers will often play upon this mishearing to create material with alternate meaning. William Safire was a popularizer of this type of word play, and collected examples.
Links never seem to work for me here, but there’s a huge amount of material if one googles for it.
Interesting post, Shaun.
Maybe you’re thinking of the double entendre.
Marlowe:
Thank you for the insight. A mondegreen may be in the same family as world play like the cited photo caption that triggers the brain to say “Ah ha!” and instantly decipher dual meanings, or in the case of really clever writers and readers, triple meanings and beyond.
What I am looking for — and will take your advice to Google — are studies that suss out the neurological sequences that led a reader who picked up that 1970 newspaper, looked at the photo and then Milt’s caption and got the double meaning.
Incidentally, my favorite mondegreen concerns the Grateful Dead song “Looks Like Rain” and the line ” . . . like street cats making love . . . ” which an amazing number of otherwise sentient Dead Heads have always thought was ” . . . street cars making love . . . ” which kinda makes sense since the Dead were San Francisco based.
‘Course then there’s also the classic line “inna gadda da vida”, and I think we have a pretty good idea of the chemically influenced neurological sequencing that led to that transliteration of the phrase “In the Garden of Eden” LOL
Daniel:
Indeed.
CStanley:
Geez! I always thought that’s what it meant. (!!!)
Lest this get totally out of control, methinks the all-time greatest rock mondegreen is “There’s a bathroom on the right” in Creedence Clearwater’s “Bad Moon Rising” instead of “There’s a bad moon on the rise.”
BTW, Shaun, I think what you are describing about the Miss America joke is really the basis of all humor. Words, phrases or ideas have a literal meaning but then the process of ‘getting’ the joke is the realization that there’s a second meaning. I don’t know if there’s a specific term for the exact type of double meaning in this case (Daniel B suggests ‘double entendre’ but I thought that term was generally used for humor that has a sexual reference- I could be wrong though). In a way, I’d say the play on Miss America is a form of a pun, no?
On brain processing, I know there have been some studies about why certain conditions (stroke, depression, etc) sometimes result in a loss of humor. I recall that the frontal lobes are involved in the cognitive processing part but not sure about the specifics.
Marlowe: thanks for the info on mondegreens, a term I wasn’t familiar with. When I read your explanation I immediately thought of a category of humor that I find very funny, which is when kids mishear words or phrases. I see from Wiki that mondegreen is the correct term for that too.
Shaun, I think you are describing the effects of poor hearing.
…..RICE-A-ROANA!!!
CS-
The sexual reference would be the double innuendo, which in itself is a double innuendo. Since this is a family site, I will refrain from a more graphic explanation.
The OED definites double entendre thusly:
Shaun,
Sorry, I was making a joke. Obviously, not a very funny one.
Daniel:
Not to worry. It’s nice to have a thread that does not contain the words Bush, Gonzalez or loner. At least so far.
Oops, now it does, Shaun.
Shaun said:
Wow! That is a beautiful mondegreen, Shaun. It perfectly resonates with the San Francisco atmosphere…the streetcars bunching up on the line due to delays outside…and lazy afternoon lovemaking beneath drifting clouds of marijuana.
That is the poetic potential of mondegreens, I think. Also, illustrates how the brain connects these things. Maybe you could post that somewhere, as it is a great example I have not heard before.
You’re quite welcome, CStanley. As a kid, I had a horrible inclination for mondegreens. Almost had an alternate universe of words and phrases. I have talked about this with folks in linguistics, who have speculated that it has something to do with growing minds…kids are natural poets in ways.
Well, in thinking a bit more about the kid tendency toward this, Marlowe, it occurred to me that the most common examples are when kids are taught to memorize and recite things that they really don’t understand. There’s the pledge of allegiance (even the title of that gets altered, but the most common one is “One nation, invisible”), and prayers like the “Our Father” (“Our Father, who art in heaven, Harold be thy name”, or my own son’s version which included the line, “King Kong come” instead of “thy kingdom come” LOL)
I guess it still relates to the greater concept, that the listener hears what resonates with him or her which isn’t necessarily what the speaker/writer initially intended to say. But in the case of the kiddisms, it’s specifically often because we’re putting words in their mouths that have to do with ideas or experiences that they haven’t yet learned about.
I can’t add anything but a grateful thanks to all contributors for a respite from the heavy debates smothering the air around uf.