Steve Hofstetter’s joke compilation, Student Body Shots is representative of all that is wrong with college humor.
The title claims the book is a ‘sarcastic look’ at college life, which would be true if by ‘sarcastic’ it means, ‘lame jokes no one thinks are funny.’
Well, some people might think these quips are funny, but these are the same people who think ‘MAD TV’ is better than ‘Saturday Night Live’ and that ‘Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo’ was a good idea. Are you going to trust their judgment?
Although a mercifully short 100 pages, Student Body Shots is Seinfeldian observational humor gone wrong. It ends up being more of a long rant by Captain Obvious with painfully stretched punch lines and horrible, horrible puns. The ‘jokes’ are simply things everyone already knows.
Take for instance this zinger. Hofstetter writes, ‘I heard someone say ‘boys will be boys.’ Good otherwise they’d have been named wrong.’ I’ll let the sheer failure of that joke stand without comment. In fact, I read the whole book and didn’t laugh once. No silent chuckles. Not even any smiles.
On the title page, Hofstetter quotes ‘The Simpsons’ by claiming ‘It’s funny cause it’s true.’ This is perhaps the worst manipulation of a classic Simpsons’ quote I’ve ever seen. It is, in fact, not funny, Steve, because it’s base, trite, and boring.
The book is divided into sections filled with unrelated one or two sentence jokes. Some sections are appropriate for college humor, like Hooking Up, Classes and Professors.
However, a whole section is dedicated to one-liners about prescription glasses. This was following jokes about the weather.
To make matters worse, the book’s foreword is written by Rider Strong, who you may remember as Eric, the quirky older brother from ‘Boy Meets World.’ Oh, wait. That’s right. He’s not funny either.
The jokes rely on hackneyed college stereotypes the obvious cracks at Greek life and the clichés about college students as drunk, poor and dirty. He also makes jokes no one else understands about Columbia University, where he went to school.
He writes, ‘It’s weird when everyone in sorority dresses the same during rush as a symbol of unity. Unless they’re wearing bikinis. Then it’s pretty cool.’ Hey Beavis, he said bikinis. Huh huh. Huh huh.
In the bigger picture, what is wrong with this book is representative of what is wrong with college humor as a whole. Producers, writers and comedians all insult our intelligence. They see us as beer-soaked, freeloading messes. I’m sure at Columbia University, where Hofstetter is from, this is hardly the case. Even here at BU, the average SAT score is quite high. There are very few of us who came to college for the beer and freebies.
However, Hollywood moviemakers continue to make movies for this stereotypical co-ed. Here’s the Hollywood recipe for hit college movie. Cue stereotypical college students, scrounging for money in the couch crevices or passed out somewhere. Add some obligatory jokes about bodily functions, season heavily with crotch kicks and several boob shots and marinate in cheap beer. Voila.
Take Animal House. Take American Pie. Take Van Wilder. Point proven.
Perhaps there’s just nothing funny about college. Or maybe it’s just that no one’s been able to capture it yet: the insanity of gorging oneself with greasy Late Nite and then complaining about the Freshman 15, the innocence and cluelessness of the freshmen as they stock up on shower shoes and BU logo sweatshirts and the blatant ineffectiveness of T travel, to name a few. And until someone captures the real college life, we’ll have to settle for the beer-battered stereotypes.
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