Misused: Clucking Funny

As per the main definition, Clucking Funny is about chickens being used as either comic relief or as part of comedy gags. Most of the on-page examples are just "media where a chicken appears at least once", so I went on and I did a wick check. It turned out that:

• 15/50 examples mention comedy scenes featuring chickens, or chicken characters acting as comic relief.
• 2/50 examples mention products where a chicken is one of the main characters or where chickens are involved, but are not comedy relief.
• 33/50 examples are various kinds of ZCEs, such as descriptions of scenes involving chickens that don't mention being comedic, scenes involving chickens being referred to as being funny without explaining what makes them funny and, of course, examples that are literally "chickens exist"

Most of those issues are probably a leftover of when the trope was called Everythings Better With Chickens, so I think a cleanup should be enough.

The best character is always the one-shot disguise.

Opened. I'm good with a simple wick/example clean.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

I'm currently not OK with a simple wick clean, and I'll explain why.

Remember the Animals Played For Laughs thread in Trope Talk? We never came to a definitive conclusion regarding that, but one thing that got brought up was that "animal Played for Laughs" on its own may not be tropeworthy. I recall a few people, notably amathieu13 arguing that the different ways animals played for laughs are what's really tropeworthy. From the discussion(s) (since there technically was more than one):

And especially this quote, since it's relevant to this thread:

The question I have is, as is, is this really tropeworthy? I mentioned Clucking Funny in the OP of that thread actually, along with Quacking Up and Silly Simian (which, depending on how this thread goes, may themselves need TRS.)

Paging ~amathieu13 to see if they have anything to add, since they were instrumental in this conversation and all the quotes I put are from them.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Aug 29th 2022 at 5:10:57 AM

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

"Just clean" proposal isn't somethig that needs TRS, other than asking to take the slot until it's wick cleaned. Beside that...

I think Silly Simian is tropeworthy because Monke are stereotypically funny. Any other animal I wouldn't miss if any was cut or all merged together.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

Honestly, I think this is in the same boat as Everythings Better With Cows, so I'm leaning toward getting rid of it. (Quacking Up would probably be in the same boat, but that's outside this thread's scope.)

The most famous chicken joke ("Why did the chicken cross the road?") chose a chicken completely arbitrarily. You could replace the chicken with any other animal without changing the punchline ("To get to the other side!") and the effect would be the same.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I think someone argued once that the joke uses "chicken" since it's an inherently funny animal, but I don't think that's what's actually going on. Definitely seems random to me.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Maybe we could disambiguate this between Chicken Joke (which I didn't know had its own page), Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!, Cocky Rooster, Tastes Like Chicken, and What's a Henway?.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Might have been me?

I have some vague idea about domestic livestock being "inherently funny" due to the combination of innocuous (non-threatening, well-known, typically just hanging around in a field) and rare (surprising to encounter them outside of agrarian areas) that makes them simultaneously generic and specific and consequently useful in a Straight Man role. (I might have gotten this from The Far Side at some point, actually.) But they don't all need their own pages if that's the case.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Aug 29th 2022 at 1:25:47 PM

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Chicken jokes are funny because chickens are inherently funny is circular reasoning and one of the reasons I don’t see how this is tropeworthy. (Not disagreeing with you Warjay just explaining my thoughts)

I don’t think this can be solved with a simple cleanup.

CSP Cleanup Thread | All that I ask for ... is diamonds and dance floors

lol, to be clear I wasn't saying I agreed with the stance, just that it was a stance I've heard before. Devil's Advocate and all

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Thanks for the ping. Besides what you've quoted from my previous posts in the Animals Played For Laughs thread, I have nothing else to add other than much like with everythings better with cows, I don't think this is much of a trope and can be cut / dsiambig'd as Gaston suggested here

Any specific reoccurring patterns that might exist can be pushed to Animal Stereotypes, one of its many subpages, or if the page for that particular "joke" doesn't exist, launched at TLP.

ETA: also several people have tried making the "these animals are inherently funny" argument, you can see it in the Everythings Better With Cows TRS thread starting from here

Edited by amathieu13 on Aug 30th 2022 at 5:14:41 AM

Quacking Up, Clucking Funny and especially Silly Simian are tropeworthy, because these animals are often seen as inherently funny and goofy-looking, so it's not just a random "species + trait" pattern.

Specifics: They walk bipedally, which is similar to humans, but still a bit off, so it looks funny for us; the sound they make is also seen as comical (it's a very common gag that a scary-looking creature makes a clucking sound as Nightmare Retardant).

Edited by Snicka on Aug 30th 2022 at 5:25:18 PM

Question then: shouldn't we then be troping specifically how their appearance makes them funny, rather than just them being funny inherently? Because as written Clucking Funny, Quacking Up, and Silly Simian currently cover "animal is inherently funny" rather than "this is how the animal is funny/this trait is associated with the animal for humor".

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

I had the same train of thought and I edited my previous post before I saw your response. See the specifics up there.

During the Everythings Better With Cows TRS thread amathieu13 linked, that exact point was actually brought up for that trope. The argument against it was that tropes like Everythings Better With Cows and Clucking Funny end up becoming trope amalgamations of several separate potentially tropable ideas.

FWIW, we could still go with your option, which would probably require a description rewrite. As is, the points you raised aren't really covered by the current description.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Aug 30th 2022 at 11:30:50 AM

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

I actually think that the very fact that "X is inherently funny" makes "X is funny" not tropeworthy. If those animals are inherently funny then it's essentially chairs.

Now, someone in-universe commenting on them being inherently funny could be a trope.

Edited by kundoo on Aug 30th 2022 at 8:37:28 AM

I disagree with that reasoning. Not every chicken or monkey ever appearing on screen is automatically funny - we have Cocky Rooster and Maniac Monkeys too. By "inherently funny" I meant that they have certain traits that can make them funny, which can be played up in certain works for comedy purposes.

Ok, so that's the start. That means the trope should be something like "this trait X has is exaggerated for comedic effect" rather than "X is funny".

For example Maniac Monkeys is not just about monkeys. It's about monkeys being devious. But Clucking Funny is about chickens... clucking?

Edited by kundoo on Aug 30th 2022 at 9:01:57 AM

Exactly this. Which is why I said earlier many of these tropes are probably redundant with Animal Stereotypes or are/can be made into subtropes of Animal Stereotypes which is where all of the "animals + trait" tropes currently reside.

And if there are shared traits that makes these subsections of these animals humorous, then we should be troping those. For example:

They walk bipedally, which is similar to humans, but still a bit off, so it looks funny for us

then perhaps a trope needs to be made along the lines of "human-esque animals are still animals" that's all about animals that come off somewhat human acting in distinctly non-human ways and that being funny. Or...

the sound they make is also seen as comical (it's a very common gag that a scary-looking creature makes a clucking sound as Nightmare Retardant).

this is a very distinct trope ("Voice-Physique Dissonance") about a character/animal's scary outer appearance being undercut by their voice / the sound they make. This specific gag should be the trope, not just some broad "chickens are funny" idea.

Vocal Dissonance is already a trope, the particular gag sounds like the inversion of Cute, but Cacophonic

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

I can see this being made into an index about various "funny chicken" tropes, but yeah, right now, not particularly tropable if only because it's too broad.

My troper wall

is What's a Henway? really relevant? it's a wordplay trope, not a chicken trope, it just uses "hen" by mostly coincidence.

It seems completely irrelevant. What's a Henway? is not a chicken trope and only one of the listed jokes (the trope namer) even mentions chickens.

Edited by GnomeTitan on Aug 31st 2022 at 8:37:17 PM

Fair enough. I removed it.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.