Oh boy, ILX! That's where I'm a viking!..?

You were very adamant that your interpretation was correct and the other side was goofy. So I find it hard time believe you wouldn't at the least place SOME importance on authorial intent and find it the TEENSIEST bit interesting if Weinstein said he meant "excels at".

there's a logical leap in your "So..." that doesn't track for me. but w/e --- I came back into the thread today intending to offer the functionalist/elevator post as a new wrinkle/angle that could open some more discussion. all you're interested in, seemingly, is repeating "you're obviously wrong and won't admit it." do you do this in IRL conversation?

as for pointing out that i made similarly tendentious posts to yours (but intended as fun/funny) ten years ago ... okay? i've already said i don't see the point of the conversation the same way now, in another post you didn't engage with. at this point i don't really feel like you're here for the joy of the discourse. but maybe you're having a different kind of fun than i'm having? OH NO POSTMODERNISM!!!!

I consider the argument more than settled, but what I'm really curious about is how did it happen that a significant minority of people understood "that's where I'm a viking" to mean "that's what I excel at"? Like as a phenomenon, that's mind-boggling to me aside from what's "wrong," because to this day I have never heard the usage of "[ being] a viking" at something to mean excelling at it. Did thousands of people literally come to that conclusion instantaneously upon seeing the episode, all at the same time, or is that an understanding that spread from person to person among people who were initially confused by the joke?

I found Room 237 very interesting. All these different theories and reactions viewers' had, some mutually exclusive. I love how ppl watching the same film came up with so many different interpretations. I would never want ppl to feel like they weren't free to come up with their own interpretations. But still, I think most of those interpretations are seeing things that aren't there. Which is fine! Some of the theories are much more valid than others imp. But I'm even more curious what Kubrick intended; which symbolism did he consciously use. Knowing his intent doesn't rob me of my own response. Jokes are much less open to this sort of interpretation but it can occur, does occur, and I'm glad. Tickles me that so many came up with what to me is a bizarre interpretation of a straightforward joke. It's more understandable than thinking Ralph meant he was a QB from Minnesota in his sleep, makes more sense than thinking Ralph said "Oh boy sleep! That's where I'm bike king!". But equally wrong.

If I were a viking that was good at sleeping and dreamed about being myself what would I say

For me, the 'exceller' reading was just how the joke landed when I initially heard it. It wasn't until much later that I realized there was even a disagreement. I think that's typically how it happened for excellers. I am curious how quickly anyone realized, after the episode came out, that there was this split in interpretation. It could easily have gone unnoticed for years.

Just to weigh in on something already addressed but

i think one interesting thing about yesterday's variation on this discussion is the idea that jokes/humor, for some observers, occupy this kind of functionalist space, where hearing it differently than intended means something incorrect is being done, and someone doing this needs to admit they're doing it wrong and stop.

isnt at all the thrust and GD and myself and others have been at pains to clearly counter this

Laugh all you like at the incorrect interpretation of the line, it would clearly be as ridiculous to state you could not find an alternate reading funny as it would be to state that the incorrect reading of the line is correct because you find it funny

I do like the idea of Ralph describing something like Theodore Roosevelt out of nowhere.

iirc in the current revive, as opposed to posts from ten years ago, only dreamers have been insisting on the "correctness" of their take. I thought an interesting avenue out of this thread's endless repetitions might be to make this connection between humor and the idea of "correct" interpretation into a subject in its own right, in the process finding something from GD's posts to build upon. you know, like in a conversation.

I saw the episode when it first aired and tbh had zero recollection of this throwaway joke until I looked it up after the debate came up on ilx. I was still a vegetarian when it aired so it was an episode that stood out in my memory otherwise. I probably just heard it as funny random words at the time and didn't think about what the character meant, especially since it has no bearing on the storyline, satire, or message.

I think that would be a short discussion dr c!

Humour is in the eye of the listener (read that one twice eh) and anyone arguing otherwise would be ploughing a hard furrow

But the discussion does seem to me to be solely based around the meaning of the line and not the humour to be found in it, and in that personally (clearly) i think theres no living case for "any interpretation is the meaning"

My first year college poetry teacher used to tell a purported (possibly fake) story about someone who thought "O Attic Shape!" meant "high" because the attic is high up in the house. I feel like that's the same kind of clearly wrong but borderline plausible misreading as "that's what I excel at." Like I'm not saying there is literally no possible pathway from those words to that interpretation, it's just a really bad interpretation where there is clearly a more correct one. Most Ralph jokes are the same joke, i.e. that he understands the world in a stunted and innocent way, like a much younger child. "Can you open my milk, mommy?" to his teacher. "I want to be a triangle!" in response to "be there or be square." "I'm a star wars." So he doesn't really understand what dreams are and think they are literally a place he goes where he is something else. That's it.

And I don't think they idea that you can make a "more correct" interpretation of language is wholly incompatible with some degree of postmodernism. We wouldn't be able to understand each other at all if there weren't more correct interpretations of language in most cases. And we wouldn't misunderstand each other if language was airtight on both ends.

Does anyone ever convert from the dreamer reading to the exceller reading? Conversions in the other direction seem somewhat common (me for one - I hear the dream reading as more natural now), but it seems like dreamers are typically entrenched.

It's a bit annoying, I guess, but it could be taken as a datum in favour of the dreamer reading. If the only way for the exceller reading to take hold is to have involuntarily heard it that way from the beginning, then there's something flukey about the reading.

Oh oh
Dreeeeeamreader
I believe you can get me through the threaaad

Anyone even trying to convert tho?

wow this thread. i guess this is probably the one simpsons topic i've never weighed in on here so here goes.

here's the full exchange:

ralph: miss hoover?
miss hoover: yes, ralph?
ralph: my worm went in my mouth, and then i ate it. can i have a new one?
miss hoover: there aren't any more, ralph. just try to sleep while the other children are learning.
ralph: oh boy, sleep! that's where i'm a viking!

from the way it's written and delivered, this exchange seems to be leading up to ralph saying something like "oh boy, sleep! that's something i'm good at!" which is the kind of lame sitcom line that most shows would have given us. of course, ralph wouldn't have said that because he doesn't really have the self-awareness required to describe himself as being good at something. but i think this is where the confused "wait...does being a 'viking' mean that you're good at stuff?" interpretation comes from. and of course ralph wouldn't have said that either, even if it made any sense, because he never uses metaphors. so, yes, he's talking about a dream. the joke is a little confusing but it's in character for ralph to describe everything with baffling literalness.

what's always kinda weirded me out in this scene is that the kids are dissecting LIVE worms, that they're supposed to pin down. was that really a thing? the only thing i ever dissected in class was a clam. (also, if the worm ralph ate had been dead, presumably it would have been treated with formaldehyde and miss hoover should have called 911 instead of just telling him to go to sleep.)

Yeah, it's actually what annoys me about the argument that the 'excels' reading is more creative or fun - it's the more simplistic, predictable joke. It's only less 'literal' because it requires you to strain the actual line to fit the conditioned expectation.

"Sleeping - now that's where I'm a champ!" That's some Michael Kelso shit.

from the way it's written and delivered, this exchange seems to be leading up to ralph saying something like "oh boy, sleep! that's something i'm good at!

I think this is also debatable, largely because Ralph is blankly enthusiastic about everything except for the episode where Lisa crushes his spirit; it reads to me like Ralph is excited about getting to go to sleep because he gets excited about everything and I have no belief that he has an inner monologue capable of sorting things he does into "I'm good at this" or "I'm bad at this" taxonomies.

what's always kinda weirded me out in this scene is that the kids are dissecting LIVE worms, that they're supposed to pin down. was that really a thing?

Yes. Admittedly not in second grade, but worm dissection is, or at least used to be, a common high school biology activity.

We dissected worms in high school (or maybe Grade 8?) But they were dead and preserved in formaldehyde.

Not gonna try to load this entire thread to find out but does anyone know if Nancy Cartwright has weighed in? The writer's intent seems irrelevant in this situation where we all first experienced the joke through Cartwright's delivery. It's pretty easy to change the meaning of a sentence just by shifting the emphasis.

I think the worms we dissected were live; the frogs were preserved. I have a memory of trying to pin the worm's head while it was squirming.

What word would you have to emphasize to cause "viking" to mean "excel at" for the first time in the history of the english language? xp

Appreciate JD posting the full exchange because yeah that's gotta be why so many ppl made the "excels at" instantaneous interpretation; they were primed for it.

xp
If I had the answer to that I'd be a famous voiceover artist.

Tho obv I think humor comes from Ralph immediately forgetting what he was doing and being happy to go to dreamland

It's also clear *from that exchange* that Ralph doesn't have the conception of having been "bad at" something - he's not embarrassed to have eaten his worm and seems to think that was a normal thing to do. I appreciate JD's generosity but it's a silly reading.

this is some blue dress shit and it's wrecking my brain

It's weird because he emphasizes several words equally. It sounds to me like:

"Oh boy, SLEEP. THAT'S where I'M a VIKING."

If 'That's' were clearly the dominant emphasis then you'd get something like "I may not have been a viking at dissecting worms but I'm a viking at THAT." As it is, you can sort of see why people hear it differently.

Blue dress was some interesting sensory-perceptual boundary stuff - not often that I and my wife can look at the same thing on the same screen and see radically different colours. This is just an argument about the meaning of a text, which happens every day in English classes across the anglosphere, just a trivial one.

I just listened to the clip and he does not emphasize "that's"

more Red Dress than blue and black dress

This is just an argument about the meaning of a text, which happens every day in English classes across the anglosphere, just a trivial one.

For sure! Except most texts can have multiple meanings. This one, it's obvious to anyone what Ralph means.

Yeah the "thats" is not emphasised and therefore absolutely not

from the way it's written and delivered, this exchange seems to be leading up to ralph saying something like "oh boy, sleep! that's something i'm good at!

I don't hear (or read) it that way; for me it seems to be leading up to ralph saying something like "oh boy, sleep! that's something i'm good at! I enjoy."

Does he enjoy it because he believes he excels at it? Perhaps he looks forward to sleep merely because it's something he knows how to do. It's low-pressure. He's adequate at sleeping. And he's not adequate at much else.

He could also (and this is how Team Dream interprets the line) look forward to sleep because he has a rich fantasy life in his dreams, where he can be free. Given how constrained his everyday world is, this makes a lot of sense.

Both interpretations stem from Ralph's gleeful anticipation of oblivion. But - I think this is key to his character - his outlook is generally pretty sunny. Would that we could all be configured so simply that a half-hour on a nap mat constitutes a welcome adventure.

Id hear it as Ralph simply being not just absurdly easily distracted, but delighting in that distraction

I have no belief that he has an inner monologue capable of sorting things he does into "I'm good at this" or "I'm bad at this" taxonomies.

"Me fail English? That's unpossible!" would seem to confirm this.

Does he enjoy it because he believes he excels at it? Perhaps he looks forward to sleep merely because it's something he knows how to do. It's low-pressure. He's adequate at sleeping. And he's not adequate at much else.

He might do, but he would not convey that notion by using the words 'that's where I'm a viking'.

I don’t remember who brought up the line from WHAS about being “late for shul” and thinking that it was a weird mispronunciation of “school”, and finding it funny, but I think it was a good comparison. I also thought that initially, and, like whoever said this before, I also recalibrated once I realized what the real joke was. And now, maybe there’s another world with another movie in which a character might mispronounce “school” and I’d find it funny. But I can’t possibly take the WHAS line in that way anymore, now that I know what the actual intent was!

And it was funnier as a weird mispronunciation! But, c’est la vie.

"I don't care that you're bilingual" shortly after is the real chortle for me

Does anyone ever convert from the dreamer reading to the exceller reading? Conversions in the other direction seem somewhat common (me for one - I hear the dream reading as more natural now), but it seems like dreamers are typically entrenched.

It seems to me that the Simpsons accidentally created a memorable phrase that's very easily twisted from its original meaning, because its original meaning is almost wholly based on context. If you watch the Simpsons, you know who Ralph is, and you have the whole line and its context in front of you, then the most reasonable explanation for it is that Ralph dreams he's a Viking.

But if you get rid of any part of that context - who Ralph is, his mental capacity, the fact that Ralph is talking about sleep specifically - then "I'm a viking" sounds like it ought to mean "I'm good at." Not because "being a viking" actually = "being skilled" anywhere else in English usage, but because it sounds close enough to other phrases meaning "to be good at" or "to be bad at" that our brains instinctively make that leap.

So there's a high-context meaning to the phrase and a low-context meaning, and as we move farther away from the original context for the line, my guess is that the second meaning is going to seem more and more like the intuitive "right" meaning.

it’s like the tonic of “sweet home Alabama”, or Stewart copelad’s fucked up chords!

my thoughts on the use of the word "viking" follow, and don't really have anything to do with the og intent of the writers or anybody's take in this thread, but still:

to be a "viking" at some activity wouldn't just mean you excelled at it in isolation, like knitting in general (stacy really vikinged that puppy sweater), imo it implies a competitive realm in which you totally destroy all opposition, like the all-world knitting championship series (stacy really vikinged the belgian contestant so hard in the finals that the belgian didn't even show up for the medal ceremony).

otoh, if you are a literal viking, imo it suggests you have transcended trivial interpersonal comparisons over what you are and aren't good at, or how that positions you socially, because you are a viking and dgaf. you just have to be good at one thing, vikinging. if you are just a mediocre coder or can't play the net, does it matter? no, because what you do all day is crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women. if ppl are worried about dying at your hands they're not throwing shade because of whatever stupid thing they think makes them special and not you.

this is why dream resonates more with me than excel. ralph isn't jazzed that he's the best at sleep, he perks up because gets to be someone who doesn't care about who he has to be the rest of the time. that seems really dark, though, so maybe my vote is that the viking comment was just a silly non-sequitor that wasn't supposed to mean anything specifically.

I think he is saying he excels at sleep because he has dreams of being a Viking, whereas other people have dreams about less excellent things, or don't have positive sleep experiences.

Thinking that Ralph discusses his dreams with the rest of the kids, or at least that they tell him what they dream, doesn't seem likely. Nobody speaks to him, hence why he thinks Lisa is his girlfriend just because she isn't ignoring him.

I haven't seen this show in like over 20 years and even then, I watched episodes here and there, so ... unless we are completely divorcing the argument from the context of the show, I am probably the least likely to be right in my interpretation.

though speaking of shows that I am very familiar with -- The Wire -- notice, in this clip, the presence of "sleep" and the announcement of "being a viking" -- is this a reference to Ralph's Viking-ness?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph3ESERrdMU

I think I was in the "excel" camp because (and I'm sure someone has already said this in the previous 2000 posts) I misremembered the scene and thought there was an emphasis on "I'm". In my head all these years it's been "that's where *I'm* a viking", but it turns out that there is no such inflection, and what I've had in my head is just informed by the later "excel" reading. So now I'm a dream-excel hybrid.