Structure
A person who is unfamiliar with the hidden or alternative meaning of a sentence may fail to detect its innuendos, aside from observing that others find it humorous for no apparent reason. Perhaps because it is not offensive to those who do not recognize it, innuendo is often used in sitcoms and other comedy considered suitable for children, who may enjoy the comedy while being oblivious to its second meanings. For example, Shakespeare's play Much Ado About Nothing used this ploy to present a surface level description of the play as well as a pun on the Elizabethan use of "nothing" as slang for vagina.
A triple entendre is a phrase that can be understood in any of three ways, such as in the cover of the 1981 Rush album Moving Pictures. The left side of the front cover shows a moving company carrying paintings out of a building. On the right side, people are shown crying because the pictures carried by the movers are emotionally "moving". Finally, the back cover features a film crew making a "moving picture" of the whole scene. Another example can be observed in the 1995 film GoldenEye, in which the female villain is crushed to death between a tree, to which James Bond quips, "She always did enjoy a good squeeze." This references her death, her method of executing men (crushing them with her legs) and her sexual appetite. Another example is a sports bar at the bottom of 5th Street in Benicia, California, named "Bottom of the Fifth", referring to (1) the address, (2) baseball's fifth inning, and (3) a measure of consumption of a common quantity of alcoholic beverage.
In contrast, comedian Benny Hill, whose television shows included straightforward sexual gags, has been jokingly called "the master of the single entendre".
Read more about this topic: Double Entendre
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.”
—Paul Tillich (1886–1965)
“A special feature of the structure of our book is the monstrous but perfectly organic part that eavesdropping plays in it.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in its totality, in its structure: posterity discovers it in the stones with which he built and with which other structures are subsequently built that are frequently better—and so, in the fact that that structure can be demolished and yet still possess value as material.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)