The banana in my ear genre of humor represents a prototypically American form of irony and chagrin, expressing both amusement and frustration with Catch-22 situations. The genre gets its name from the following joke, an exchange between two people:
"What? I can't hear you; I've got a banana in my ear!"
The preposterous situation in which a person complains of being unable to hear helpful advice, because the advice he's not taking prevents him from hearing it, has far-reaching implications in the fields of law, engineering and philosophy.
