While Tom Swifties were marketed to literate adults and gradually fell out of fashion over subsequent decades, elephant jokes have lasted among younger audiences, circulating through generations of schoolchildren.
[1][5] Prolific science fiction writer Isaac Asimov was of the opinion that these jokes are "favorites of youngsters and of unsophisticated adults".
However, if instead "read" is assumed, then there is no implied mutual exclusivity preventing a solution, conventionally a newspaper, from satisfying both required conditions.
The absurdity of an elephant wearing a nun costume makes it nearly impossible for anyone not familiar with the punchline to independently think of the parody answer.
Elliott Oring notes that elephant jokes dismiss conventional questions and answers, repudiate established wisdom, and reject the authority of traditional knowledge.
He draws a parallel between this and the counterculture of the 1960s, stating that "disestablishment was the purpose of both," pointing to the sexual revolution and noting that "[p]erhaps it was no accident that many of the elephant jokes emphasized the intrusion of sex into the most innocuous areas.
"[3] In their paper, On elephantasy and elephanticide, Abrahams and Dundes consider elephant jokes to be convenient disguises for racism, and symbolised the nervousness of white people about the civil rights movement.
One example Abrahams and Dundes provide is the joke: They state that the "big and grey and comes in quarts" is in fact a reference "to the supposed mammoth nature of black sexuality."
Similarly, the joke about an elephant in the bathtub is argued to be a reference to the increased intrusion of black people into "the most intimate areas of white life.
"[10] Oring strongly disagrees with this view, writing: "The Civil Rights movement, of course, was an integral part of the countercultural revolution.
"[11] Gruner however disagrees with Oring about the chronological topicality of the elephant joke and its relation to social upheavals, arguing from personal experience of "one of the best motion picture sight gags in history", where Jimmy Durante in the 1962 movie Billy Rose's Jumbo is attempting to sneak an elephant unseen through a circus.