In Taking Penguins to the Movies, Emil Draitser offers an insider's view of Russian society by presenting and analyzing Russian ethnic jokes that center on Jews, Georgians, Ukrainians, Chukchis, and other groups. Drawn from Russian joke books and the author's private collection, most of the 300 jokes and popular rhymes, ethnicity-related proverbs and sayings appear in English for the first time.

Draitser uses humor as a means of understanding the attitudes and customs, beliefs and idiosyncrasies, and inter- and intra-group relationships of this multinational society. In analyzing the jokes, he seeks to determine what makes them funny, why certain groups are targeted, and even why a mediocre joke can be received with great enthusiasm.

He traces the evolution of ethnic stereotyping, examines the circumstances under which such jokes arise, shows how they are used to project anxieties on out-groups, and suggests what they reveal about those who tell them.