Category Archives: Stereotypes/Blason Populaire

No Dancing in Texas/China

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: La Crescenta, CA
Performance Date: 3/12/17
Primary Language: English

Context: I collected this from a high school friend when we were on a camping trip together over Spring Break.

Background: My friend was originally born in Texas, where his father is from, before moving to California as a child. His mother is an immigrant from China.

Dialogue: Yeah, um, again, I wrote a paper for dance history class that was in freshman year, about my personal experience with dance, and the professor gave me 100%, pulled me out of the class, and said, “Hey, I really enjoyed that paper, it was really cool, and I really appreciated the way that you opened up in the paper about your experiences,” because I wrote about how I have absolutely NO personal cultural experience with dance, like, in my life… Um… And that was due to the fact that my father was from the Deep South, and there, uh, at least for men, dance was seen as… something that was highly effeminate, and, like, if you danced it would somehow make you gay, um, and being from the Deep South he didn’t want me to be gay… So, I just NEVER danced as a child! And, then, on my mother’s side of the family, I had no cultural experience with dance because… uh, she was from China, but she was born under the Mao regime, and, um, during that time, a LOT of forms of art were actually pushed, um, out of the cultural sphere… And so there wasn’t really any dance except for this one dance that they did was like, “Hail the Might Mao” or whatever. Um… And, most forms of art were pushed out, so I had no culture of dance from that side either.

Analysis: I debated whether or not to check this under the Folk Dance category, but went against it because there isn’t actually a dance to be learned or performed. It’s interesting to compare these two different types of censorship, and see how much they’re based on the same kind of ideals. While the Maoist restriction of dance and art forms in general is more a complete totalitarian regime, the Deep South’s stereotyping and discrimination against gay people is more focused and specific. Yet they’re both based on the idea of controlling what people do through the use of villainization (against art and homosexuality, respectively).

The Dumber the Name, The Better the Food

Nationality: American
Age: 29
Occupation: Actress
Residence: New York City
Performance Date: April 15, 2017
Primary Language: English

My sister got this saying from a guy she was seeing at the time. He was extremely well traveled, and used this trick for finding close to/authentic Chinese food in America.

Allegra: “So his advice is to look for the Chinese restaurant with the weirdest name – the name that makes no sense in English. Go there and you are sure to have some authentic fare at the right price.”

Me: What do you mean by weird?

Allegra: ” Well there are names which make no sense and are a sort of enigmatic challenge for the discerning brain. Do they actually make sense and would be clear to those who were more culturally aware and cosmopolitan? Or are they purposely inscrutable so as to attract attention? Who knows, but here are some real-life examples:

I Don’t Know Chinese Restaurant

New Fook Lam Moon (was there an Old Fook Lam Moon?)

Concubine and The Shanghai

New Cultural Revolution Restaurant

Confucius Pao

The New Edinburgh Rendezvous Mandarin Kitchen

Nice Day Happy Garden

Me: Have you tried this out anywhere in New York City?

Allegra: “I haven’t yet. But now that I’m thinking about it, I fully intend to.”

Analysis: Perhaps perpetuating this rule of thumb – “The dumber the name, the better the food” is a way for people to deal with their fear of the unknown and bestow some honor on their xenophobia. Or, maybe the rule of thumb is true – at least as a self-fulfilling prophecy. People will think the food is better if they’ve found a place with a truly confusing name.

Midget Town

Nationality: American
Age: late 30s
Performance Date: April 1, 2017
Primary Language: English

Oh it was always like have you been to midget town? Because it’s like… Yes, it scared the bejeezus out of me. But it was just like this one way street by the river bed and that the houses are smaller so it’s midgets. But it’s a private… it says PRIVATE STREET:NO TRESSPASSING, that if you drive down the street, midgets will come and chase you with pitchforks.  

This Urban legend came to the attention of my informant through her high school friends and peers. She told me this story as a funny thing she and her friends used to do. This was an urban legend around where she grew up in Whittier, California. She was an active practitioner of this urban legend and found that the houses were indeed smaller for little people, but there were no pitchforks. This piece of folklore was interesting to me because this was a real place that was only nicknamed “Midget Town” a name stereotyped for little people.

Chinese, Japanese, Look At These, Hit My Knees

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Queens, NY
Performance Date: April 17
Primary Language: English

“I had an ummm…. sort of racist I mean it was very racist, I think this might have been in the Devils Rejects, was it in the devil’s rejects? I think it was anyways I did the same thing as the people in the Devil’s Rejects did in elementary school… not murdering people… but this demented nursery rhyme… it went sort of like ‘Chinese, Japanese, look at these hit my knees*’ it was very racist and I think that’s why we did it and even the Japanese kids in our class did it…. ummmmm…. We knew it was bad and we did it anyways (laughs)”

*note the informant does motions with his hands when he says “Chinese” he stretches his eyes length wise, “Japanese” he stretches them width wise, “Look at these” he motions towards his chest as if to insinuate breasts, “Hit my knees” fairly self explanatory, the speaker hits his knees.

I found this one interesting because it’s a rhyme that’s clearly at the level where it’s made for kids. It’s very intentionally crude as sort of a taboo rhyme. It was a horrible non sensical thing to say but it whoever said it felt like they were breaking rules. This probably added to the fun of the rhyme.

“Snowbirds” flock to Arizona in the Spring

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Phoenix, Arizona
Performance Date: March 14, 2017
Primary Language: English

Living in Arizona in the spring, we are flocked with what are colloquially know by Arizonans as “snowbirds”. These are tourists from areas who have terrible winters that bleed into spring, so they escape their snow for a few months (march to may) and live in Phoenix. I was in the car with a friend on a visit home, she was driving behind a car driving particularly slow and she turned to me and complained about “snowbirds”.

Me: “Explain what a snowbird is, and why they are called that?”

KC: “Snowbirds are tourists that come to Arizona in our spring, their winter and just live here, they are usually older couples. They are called snowbirds because they like, migrate here in the winter for the warmer weather.”

Me: “Why do you complain about them?”

KC: “Because they are so annoying haha. They are the single worst drivers ever, driving behind this one now is an example, Minnesota plates, they just crawl along because they usually don’t know where they are going or don’t know the speed limit. The sad thing is, is Arizona is so easy to drive in, I mean we are on a grid system, so east to navigate. Also they just cram up the streets, I mean usually Phoenix is so spread out that you don’t see to many cars, but come this time a year the traffic is awful because all you see are the Minnesota, Michigan, Kansas or like Illinois plates mixed in around with the Arizona ones. It’s really just driving that it’s annoying, I mean old town gets crowded, but it’s not bad, and they only go to the tourist place in the day, which are like far out of town anyway.”

Me: “Where did you learn this term from”

KC:”Hmm. I don’t know really, just heard it around growing up, probably my parents complaining about their driving too or something.”

Analysis:

This term is one local to the Arizona or perhaps even the southwest region of the United States, one used only by the locals to describe the tourists. This term is one where the locals perform their identity with one another by creating the “other” of the snowbirds. It brings the people together under a common annoyance of these tourists and those who know and understand the term in this context would be deemed as part of the group. It is creating the locals as a group, as ones who know how to drive properly in their home and instantly can recognize when someone is not simply because of their driving.