Tag Archives: humor

“Karen” as a folk term

Nationality: Jewish
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/21/2020
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

Interviewer: What does “Karen” mean?

Informant: Karen is an internet slang word to describe a  very entitled, middle-class white woman. Or a boomer white woman. They are often blonde and they often have very short haircuts. They usually like to speak and the managers, and then proceed to yell at the entry-level employees who have no control over the matters. 

Interviewer:Where did you pick it up?

Informant: Maybe a year ago, scrolling through Twitter. 

Interviewer: do you use it frequently?

Informant: Yeah, especially when making jokes with friends or memes on the internet, haha.

Background

The informant is a good friend and housemate of mine, and is a junior at USC studying Computer Science and Computer Engineering. He is originally from Manhattan Beach, CA and has been coding ever since highschool. He has had several internships with different computer science companies such as Microsoft and is very involved with different coding clubs on campus. 

Context

The group of individuals at my house tend to send each other a lot of memes and use internet lingo throughout the house as different jokes. “Karen” is one that this informant uses very frequently, so during our interview I asked him to describe it in his own terms. 

Analysis

This term of folk speech is a perfect example of how internet lingo and culture has permeated into everyday verbal communication. Many of these terms are associated with humor and generational differences, as seen with this one which is intended to poke fun at individuals from an older population. This shows the rift in values and morals between generations, and displays how everyday names can be transformed to carry much more weight and meaning.

Campfire story-The Ghost With One Black Eye

Nationality: American
Age: 55
Occupation: Business owner
Residence: Dallas, TX
Performance Date: April 25, 2020
Primary Language: English

Background: My informant grew up in a small town in Michigan in the 70s. Growing up, her friends would often sit around bonfires and tell stories. She tells me this is one of her favorite campfire jokes because you think it’s going to be a scary story, but it actually turns out to be a joke, which usually makes it funnier because people are expecting to be scared.  She tells me the joke is told at the campfire as if it’s something that happened to you at a different campfire. We sit in her living room as she tells me the story.

Main text:

“So we were all sitting around the fire, just like this”

She motions to the campfire we were pretending was in between us 

“And suddenly we all heard ‘I am the ghost with one. Black. Eye’”

She uses a deep ghostly voice for the part of the ghost

“Everyone looked around in shock like ‘what?! What was that?!’”

She says this part in a hushed tone

“Then we heard it again ‘I am the ghost with one. Black. Eye’ only this time it was louder”

She continues to speak in a hushed tone except when she does the ghost’s voice

“And then it gets closer, ‘I am the ghost with one. Black. Eye!’  by now everyone is shivering”

She makes a shivering sound

“Closer and closer, louder and louder, we kept hearing it. ‘I am the ghost with one. black . eye! I AM THE GHOST WITH ONE. BLACK. EYE’”

She gets louder

“And all of a sudden it’s right behind us  ‘I AM THE GHOST WITH ONE. BLACK. EYE!’ and I stood up and I shouted ‘IF YOU DON’T SHUT UP YOU’RE GOING TO BE THE GHOST WITH TWO BLACK EYES!’”

She starts laughing 

Analysis: As she was telling me this joke, I could tell it was important to her. She would smile to herself in the middle of sentences as if she was reliving her childhood sitting around campfires. While I did find the joke to be funny, I agree with her that part of the reason the punchline is so impactful is that you get caught up in the fear of there being a ghost that you aren’t expecting it to turn out to be a big joke. Sitting around a fire at night would have made it more impactful than sitting in her living room, but nonetheless the voices she used for the characters and the intensity in telling the story made it a very successful joke.

La Migra

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Santa Ana, Orange County, California
Performance Date: 15 April 2020
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Main Piece:

The following is transcribed from a conversation between the interviewer and the informant.

Informant: So when I was in 6th and 7th grade, the kids at my school would play this game during lunch called “La Migra”, it means ‘immigration’ in Spanish. Basically it’s like tag, whoever is the ‘catcher’ would run around and try to catch people. If you do catch someone, you yell “La Migra” and the one who got caught becomes the catcher, and so on.

Interviewer: Were the students participating in the game mostly Latinx? Or did kids of all ethnicities join?

Informant: I went to a really Mexican school, so everyone was pretty much Latinx yeah. I’m not sure if someone who’s not Latinx could even play this game, because so much of it is like, self inflicted harm (laughs).

Interviewer: Can you describe that further?

Informant: We were all very much around immigration and ICE and stuff our whole lives, like whether that be someone in our family or just someone we know. All that stuff, boarder patrol and whatnot, is just something that’s always present in our culture, and it’s really fucked up that it is. I think this game was kinda created because of that, for kids to like process this messed up reality into like a lunchtime game. Or maybe it was jut middle school kids being stupid and edgy as they all do, I don’t know.

Background:

My informant is of Latinx descent, and currently resides in Santa Ana, Orange County, a city where majority of the population is made up of Latinx people. The city of Santa Ana also has had city-wide protests against the mayor for failing to provide a safe environment for undocumented immigrants, as ICE raids increased and the city police provided aid to ICE during these raids.

Context:

The conversation took place on the phone, and the informant was in her room by herself.

My thoughts:

Middle schoolers can be really dark for the sake of being dark, it’s something about that age and puberty starting that makes everyone gravitate towards being ‘edgy’. But I think this game is more than just being provocative, I think it shows the very reality of children growing up in a hostile environment, coping with such stress by making a ridicule out of it.

Childrens Magic Trick: The Disappearing Bracelet Knot

Nationality: Peruvian-American
Age: 12
Occupation: Student
Residence: Miami Florida
Performance Date: 4/20/19
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Background: The performance is a magic trick, a form of slight of hand that uses a hair scrunchie or similarly elastic bracelet, the informant (RW) learned it on the playground from one of her friends.
RW: It’s so cool!
MW: What do you like about it?
RW: When you do it right everyone gets really excited!
——————————————————————————————————————–
Context: Informant(RW) is a 12 year old student who’s interests include spending time with family, and riding bicycles. RW shared this particular magic trick with multiple members of her family during their annual Passover Seder, in this case RW, her sister, and I were getting paper from the garage so that RW’s father could teach us to make paper airplanes when she asked to show me a magic trick.

Performance:
RW: Ok, ok, so first you twist the rope like an 8 on your wrist
RW: You do that and you see this part? [RW points to the loop formed by her bracelet]
RW: The under part [she gestures to the under side of the bracelet], and you pull that part into the little circle but not too tight.
RW: If you flick it really fast the knot disappears!

Steps to reproduce:
1)Twist a section of the bracelet into a loop
2)Take the underside of the bracelet a pinky length away from the loop and pull it through to make a knot, loosely
3) Flick the end of the bracelet that sticks out of the knot and it disappears
——————————————————————————————————————–
Analysis:
The trick is a way to “get one over” on one’s peers and even adults. Thus the child demonstrates “magic” that they know to be a reflection of their own knowledge. The informant’s pride is the key marker here, this piece of folklore is a performance passed from person to person for the benefit of the people around them. Likewise this is a display of trickery, the goal is to fool, and thus in harmless deception traverse the social taboo of lying. This gives the performer the space to engage in a behavior that is generally seen as wrong in a way that will actually net them praise.

Stamp Out the Name

Nationality: American
Age: 46
Occupation: Rabbi
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: March 17, 2019
Primary Language: English

One tradition of the Jewish holiday Purim is to take measures to stamp out the name of Haman, the man who tried and failed to kill all Persian Jews in the Purim story. This manifests in other little traditions but one of the most literal involves people writing Haman’s name (in English or Hebrew) on the sole of their shoes so then they walk about stamping out the name throughout their day. Sometimes this is even paired with secondary events to maximize stamping such as a footrace.

While never personally observed by this folklorist (my synagogue doesn’t do this) this tradition stands out as a humorously obvious interpretation of the idea to stamp out the man’s name and ergo very believable. It’s an ancient, international holiday; someone has to have done this. The humor is assuredly intentional and adds to the joyous vibe of the rest of the holiday.