Trudging homeward, I was just past the house with the knight's armor on the lawn, not yet to the gully of soiled mattresses. The spherical, middle-aged white woman emerged from her car and bellowed, to her equally rotund husband on the porch, the question of the new millenium: "whassssssuuuuup?"
Perhaps it has become the motto of our age - seemingly friendly, yet somewhat remote; humorous, but mildly annoying; black, though increasingly mainstream; corporate and everywhere.
I say "whassup?" to my grandmother. I say "whassup?" to strangers at Harris Teeter. I respond "whassup?" to questions from professors.
Slightly more successful than its "Budweiser. Es para usted" campaign on Univision, the King of Beers has lodged itself into our collective mind and permeated our co-existence with a charismatic dose of Ebonics.
In case you're a plodding Clydesdale who has not yet emerged from the Budweiser frogs era, "whassup?" is the current Bud ad campaign. In television commercials, a group of middle-class black males ask one another, repeatedly, "whassup?" with varying stress, duration and volume. "Whassup?" is a truncated form of "What is up?" - loosely translated as "What are you doing?"
The query is used in various settings, usually domestic, typically is issued telephonically and is responded to with, "Watchin' the game. Drinkin' a Bud." Check out www.budweiser.com for a sampling.
Funny? Yes. Why? I'm working on it. Although our protagonists are black, race doesn't really figure too prominently.
Maybe Budweiser is targeting the black male middle-class demographic, but judging by the phrase's prevalence in today's society, it's not the characters' culture that makes these commercials enjoyable or accessible.
The most recent addition to the "whassup?" family is all about race, though. Cacophony has its day, thanks to an infusion of pasty whiteness. Same telephones, same questions. A paler, more-sweatered cast with a tendency for consonants.
"What are YOU doo-ing?"
"Watching the market recap. Drinking an import."
"That is cor-rect! THAT IS COR-RECT!"
And that is funny stuff. But now race matters. Ethnically, I'm white. Real white - though not quite wooden-tennis-racket, John-Stockton-short-shorts white. These guys are. Making fun of white guys is a dead ringer.
What makes white guys so hilarious? Maybe it's because they (and by "they," I mean the mythically anal retentive Cotton Mather/Dan Rather type) don't dance so well. Or because they wear shirts with buttons. Or because they are more concerned with stocks than jocks. Or because they don briefs as undergarments. Tightie-whities are always good for a laugh.
So what? Why is stiffness laughable? Why is the slurring of syllables preferable to enunciation? If the Puritans were break-dancers, would the shoe be on the other foot? Hipness is necessarily defined against a historically dominant type.
Even if whiteness remains the largest ethnicity in America today, the mainstream has repeatedly looked to black culture for its new material. The result is a populous comfortable, and usually identifiable with, a relatively (or at least superficially) "multicultural" culture. So we can all mock white people, when most of us are white people. What a luxury.
Where does the white male Budweiser audience (surely a majority) fall in this dichotomy? They're supposed to identify with the black guys.
The humor is racially based, but nobody's offended - the targets are watching the market update, not the game.
When our Budweiser yuppies have mercifully ceased their hollering, we find another layer to their narrative.
Two of our black "whassup" veterans sit watching the commercial as we are - not laughing at all, but rather sharing looks equally puzzled and horrified.
Why don't they think it's funny? Perhaps they are taken aback by a sense of identification. Probably not, though.
Beer has done a lot for white guys. Piscipo and Uecker. Kegstands, psoriasis and Swedish bikini teams. Now, it's gotten them to laugh at themselves. Black culture is the norm and Whitey isn't all that. Touche.
Beer. Is there anything it can't do?
Read More
The triumphant return of Littlejohn’s
By Blaine Hutchens and Kate Johnson | YesterdayThe revived Littlejohn’s presents a tasty and conveniently located, albeit pricey, food option for those looking for a taste of old and new.
Top 10 things to know before attending the Foxfield Races
By Malone Morchower | YesterdayEvery year, students arrive in droves to watch the horses, bask in the sun and hang out with friends before finals and summer vacation.
The perfect pony-themed bite for Foxfield
By Evalina Caruccio | 2 days agoHunt Country is the perfect spot to grab some lunch for a picnic, or my personal favorite — the best way to fight Foxfield famish.
