Making a Big Apple Crumble:Bill EllisChapter Six: The Move to Closure Page 11
5. The Move to Closure (October 10-30, 2001).One prediction I had made was that joking would be especially popular early in October (a prediction that we have seen fulfilled) and that it would disappear by the end of the month. Interestingly, the last half of this prediction proved wrong: in fact joking continued throughout the month and to some extent into November, though with less of the emergent flare of some of the jokes surveyed. It remains to look at two examples of these late-appearing jokes. The first, which I'll title "Bin Workin," was the single piece of humor that represented an international response to the WTC attacks. Growing out of an ethnic quip that circulated in Australia as early as October 6, the joke proved extraordinarily successful. An ecotype appearing on October 7 reached virtually all English-speaking countries within the week following and remains in circulation at the time of this article. In origin it grew out of a tradition of anti-ethnic humor, in this case directed at Australian Aboriginals, in much the same way as the British Wave used details from the American terrorist strike to perpetuate colonial stereotypes of the Irish. Unlike jokes such as "Killing the Afghans" and "Hijacking the Blimp," however, this joke proved flexible enough to adapt to ethnic Outsiders in many English-speaking countries. Thus on some level it was not about the World Trade Center tragedy at all, but rather about a multitude of local conflicts that involved power struggles with Others. In essence, it argued that the known Outsider (whose identity shifted as the joke was relocalized) was a more immediate threat than the unknown Islamic terrorist. More interestingly, the joke tended to lose its anti-ethnic edge as it spread, with the role of the potential (if incompetent) terrorist shifting from ethnic Other to members of the group among whom the joke was distributed. Like the Second American Wave, the joke's popularity implied an attitude that minimized the danger of terrorists and suggested that we should rather stop focusing on the aftermath of the WTC tragedy and return to work on less dramatic but more important problems in one's home community. The earliest form of this joke appeared on Australian-based message boards debating local politics. The immediate context was a dispute over the current government's policy of providing welfare and public support to Aboriginals, whose traditional lifestyle is under pressure from modernizing influences. In a paper surveying these contemporary pressures, Alison Fettell and Linda Pfeiffer (2002) noted that the Palm Island colony, on the northeastern coast of North Queensland, had recorded an unusually high number of crimes of violence and disorderly conduct, nearly all of which were alcohol related. In addition, domestic violence was also commonly associated with drunkenness, and, overall, they found, official records "highlight an extraordinary rate of violence occurring under the influence of alcohol." Other news releases on the problem note the problematic incidence of tobacco, petrol sniffing, and other forms of drug abuse among young people in this colony ("Sexual Abuse" 2002). While the official governmental policy is to support public service efforts in such colonies, a growing number of white nationalists have attacked such efforts in much the same terms as conservatives have assailed welfare policies for ethnic minorities in the United States. The most notorious of these groups, One Nation, is an extreme white nationalist party led for a time by Pauline Hanson, an outspokenly nativistic member of the Australian Parliament.47From this white nationalist point of view, Aboriginals are "dole bludgers," habitual loafers who avoid work in order to live off of unemployment benefits.48 Hence, the following set of quips, posted on alt.ozdebate, under the heading "Terrorist attack on Australia," made perfect sense to many Australians.
1. Did any of you guys hear about the terrorist attack in central Australia ??? 2. Police have since released the names of two of the terrorists - bin Smokin and bin Drinkin. An accomplice, bin Workin, could not be found. 3M. He was later found with bin Asleepallday. But the kicker was, they were aiming for Smoking and drinking are commonly mentioned together as besetting sins of Aboriginals, and the improbability of finding them working, or earning a living, is a commonplace among Australian white nationalist propaganda. In addition, the "bin" + verb or noun is a commonly reported feature of Aboriginal dialect,50 and in subsequent days several other Australians played on the similarity between the "bin" (= Arabic "son of") and the common substitution of "bin" for "have/has been" in Aboriginal dialect:
They're here, all right. and
Did u hear the FBI surrounded an Australian Hotel, they had identified 3 aboriginal associates of Bin Laden. They arrested Bin Sniffin' and Bin Drinkin'. They are still searching for Bin Workin'. However what became the most frequently forwarded ecotype of this joke first appeared on October 7 in a thread titled "Terrorists" posted on a Australia & New Zealand forum of the Travel & Immigration Discussion & Answers message board sponsored by BritishExpats.com:
TERRORISTS FOUND ON PALM ISLAND Interestingly, the joke was challenged by another contributor, who found it unfunny and argued that "there has to be a clear line of respect for the ones who have lost somebody in these attacks" (October 18, 2001 11:58). This led the person who originally posted the joke to explain its intentions in some detail:
There is absolutely no reference in the attached joke, to any attack. The only reference to recent world events is to the name of a well- known terrorist. The humour is derived not from the attacks of September 11, but from the bludgers in various coastal communities in Australia. This response makes it clear that, in the eyes of this forwarder, the joke's objective was not intended to make a specific comment on the American terrorist attacks, but to appropriate details from it to demonize a local non-European population. In essence, the joke suggests that it is time to stop paying attention to the American tragedy and reorient oneself to pressing issues close to home. The poster's reference to "soldiers in general" picks up the anti-militarism that we have seen in the British Wave, but the other causes of death--"cars, cigarettes, heart attack--are the kinds of "trivial" domestic problems on which the Second American Wave ultimately refocused attention. These two elements--the desire to turn back to "business as usual" and the joke's applicability to other populations of ethnic Outsiders--made the joke funny in an international sense. Thus the joke could be easily adapted to a new situation and rerouted through many conduits, which explains the explosive speed with which the joke spread to other parts of the British empire and hence to North America. By October 9, the joke had circulated in both New Zealand and in the United Kingdom, where "Nowhere Man" posted to rec.music.beatles a version localized in Liverpool but virtually identical to the Australian text:
Latest news reports claim that a cell of 4 terrorists has been operating in Merseyside, Liverpool. The early appearance of a British version of "Bin Workin" raises the question of whether it was in fact Australian in origin, or if it had originated independently in both countries. To be sure, punning on "bin" + verb is possible in many English dialects, and a number of not-very-successful American quips had already attempted to play with Osama bin Laden's name. He had already been called, for instance, "Osama bin Hidin'"54 or, particularly in captions to cybercartoons, as "Osama bin Lovinit" (a pornographic image showing him committing oral sex on a camel) or "Osama bin Partyin" (smoking a joint). As we have noted, one item on the "Osama Jokes" referred to his corpse as "Osama bin Rottin." However, the many verbatim correspondences in the two texts quoted above make it clear that the most frequently circulated ecotype could only have originated once. And the joke continued to appear on Australian message boards in variant forms; for instance, a week later this text was posted in an online journal kept by a resident of Perth:
TERRORISM IN AUSTRALIA The presence of such independent Aussie versions (and the apparent absence of recomposed versions from other countries) shows that the joke initially circulated in oral context, like the items in the British Wave that appeared in many textually variant forms. By contrast, all the "Bin Workin" variants localized outside of Australia contain language found in the October 7 "Palm Island" text. This makes it almost certain that this Aussie version of the joke was the model for all the subsequently circulated international versions.56 Within the next day, versions were posted adapting the Australian text to settings in Glasgow and in Newfoundland, Canada, and on October 11 the first United States version appeared. The joke proved easy to adapt to American situations, simply replacing the image of the ignorant Aussie aborigine with an equally stereotypical Black image:
This was just on CNN NEWS at 2:11PM: Latest news reports advise that a cell of five terrorists has been operating in the Harlem area. Police advised earlier today that four of the five have already been detained. While such versions are localized in non-Australian settings, it is significant that such phrases as "Regional Police Commissioner" and "immigration issues" are retained, even though no such position exists in American police forces and "immigration" refers to quite a different issue and ethnic conflict in this country. However, the notion that Others have "bin" doing improper things allowed those who passed it on to connect it with a large variety of local conflicts, as in a variant received in Columbus, Ohio:
Latest news reports advise that a cell of 5 terrorists has been operating in the Over-The-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. In this case we see the joke gradually being modified to fit American terminology: "police officials" sounds more authentic than "regional police commissioner," and "civil unrest" is a well-used term for Black/White conflicts. Localizing the joke in Cincinnati alludes to the bad reputation the city has gained over the past few years for Black/White racial riots over alleged police brutality. In particular, over Easter weekend 2001, several days of rioting and looting followed an incident when a white police officer (unnecessarily) shot and killed an unarmed African American resident of the predominantly Black neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine.58 continue
Page Notes47. While many anti-aboriginal jokes exist in Australia, it is significant that both Hanson and One Nation have also provoked many political jokes. One such noted that "Pauline Hanson, Member of Parliament" was an anagram for "Alien bushmen fear rampant loonie MP." See http://www.zip.com.au/~rocket/hanson/index.htm 48. See "Australian Words." Available: http://www.anu.edu.au/ANDC/Austwords/bludger 49. More properly, the Australian landmark Ayers Rock; Alice Springs is the nearby tourist hub. 50. Compare this typical line from the "Aboriginal musical" Bran Nue Dae by Jimmy Chi and Kuckles: "I bin away for 20 years now. I bin drovin' I bin drinkin' I bin Christian. I bin everything but now its time I gotta go home before I die." [Available: http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/wyrick/debclass/bran.htm.] 51. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Australia's governmental national security service. 52. An identical text was also posted the same day on rec.travel.australia+nz: October 07, 2001 11:13:57 PST. 53. Here, and in all subsequent texts of this joke, I have italicized additions unique to each version. In both British and Australian slang, "wanking" means "masturbating," although "wanker" is more broadly used as a pejorative term for a person, parallel to "jerk" (more fully, "jerk-off," or "masturbator.") It is therefore impossible to tell if his unique line came from an Australian version or was added to the British version. 54. "There's a large sign here next to a flag (which are everywhere) that says 'Osama bin-hidin'!' heh. It just sorta made me giggle" (alt.hi.are.you.cute: September 16, 2001 05:10:01 PST). 55. Sunday, 14 October 2001 - 7:29 PM. Available: http://mark.figjamland.com/main.html. 56. Of course a well documented text from before October 7 would demolish this argument. I would be pleased to hear from anyone who can attest to an earlier version of this joke that circulated outside of Australia. 57. The original forwarder quipped, "Well, you can be sure you won't find Bin Hidden." 58. For background, see http://www.emergency.com/2001/cincyriots2001.htm, and Singer 2002.
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