A few evenings ago, the ostensibly thoughtful Pat Sajak thoughtlessly said, "Maybe the dingo ate your baby," in response to something a contestant uttered. The audience found the remark typically so-darn-cute. But I didn't find it at all funny.
I found it, once again, insensitive, offensive, inexcusable.
See, there was a baby that got eaten by a dingo one terrifying night in August 1980—a baby who drew breath and was adored by her parents for just nine short weeks, and whose name was Azaria Chamberlain.
Azaria's disappearance from a camping site at Australia's Ayers Rock and the wrongful incarceration of her mother, Lindy, for her presumed murder were documented in the 1988 feature film A Cry in the Dark, starring Meryl Streep.
I'd seen that film and therefore immediately recognized the provenance of the "dingo" line so famously—and, judging from the overwhelming online evidence, admiringly—delivered by Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine Benes in a 1991 episode of Seinfeld called "The Stranded." It so startled and offended me that I wrote the following piece for my copywriting portfolio, illustrated with a grainy, slightly out of focus black-and-white photograph of a baby and a dingo-looking dog sitting in a kiddie car.
Not even from the mouths of babes!
"Maybe the dingo ate your baby," Elaine derisively rejoins in an exaggerated Aussie accent. And of course the live studio audience splits its sides at yet another outrageously hip Seinfeld riposte.
Only me, I'm gaping slack-jawed at the boob tube, dwelling on the outrageous part. As in outrageously offensive.
Because, I'd seen that movie too—the one the Seinfeld writers had obviously seen—where Meryl Streep plays a real-life Australian mother whose real-life little baby got dragged from a camping tent by a real-life dingo. Dragged into the night forever.
And sitting there, I could easily imagine, if only in some grossly thank God rudimentary way, the magnitude of that poor woman's horror—could infer its submerged mass from the visible part containing my unrelenting fears for my own children's safety.
How could anybody who knows that story (no urban myth) exploit that unspeakably tragic thing? How could anybody write that joke, approve that joke, deliver that joke (with pertinent regional inflection, no less), and above all find it uproarious?
Yeah, I'm something of a roiling cauldron of repressed irreverence, professionally speaking and personally speaking as well. Yet all hail the tempering spark of common human decency. May it eternally glow.
I blame everyone associated with that Seinfeld episode for investing a regrettable reference with pop-culture cachet.
As for Pat Sajak, maybe I'm being unfair in taking him to task for serving it up for the hundred-millionth time; it's been 18 years since "The Stranded" first aired, and as near as I can tell, I'm the only person in the world raising even a single eyebrow over "Maybe the dingo ate your baby."
I couldn't find anybody else offended by the line on Google, you see. But I did find an assload of dingo-ate-your-baby T-shirt offers.
Read the Wikipedia account of the tragedy.
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Sad, sad, sad, but I have to admit to using that phrase at one time. I do know someone who has a dingo and was very leary of having my baby around it because of that phrase. I saw that movie aswell and feel immensely for what that family went through. I will never use that phrase again!! rlb
ReplyDeletewhile I thoroughly understand your horror at the utterly cavalier remark (considering it's origin in the 1988 movie), I wouldn't be too hard on Pat or Julia or the hundreds of other people who've probably used that line in the last 21 years (including me). I certainly agree that the remark in itself is insensitive, offensive and inexcusable in the context of the actual event. Considering, though, the fact that most of us in this country have nothing to compare it to, the remark out of context sounds comical. Something like saying "maybe the tooth fairy took it" to someone who's just lost their dog. We are, you must admit, a society that relishes pop-culture cachets, uses them all the time, and with no reverence or concern for the actual history of how the phrase came to be. To me, it falls in the category of why we like to tell ghost stories in the dark - we like scaring ourselves by imagining the worst that could happen to us, and then making fun of it by trivializing it. It's probably sick, but I think we're all guilty of it at some time or another...I think we recognize that some of the things we say are actually awful, but we say them anyway because they sound funny. No harm intended.
ReplyDeleteI don't necessarily disagree with everything you're saying, all of which I'd already thought through.
ReplyDeleteWhat I am most pissed off about and trying to get at here is the insensitivity of the people responsible for setting that despicable phrase rolling: Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, et al.
Whoever wrote that episode definitely created the "dingo" line based on having seen the movie and knowing about the tragedy. It was a specific, horrific incident affecting only one family in the world, and coincidence could not have been involved. How would you feel if the Seinfeld writers had based a joke on the worst thing that ever happened to you personally? That's what they did in the case of the Chamberlains, and it was cruel and inexcusable.
No, I don't blame people who don't know its origin for thinking it's off-the-wall funny and ignorantly helping to perpetuate it. I am trying to, on a ridiculously small scale, help correct that by explaining why no one should think it's funny, much less repeat it.
Regarding Pat Sajak, I would bet my next paycheck (ha ha) that he had indeed seen "A Cry in the Dark," possibly more than once, and should have known better. Ditto for Louis-Dreyfus.
Point well taken. I was amazed (and actually appalled) when I pulled up the Wikopedia article and read the "In Media" section. The extent to which the quote has been trivialized as a humerous remark (generally implying that someone is crazy) reaching as far as band's names, and The Simpsons (to name but a few), was a shocker to me. It certainly shows how far removed from the actual event we've become. Maybe it's time to re-release the movie. I'll think twice the next time I start to use that phrase.
ReplyDeleteI must say I was quite taken aback here, having a dog for 14 years that was part dingo and having the Gary Larsen Far Side cartoon in that same vein on my fridge for many, many years. I had no idea about the movie based on that family's tragedy; just thought it used to be a "thing" in Australia back in the 1800s maybe in the outback that one had to be careful of. You've opened my eyes.
ReplyDeleteAs for Elaine's remark. Creators of the sitcom repeatedly mentioned the insensitivity and abnormality of people in the show. So I don't see any problem with that. Just watch any of episodes, you will laugh on how these people manage to create terrible problems for each other. Julia dreifus mentioned this fact in her interview. Jason Alexander was joking on the characters, on their unimaginable egoism and stupidity. So take it easy. These guys are jerks but so funny and sometimes faire...
ReplyDeleteMy husband used to quote Elaine's line all the time. I had never seen the episode, and I kept asking him if she was quoting from a movie, but he didn't know. Well, today one of my Facebook friends mentioned the Azaria Chamberlain trial (which has never been officially closed, apparently), and I looked it up online and was appalled to find out that it was the basis of the Seinfeld quote. I told my husband about it tonight, and after a few moments silence he said, "Why would they make fun of something like that? That's really horrible." So that's one more person in the world who will not use that quote anymore, and he will certainly educate anyone else he hears saying it. Thanks for standing up for baby Azaria when no one else was!
ReplyDeleteYou have no idea how much you've made my day! I wish I could kiss you -- and your husband. I have deleted probably a half dozen scathing comments from uberjerks taking me to task for my lack of a sense of humor and how I should lighten up or get a life or worry about things that are really worth worrying about. They called me filthy names and more for my position on this, and their violent reactions have sickened me almost to the point of despair over what has seemed to me an increasingly pervasive, sick-minded heartlessness in our society. When I got the Gmail notice of another Anonymous comment having posted on my Dingo entry, I thought "Here we go again." And then my heart leaped for joy at your thoughtful words. Thank you SO much.
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