Your-mother-joke

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Your-mother-jokes or your-mother-sayings (in Germany also common in the form of “your mudder ...” or “your mudda ...”) are a worldwide phenomenon of youth culture . These are jokes that often only consist of one sentence and are uttered in an ironic - pejorative manner to another person. The content of the jokes is a disparagement of the mother of the other, whereby the insult is so exaggerated or absurd that it is weakened by it. The phenomenon is possibly rooted in the African-American youth culture as playing the dozens and was described for this milieu as early as the 1960s.

construction

Your mother jokes usually consist of a sentence that begins with "Your mother ...", sometimes with "Your Mudda ...". This is followed by either a derogatory statement about the mother's behavior, appearance, social status or intelligence ("... is so fat ..."), illustrated with an example ("... she looks at the menu and then says to the waiter: 'Okay'. ”), Which at the same time drives the content of the statement into the unbelievable and thus ensures the punch line of the joke. These absurd statements can also follow directly at the beginning of the joke, whereby the explicit insult to the mother as fat, ugly, poor or stupid is omitted and only implicitly resonates. The sentence "Your mother's name is Ottfried and is the bull from Tölz " contains both an allusion to the alleged corpulence and the lack of femininity of the other's mother. Unusual variations consist of several sentences and initially tell a more complex story, which then comes down to the same punch line.

Your mother jokes can also be designed as an interplay of insults that are linked to each other in dialog and outbid each other, for example in this form: “Eat shit!” - “And what should I do with your bones afterwards?” - “One Build a cage for your mother. ”-“ But how is she supposed to keep up to date with what I'm doing with your mother? ”

Stylistic motifs

Insulting the mother can be done in several ways. Above all, the assumption of sexual permissiveness is widespread, as is the claim that she practices taboo forms of sexuality, including homosexuality , zoophilia or incest , depending on the social milieu . Often there are also insults aimed at the external appearance of the mother, be it the appearance (ugliness, obesity in connection with voracity), the body odor or atypical perspiration ("your mother sweats when pooping"). There are also insults that put the mother on the social fringes, mostly as poor, unemployed or uneducated, such as "Your mother is sitting under the cash register at Aldi and making the beeps". Thus an overall picture of a stupid, lecherous, thick "underclass mother," a "will RTL II -Tussi" drawn, so the time - Columnist Peter caraway. In addition, there are also criminal offenses typical of the lower class, such as theft of low-value items, e.g. B. in the very common joke: "Your mother steals from KiK and demands a receipt".

history

The beginnings of your-mother-jokes are located in the Afro-American youth culture at high schools and were already described there at the beginning of the 1960s. This was a phenomenon that was described by scientists under the name of the dozens , but was better known by the young people themselves as ranking , dusting , icing , putting down , cutting down or tearing down . The latter names mostly emphasize the degrading aspect of the ritual.

In these spontaneous arguments, two mostly male adolescents faced each other and took turns insulting each other. It was necessary to either outdo the previous insults or to turn them against the other person. This was repeated until one of the young people won the argument: Either because one of the opponents couldn't think of a suitable answer or because an original insult caused so much laughter among the bystanders that its author could claim victory for himself. The insults did not necessarily refer to the mother of the other, but in a large number of cases. While it was initially assumed that this was a genuinely African-American lower-class ritual, Stephen Barnett and Milicent Ayoub demonstrated in 1965 that The Dozens was also widespread among white youths who came from the middle class. While outsiders assumed that it was a matter of serious aggressive behavior, the young people involved emphasized that it was expressly an ironic game in which no one had the intention of hurting their counterpart. Outsiders were mostly seen as spoilsport by the young people involved because they withdrew from the ritual and, from their point of view, were too thin-skinned to take the insults away.

Ayoub and Barnett also see the origin of the game in Afro-American youth culture, they assume that it was adopted by white youths during school sports courses after 1945, probably only after the Korean War in 1953, where the otherwise separate milieus met. Simon J. Bronner views the thesis of an Afro-American origin of the joke genre with skepticism. He showed in the 1970s that The Dozens was widespread among white youth in urban centers. He regards the diffusion about sports courses assumed by Ayoub and Barnett as a weak thesis. Although he also notes a mutual influence of black and white youth culture on the development of the game, he does not conclude that it has an origin in Afro-American culture. Rather, he also sees parallels to typical patterns of abuse from the Anglo-Celtic area.

function

John Dollard postulates that the original teaching is primarily an outlet to reduce aggression, because frustration and aggressiveness are particularly widespread in underprivileged Afro-American milieus. According to Dollard, the weak inhibitions towards strong expressions in these circles favored the development of the ritual. According to Roger D. Abrahams, however , The Dozens served the male adolescents to free themselves from the matriarchal structures in Afro-American communities: The strong position of mothers in their families means a rejection of the adolescents in their capacity as boys and young men. According to Abraham, the insults were actually aimed at the mothers instead of being meant as jokes, as the young people emphasized.

Ayoub and Barnett reject these attempts at explanation, pointing out that The Dozens was also practiced by white young people of the middle class and thus - at least after 1945 - could not be an expression of social status or cultural background. Above all, they see the playful insult to the mother as a ritual in which friendly ties between the participants are displayed and strengthened. By participating, an adolescent is declaring his willingness to allow others to offend his mother without seeking genuine retaliation. In doing so, according to Ayoub and Barnett, he is sacrificing part of his family ties in favor of a stronger integration into his clique. This would be supported by the fact that insulting mothers is taboo in American society, which binds the participants in lectures to one another in the sense of a community of guilty parties. The insults also served to draw boundaries to the outside world, according to Ayoub and Barnett, an important element of male youth cliques, which valued their exclusivity: Only particularly intimate relationships between participants allowed an insult to the mother, accordingly the insults within cliques were far more drastic than between people who were not in a close relationship to one another.

Ayoub and Barnett explained the relatively low participation of young women in the game with the different structure of boy and girl friendships. While boys' cliques see each other exclusively, this aspect does not play a role with girls. They rarely move in groups of more than four people, which are necessary for the practice of the ritual, while significantly larger groups are necessary for boys. In addition, in female peer groups there is no contradiction between family ties on the one hand and friendship ties on the other.

review

In 1983, the magazine Hustler exploited the constellation of your-mother-joke with the motives incest and backwardness by means of a fictitious self-accusation: In an alleged interview as part of an advertising campaign, the pastor and television preacher Jerry Falwell stated that he had his "first time" with his Mother experienced in the outside toilet. Falwell sued Hustler editor Larry Flynt , but was defeated in the Supreme Court because the fiction was obvious and the intention was backed by freedom of expression.

Your-mother-jokes have found a new and increased popularity in the German-speaking area since the late 1990s, also through the Internet, and thus a strong entry into the media .

In the film My Wife, the Spartans and I , a competition develops in which the aim is to know most of your mother's jokes and a total of eight are named. Even comedians use this Witzart such as Carolin Kebekus at her performance at Cindy from Marzahn and "The Wild Ones" or in their hip-hop parody feat Pussycat Prolls. Fifty Sven for Broken Comedy . The film Dei Mudder is face also takes up the jokes. The Greens used this popularity for the election campaign for the state elections in Rhineland-Palatinate in 2011 as well as EA and at the end of 2012 also the Lieferando order portal for advertising purposes. Apps have also been developed for various smartphones . The concept of the US reality show Yo Momma was based on the participants insulting each other with your mother jokes (English colloquial Yo momma jokes ). The title of the award-winning Mexican film Y Tu Mamá También alludes to it, which translates as "And your mother too".

The Hamburg hip-hop group Five Stars deluxe released the single Ja ja, Deine Mudder! .

literature

  • Millicent R. Ayoub, Stephen A. Barnett: Ritualized Verbal Insult in White High School Culture . In: The Journal of American Folklore 78 (310), October-December 1965. pp. 337-344. doi: 10.2307 / 538441
  • Simon J. Bronner: A Re-Examination of Dozens among White American Adolescents . In: Western Folklore 37 (2), April 1978. pp. 118-128.
  • Stuart Jeffries: The Mother of All Insults. In: The Guardian , July 12, 2006.
  • Peter Kümmel: Your fat mother. About the central figure of the new German joke culture. In: Die Zeit , January 13, 2011.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ zeit.de: Your fat mother , accessed on March 17, 2011
  2. ↑ a b welt.de: Not without my mother , accessed on March 17, 2011
  3. ↑ a b tagesspiegel.de: Laughing at ourselves , accessed on March 17, 2011
  4. ↑ bild.de: Really all "Your Mother" sayings , accessed on March 17, 2011
  5. ↑ spiegel.de
  6. ↑ Julia Rateike: Your Mudder reads this book: The coolest sayings . Eulenspiegel, 2011, ISBN 3-359-02328-5
  7. ↑ a b Ayoub & Barnett 1965, p. 339.
  8. ↑ Bronner 1978, pp. 123-124.
  9. ↑ Mushroom 2009.
  10. ↑ Caraway 2010.
  11. ↑ Bronner 1978, p. 128.
  12. ↑ Ayoub & Barnett 1965, pp. 337-338.
  13. ↑ Ayoub 1965, pp. 341-342.
  14. ↑ Ayoub 1965, pp. 342-343.
  15. ^ Hustler Magazine, Inc. et al. v. Jerry Falwell, 485 US 46
  16. ↑ spiegel.de spiegel.de
  17. ↑ gruene-rlp.de: Election 2011 ( Memento from March 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  18. ↑ chip.de: Dead Space 2: Horror Shooter in the Shock Test ( Memento from March 1, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  19. ↑ Lieferando.de: "Your Mudda cooks!" Advertising campaign by Lieferando ( Memento from May 15, 2013 in the Internet Archive )