"Whoa Daddy"

“Whoa daddy.”

This is not the kind of “whoa daddy” you throw around in regular conversation. It’s not the kind you say after your drinking buddy informs you he has successfully chugged two beers while strapping his flip-flops to his golden retriever puppy - with help of course. Nor the kind you utter when you see tank tops are 50% off at Guess. No. Let me put this into perspective.

From the Coen Brothers’ Fargo (1996). Dynamic duo, Carl (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear (Peter Stormare) drive through North Dakota in their stolen tan Ciera, the moaning wife of Jerry Lundegaard bound and gagged in the backseat. All’s well until a police officer pulls them over to deliver retribution on their untagged car. Things get out of hang quickly. The unfortunate trooper falls victim to silent and violent Gaear, who pulls him into the car and shoots him in the face. Blood and brains splatter on Carl. He stares, his eyes wider than usual.

“Whoa daddy,” He says. The audience laughs.

What makes humor possible is the build up and release of tension. In this scene of Fargo, the tension is “will these guys get caught or not?”. The release comes from Carl’s sudden vulnerability and ironic understatement. Often, the things that make us laugh speak a painful truth. Carl’s anticlimactic line reminds us that sometimes things so horrible happen that we possess no way of responding to them, not only verbally but mentally and emotionally as well. Though Carl has likely seen his share of trouble, nothing has prepared him to respond to a cop being slaughtered in his lap. He speaks likely without knowing what he is saying, just trying to find some way to calm down and assess the head that has just been popped like a shaken can of Coke.

I have used “Whoa daddy” once in my life. 

My sister, Raeha, and I sauntered through the airy, if not somewhat dry and lysol-y smelling, pathways of the Antelope Valley Mall on what had been a long and arduous shopping trip - we were in no way prepared for what next assaulted our innocent eyes. There, before us, like a rhino in the safari, approached a woman of Titanic proportions. Stretched across her ample and sawing bosom was a rag of a shirt, revealing her stomach, hanging in generous amounts over her tight, semi-transparent leggings. Lime green thong. Needless to say the ensemble was in colors that would make Nikki Minaj seem conservative. 

“Whoa daddy,” escaped my lips after the fashion culprit was lost in the crowd, despite my laudable effort to hold it. Although but a whisper, the sudden phrase spoke volumes, perfectly encapsulating the emotions spurred by sudden shock while buffering our minds against the damage our eyes could not escape.

Being a Coen Bros. fan, Raeha of course found this hilarious. Any why? The tension; we both knew what the other was thinking and wanted to say but couldn’t. The release and truth revealed - sometimes the things people put on their bodies (or rather, don’t put) are horrible enough to compare to the brutal murder of a cop in a frigid, Hell frozen over wasteland. 

This is the America we live in. 

I’m sure you’ll find something to “Whoa daddy” at today, but I fervently pray that you don’t.