Bringing Rudeness and Sarcasm to a Grateful World
Bringing Rudeness and Sarcasm to a Grateful World
by Brunonia Barry
I recently entertained some visitors from Colorado who, after a brief encounter with a local food service establishment, mentioned that they found New Englanders to be sarcastic. "You've got to be kidding," I said, smiling disingenuously.
New Englanders are a strange mix of propriety, humorous subtext, and open aggression, especially in the face of anything they find pretentious or dishonest. Growing up in New England, I came to discover that you can get along pretty well by resorting to your Emily Post or Miss Manners, but that when people really began to like you, they will mock and tease you mercilessly. If a person is always polite to you, it is never a good sign.
Now that my two novels have been sold in many countries around the world, I am in communication with the various translators, and I'm finding that 95% of their questions deal with sarcasm, self-effacing humor, and mocking understatements. Making translatable sense out of tongue-in-cheek remarks is challenging enough but even more so when a culture is devoid of multi-generational taunting. Do cultures like that really exist? If so, what do they do at family gatherings?
Trying to explain New Englanders to translators has made me think about the stereotypical behavior we ascribe to certain regions of the country and how different people really are when you live among them. I have lived in many other places during my life, but the ones I know best are New York and Los Angeles.
New Yorkers are the only people in the country consistently cited as rude by New Englanders. I didn't find them rude at all, rather I thought they were direct, which I appreciated. Once, when I first got to the city, I asked a young man for directions to Port Authority. He was patient and polite and very helpful. Then I went too far. I asked how to get to the New York Public Library. He smiled at me politely and asked, "What do I look like lady, a fucking road map?" That one had me laughing for weeks.
I have to confess that Los Angeles was a huge change after living in New York. Everyone smiled and ended their conversations with "Have a nice day." I'm not kidding. It was the late '70s, and that stereotypical expression was all the rage. Between that and the beautiful weather, I saw L.A. as a very welcoming place. Never mind that my New England and New York friends told me that just because someone tells you to have a nice day doesn't mean she's your new best friend. I didn't care. People seemed so happy and so nice. I wanted to stay. My "visit" lasted for fifteen years. Some of my most enduring friendships started with "have a nice day."
If you don't take them too seriously, these stereotypical images can engender a certain pride of place. We're not rude and sarcastic in New England, we're colorful, damn-it. We've worked hard on our image. We're proud of it.
So I and several of my Boston and New York friends were shocked and greatly offended at the results of Travel and Leisure's latest poll citing Los Angeles as the "Rudest City in America." Are they kidding? New York slipped to the #2 spot, and Boston didn't even place in the top 5? Something was terribly wrong!
Obviously we are challenging the poll. Our reputations are at stake. With the exception of liberal politics, there isn't much that New Yorkers and Bostonians can agree upon, but we are united on this front. My New York friends are working hard to reclaim the top spot. And the embarrassed and ashamed citizens of Boston are practicing their best insults and sarcasm for the upcoming tourist season. The Freedom Trail will never be the same!
What stereotypes does your area of the country engender? What are the people really like?
