Bananas Page 15
Bananas have a place as comfort food for many people, adults as well as children. Their texture is undemanding and little or no preparation is needed. Many children are fed bananas as their first solid food, and mashed or squished bananas feel good as well as taste good. Despite the ease of preparation and availability of the fruit, baby-food companies produce a wide variety of banana mixtures in little jars to provide even greater convenience to harried parents. Peanut butter and banana sandwiches are popular with older children. Homey desserts such as banana cream pie and banana pudding with vanilla wafers are scoffed at by sophisticated diners, but are welcome friends in small restaurants across the country serving home cooking as well as in supermarket salad bars.
Banana bread has become a symbolic offering. Easy to prepare, homemade banana bread is a hostess gift that is always welcome and is perceived as more personal than a purchased present. Homemade bread also resonates culturally at a time when the majority of women are working outside the household. It is symbolic of a simpler, happier time when mother stayed home. For those who do not bake, the in-store bakeries of major supermarkets also provide loaves of “homemade” banana bread.
Bananas have achieved symbolic importance in other ways. In the nineteenth century, they were associated with missionaries and the people living in the tropics although bananas never gained the importance of the pineapple, the symbol of hospitality. At the turn of the century, banana peels became associated with the “garbage nuisance” in urban areas. As the price of bananas decreased and they became a popular street snack or quick lunch, the peels were tossed into the street or on the sidewalk as was most other garbage and trash. Litter was generally blamed on the people in working-class ethnic neighborhoods but littering was acceptable public behavior by all classes. In most communities, only the main streets and those in fashionable neighborhoods received regular, often private, street cleaning and trash removal service.8
The danger of slipping on fruit peels was in fact a notion that predated the proliferation of banana peels in the city. In 1861 a writer for the Sunday School Advocate, a weekly newspaper for children, warned his young readers about the dangers of throwing orange or banana peels on the sidewalk:
Don’t do it, boys and girls, unless you want to break somebody’s neck. At least a dozen times in my life have I stepped on orange- or banana-peel, slipped up, and wrenched my back in the endeavor to keep on my feet. If I hadn’t been quite a spry old gent I should have been thrown flat on my back, perhaps have broken my head, and died of orange-peel thrown on the sidewalk by Master Frank Thoughtless. Haven’t I good reason for saying, Don’t throw orange or banana peel on the sidewalk!
The author went on to relate the story of a man who slipped on an orange peel, broke his leg, was taken to the hospital, had his leg amputated, lost his job, was unable to support his family, and his wife and children ended in the almshouse. “All this sorrow was caused by the bit of orange-peel which Miss Sweet-tooth dropped on the sidewalk. Now do you wonder why I say don’t throw orange or banana peel on the sidewalk?”9
It is likely that most readers of the Sunday School Advocate had never seen a banana in 1861. Bananas were extremely rare and oranges were also a luxury at that time. Well-bred children were told that “it is ill-mannered to eat anything in the street. No rubbish, such as paper, nutshells, or orange-peel should be thrown on the sidewalk; there is a proper place for such things; and we ought to have too much regard for the neat appearance of our streets to litter them.”10 Adults were also cautioned in Harper’s Weekly (1879) that “whosoever throws banana or orange skins on the sidewalk does a great unkindness to the public, and is quite likely to be responsible for a broken limb.”11 A joke published in 1885 went as follows:
“Sa-ay, Jonnie, wot’ll you buy for yer lunch?” said a boot-black to another. “ ‘N orange,” was the reply. “High-toned, ain’t yer?” said the first. “No,” said the other, “but the skins is good to make people fall down with.”12
Despite sporadic protests against the “garbage nuisance” in the nineteenth century, city streets in the nineteenth century were unspeakably filthy. By the 1890s scavenger pigs had been replaced by men with brooms who were possibly less effectual. City streets were fouled daily by horse manure and urine. Householders and shopkeepers swept their floors into the street and placed their trash, garbage, and the ashes from stoves and fireplaces in uncovered cans and boxes on the curb for pick-up. In addition, dead animals were thrown into the gutter, men spit tobacco juice, and children urinated and defecated on the pavements.13
The paving of city streets at the turn of the century created even more of a problem because the refuse could not be absorbed into the road surface. Why people were concerned specifically about fruit peels with all the rest of the mess in the streets is an interesting question. Banana peels appeared in the streets at the same time that a large wave of immigration crowded American cities. As residents became concerned about the growing refuse problem, banana peels may have become a code word for all garbage and litter or even the “immigrant problem” itself.
New York City led the way in civic sanitation efforts. In the nineteenth century, the city police department was responsible for clean streets and was widely accused of appointing men to cleaning jobs who either were unfit to do the work or collected their wages without doing any work at all. In 1878 the New York Municipal Society advocated taking the responsibility away from the police but their efforts were blocked by Tammany Hall.14 Col. George E. Waring Jr. was appointed Commissioner of Streets on January 15, 1895, and proceeded to clean up the city. Waring was given a free hand to reform the street cleaning service. He did the job along military lines, instilling pride in the men doing the job, requiring them to wear white uniforms, and holding annual parades of uniformed Sanitation Department workers that impressed city residents.
Waring also established Juvenile Street Cleaning Leagues in the schools to enlist children in the campaign to keep the city streets clean. The idea was to instill civic pride in the children and to pass the message to immigrant parents at home, many of whom did not speak English.15 Children were encouraged to act as the eyes, ears, and noses for the department in discovering unsanitary conditions in their neighborhoods and in identifying the perpetrators. After a slow start, the program became a rousing success. By 1899 there were seventy-five Juvenile Street Cleaning Leagues throughout the city with 5,000 participants. Members held weekly meetings, took a civic pledge to keep from littering the streets, and wore little white caps and official badges.16
The children also sang songs such as “And We Will Keep Right On,” sung to the tune of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The second verse went like this:
No longer will you see a child fall helpless in the street
Because some slippery peeling betrayed his trusting feet.
We do what we are able to make our sidewalks neat
And we will keep right on.17
The first verse of “Neighbor Mine” specifically mentioned banana peels:
There are barrels in the hallways,
Neighbor mine;
Pray be mindful of them always,
Neighbor mine.
If you’re not devoid of feeling,
Quickly to those barrels stealing,
Throw in each banana-peeling
Neighbor mine!18
Members of the Juvenile League were also expected to make weekly reports on their activities. One child wrote:
Colonel Waring Dear Sir: While walking through Broome Street, Monday at 2:30 p.m., I saw a man throughing a mattress on the street. I came over to him and asked him if he had no other place to put it but there. He told me that he does not no any other place. So I told him in a barrel, he then picked it up and thanked me for the inflammation I gave him. I also picked up 35 banans skins, 43 water mellion shells, 2 bottles and 3 cans and a mattress from Norfolk Street.
Another child reported: “I saw a man eating a banana. He took the skin and t
hrew it on the sidewalk. I said to him please Sir will you be so kind & pick it up and he said all right.”19
Waring resigned after only three years in office when Tammany came back to power in the city in 1897. The high standards that he set in street cleaning and garbage disposal gradually declined, but the example remained powerful. In 1908 the Juvenile Leagues were revived and a parade and picnic held at Dexter Park, Brooklyn, drew 15,000 children. They marched under a banner inscribed “Clean Streets.”20 Officials from the Department of Street Cleaning once again gave talks on sanitation in public schools and encouraged League activities. In 1912 the department’s annual report noted that 1,420 litter cans had been placed “at intervals along the curb for the deposit of litter and fruit skins by pedestrians.”21
Many other American cities, including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Utica, and Denver, followed New York’s lead.22 The Civic Improvement League of Saint Louis issued a set of city ordinances in 1902 “specially applicable to Sidewalks, Streets and Alleys.” Section Eleven Hundred and Fifty-Nine entitled “Throwing Fruit on Sidewalks Forbidden” was to be posted in every store, stand, or other place where fruit, vegetables, “or other substance, which, when stepped upon by any person, is liable to cause him or her to slip or fall.”23
Bananas became symbolic of the new science of city sanitation. Americans were aware of the new yellow fruit peels on city streets in a way that they were oblivious of other, more mundane trash and garbage. Banana peels stood out more than orange peels, and there were probably more of them too. Bananas were easier to eat on the street than oranges or melon—less juicy, easier to peel, and cheap.
Eating bananas in the street was associated with poor people, particularly immigrants, since cultured people were not supposed to eat in public. The lower classes ate the fruit and discarded the peels, endangering their social betters. A two-panel cartoon with the title “Banana-Skin Butcheries” published in Harper’s Weekly in 1880 showed an Irishman leaning against a wall and dropping a banana peel on the sidewalk in the path of a dignified gentleman wearing a top hat and carrying a cane. The second panel shows the gentleman being carried off on a stretcher, the banana peel still lying on the sidewalk. The two panels are labeled “Cause” and “Effect.”24 The cartoon was published with the joke section but was more a political, anti-immigrant statement than a humorous one.
It is curious that something as homey and insignificant as a discarded fruit peel can cause a complete upset and loss of dignity. The image of someone slipping on a banana peel is particularly funny when the person is wearing a suit or a uniform—a person in authority. Comedian Phil Silvers felt that slipping on a banana peel was “somehow … always funnier than slipping on a cake of soap or a piece of ice. There is something ludicrous about the banana.”25
“Banana-Skin Butcheries” cartoon (Harper’s Weekly, May 29, 1880), 343.
Silvers also starred in the film “Top Banana” in which he sang “If you want to be the top banana, you’ve got to start at the bottom of the bunch.” The term “top banana” was introduced into show business jargon by burlesque comedian Harry Steppe in 1927 as a synonym for the top comic on the bill. The term is supposed to have risen from a double-talk routine in which three comics try to share two bananas.26 Another show business term, “second banana,” refers to supporting actresses or actors, or anyone who has a secondary role. When comedian Joey Faye died in 1997, his obituary in The Economist hailed him as “among the greatest of second bananas.”27
Top Banana Game (Waltham, Massachusetts: Thomas P. McCann, 1965).
Jokes, cartoons, poems, and films continue to this day to feature people falling on banana peels, even though banana peels are seldom seen on the sidewalk. The limerick craze that began in the nineteenth century produced several versions of Hannah and the banana. This one, published in 1886, may have been one of the first:
THAT CRUEL BANANA
A certain young woman named Hannah
Slipped down on a piece of banana;
She shrieked, and oh, my’d!
And more stars she spied
Than belong to the star-spangled banner.
A gentleman sprang to assist her,
And picked up her muff and her wrister.
“Did you fall, ma’am?” he cried,
“Do you think,” she replied,
“I sat down for the fun of it, Mister?”28
Variations of the story of Hannah remained popular and appeared in 1910 and 1926 in published limerick collections.29
According to Freud, the jokes of innocence are aimless, based on sound difference or word-play. Jokes of experience express hostility or aggression.30 Like dreams, they express repressed or unconscious wishes. Another theorist has postulated that at the most primitive level,
a less flexible, less versatile individual endangers the biolgical integrity of the herd; and so the herd acts to protect itself. We laugh at the man who falls on the banana skin … because instead of retaining his versatility, his spontaneity, and his flexibility, the man who tumbles is yielding to the force of gravity and is becoming something like a robot. He is becoming an inflexible object, and at that moment he is being reminded to pull himself together, to restore himself to a state of vigilant flexibility which will then make him into a valuable and productive member of the herd.31
Another theory suggests that comedy is a momentary and publicly useful resistance to authority and an escape from its pressures; its mechanism is a free discharge of repressed psychic energy or resentment, through laughter.32 Pratfalls are usually funny because someone in a position of power or authority, someone in a suit, has taken a fall. We are not laughing from a sense of superiority, but from a subversive, latent aggression. According to Charles Darwin (who wrote a book on the expression of emotion in 1872), “behind the cackle lurks the desire, lurks the intention, to hurt … laughter may well be a civilized version of lethal instinct.”33
Many banana jokes either capitalize on the phallic shape of the fruit or on the notion of slipping on the peel. In 1878 Harper’s Weekly published one of the first banana jokes: “The older the seeds, the more perfect the lady-slippers will be. And the older the banana peel, the less graceful and the more perfect will be the gentleman slippers.”34 The story of the man with the banana in his ear who apologizes for not being able to hear because of the banana in his ear is an old favorite, popular since the 1940s at least. Raymond Sokolov suggests that “it is the kind of humorous, cryptosexual joke Freud would have said made us laugh because it relieved the tension and fear that sex and sexually symbolic objects induce.”35 In 1966 in response to a revival of Chiquita Banana singing her calypso antirefrigeration song, a seven-year-old submitted the following schoolyard parody to United Fruit: “I’m Chiquita Banana and I’m here to say if you want to get rid of your teacher the easy way, just peel a banana, put the peel on the floor, and watch your teacher slide out the door.”36
Not all banana peel jokes are hostile. Charles Lamb, early in the nineteenth century, suggested that “laughter is an overflow of sympathy, an amiable feeling of identity with what is disreputably human, a relish for the whimsical, the odd, the private blunder.”37 The humor theory of sympathy/empathy contradicts the theories of derision/superiority and disappointment/frustrated expectation.38 There is a distinction between humor and mockery; humor is found in a contrast between the thing as it is or ought to be, and the thing smashed out of shape and as it ought not to be, like a broken umbrella that looks “funny.”39 Banana peel jokes continue to circulate. “You may be a fine, upstanding citizen, but that makes no difference to a banana peel” was cited in the New Yorker in 1973.40 Recently a child asked her piano teacher, “Why is a banana peel like music? If you don’t C sharp you’ll B flat.”
Bananas can be fun to talk with. The word itself is reiterative and fun to say—like the joke “I can spell banana, I just don’t know when to stop.” Another example is Shirley Ellis’s song “The Name Game,” a popular hit in the 1960s,
much to the dismay of many hearing it for the twentieth or thirtieth time. Another example of current children’s humor is the knock-knock joke:
Knock knock … Who’s there?
Banana … Banana who?… [repeat]
Knock knock … Who’s there?
Orange … Orange who?
Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?
Bananas can lend themselves to wonderful puns such as that great swing band of the 1930s, Willie Bananas and His Bunch—The Band with A-Peel.41 A 1993 advertisement for the International Ladies Garment Worker’s Union featured a 1940s’ poster that proclaimed “Stick to your union bunch or you’ll get skinned!” The poster also showed an enormous hand of fifteen bananas. The modern caption reads “Going Bananas about Education.”42
Stephen Leacock claims that the language of humor defies translation, putting a barrier between cultures, particularly as most humor deals with fragmentary, topical allusions to current events.43 Former banana republics now caught up with fighting drug traffic are perceived as threatening rather than funny, which may explain why there are few banana jokes in circulation. Garrison Keeler’s joke show that aired on the radio program “Prairie Home Companion” in the spring of 1996 had no banana jokes in the entire two-hour segment.
In countries where bananas are grown, they are taken much more seriously. Bananas represent hard work and the basis of the family income, and the people do not tell banana jokes or slip up on banana peels.44 In the United States, the connection between banana peels and pratfalls has become a standard theme for cartoonists. The banana peel is comic when it is ubiquitous and cheap, and there is no intrinsic value attached to it. A comic postcard postmarked Chicago 1909 pictures a man with a top hat slipping on a banana peel with a woman laughing at him in the background. The caption reads: “I will write when I get on my feet.” A Mutt and Jeff cartoon from 1914 featured Jeff slipping on a banana peel.45 Banana-peel pratfalls continue to be a cartoonist’s stock-in-trade, appearing in the 1990s in Garfield, B.C., Hagar the Horrible, Broom Hilda, Beetle Bailey, Ralph, Ziggy, the Fusco Brothers, Mother Goose and Grimm, Speed Bump, and Gary Larson’s work, among others.46 No matter how often they are used, the banana peel is still funny. Even modern children’s books use the pratfall. One of the illustrations in Maxi, The Hero shows a purse-snatcher who slipped on a banana peel on the steps of the entrance to a subway station.47