Strange use of "baby daddy"

[Charles C Doyle]

Is the association of Darth Vader with the African American identity of the actor James Earl Jones an intended aspect of the comedy here?

--CD

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From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Randy Alexander [strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 10:21 AM

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 10:04 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

> It's only clear with the foreknowledge of the original--which is also
> the only reason this is at all funny. Taken in isolation, it is neither
> funny nor clear. And if it /were/ clear in isolation, the interpretation
> would /not/ have been "I am your father."


Right.  It seems to me that the writers simply thought it would be funny to
have Darth Vader say "baby daddy" and didn't think much beyond that.  I'm
sure a huge amount of the audience either doesn't quite know what one is (I
didn't know until "baby mama" was discussed here), or aren't the kind of
people who would think through the fact that it doesn't mean what it should
in that context.  Hopefully the other parts of the parodies (I have the
Robot Chicken parodies, but haven't watched them yet) are funnier.

--
Randy Alexander
Xiamen, China

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