po-tay-toh po-tah-toh: disrupting gender binaries
I already know what you’re going to say. “Tre, please don’t write a think piece about that TikTok with the potato boy. It’s not that funny and it’s really old.” However, due to COVID, I have had absolutely nothing to do for the last six months. So I’ve been reading queer theory, lots of it. And let me assure you, TikTok’s don’t get any queer-er than this.
I guess I can describe the TikTok for you, if you’re like, too lazy to click on the link or something. Basically, a girl is on a zoom call on her laptop, and she’s filming it with her phone. It’s unclear why she was filming. On the zoom call, this boy (white, presumably cisgender and heterosexual) is eating mini potatoes, raw, for some reason. The girl filming says to him—she started filming mid-conversation—“I thought that was a doughnut!” To which the boy responds, “no, it’s like a mini potato”. Again, I don’t know why she was filming this, because nothing interesting is happening. Then another boy (questionably white, presumably cisgender, and almost certainly not heterosexual, but we will get to that later) says, in the funniest voice I have ever heard, “oh, po-tay-toh po-tah-toh!” After he says this, the zoom call is dead quiet—the first boy gives his camera a deathly glare, the second boy realizes that his joke fell flat and makes a hilarious face (really, he is the only interesting character in this entire ordeal) and then the TikTok ends. The words printed over the TikTok read “I have second hand embarrassment”, followed by a skull emoji.
I think it’s worth explaining the potato pun to the reader, as a lot of my followers on Instagram did not seem to understand the humor behind it. “Po-tay-toh po-tah-toh” is an English language phrase which refers to a trivial or inconsequential difference. The phrase originates from George Girshwin’s 1937 song “Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off”, in which a man jokingly tries to end his relationship with his lover because they pronounce the word “tomato” differently. In the traditional use of the phrase, the potato acts as a metaphorical stand in for whatever trivial, inconsequential difference is at hand. The phrase has become so overused in American English that it is no longer considered a clever use of language, instead reduced to a mere cliché. So while the use of the phrase in almost any other context would be completely cornball, the boy’s use of the phrase in this TikTok is nothing short of rhetorical genius, precisely because the “po-tay-toh” refers to an actual potato. In other words, while the phrase is applicable in it’s usual metaphorical sense, it is applicable in the literal sense as well.
I would like to make the argument, or perhaps the assumption, that the boy who made the potato pun is gay. Or, if he isn’t gay—because it’s impossible to tell if someone is gay from two seconds of camera time in a TikTok—then I would like to argue that he constitutes a queer presence in the video. This claim is rooted in nothing but my own (several) viewing(s) of the TikTok, but I mean, come on. Seriously, watch the video and see for yourself. Everything about this boy’s performance—the enunciation with which he pronounces the predominant “T” in “po-tay-toh po-tah-toh”, the flabbergasted grimace he makes when he realizes his joke has fallen flat in the Zoom call—it all screams gay. And, even if that boy is not gay, one cannot deny the queer vibes he radiates into the TikTok. For the purpose of my argument, it does not matter if the boy is gay in real life; we only need to acknowledge him as a gay energy to which the straight students in the TikTok react.
The difference between “po-tay-toh” and “po-tah-toh” lies in the second syllable of each word; the difference between the sounds /teɪ/ and /tɑː/. In semiotic terms, this difference lies at the level of the signifier. Both “po-tay-toh” and “po-tah-toh” refer to the same thing, the same signified, which is, of course, a potato. The difference lies in the sounds themselves, not in any meaning inherent to the word. (This is, of course, untrue to a certain extent, as nobody in their right mind ever says “po-tah-toh” in normal discourse. Thus, “po-tah-toh” does not simply refer to a potato, but instead refers to a “not po-tay-toh”. However, for the sake of my argument, and my sanity, we will pretend that they are the same.) The phrase “po-tay-toh po-tah-toh” can thus be understood as a semantic favoring of the signified over the signifier. It does not matter which pronunciation you use to communicate; the fundamental meaning is always the same. Under this theory, the signifier acts as an empty vessel which carries the signified as meaning.
If we understand the boy who made the pun as a queer presence, then this notion that transcendental meanings trump trivial appearances applies not only to the potato in question, but to his performed gender as well. While the other students in the TikTok live within the rigid gender binary, as either “po-tay-toh” or “po-tah-toh”, our favorite gay exists in between and outside of these boundries. His humanity is not dependent on appearance as performed gender; it exists separately from his physical appearance altogether. Just as signifiers are meaningless vessels through which signifieds are transported, so too is gender a meaningless (and therefore arbitrary) vessel through which we carry humanity. One should not ignore the phallic symbolism of the potato, which was initially mistaken for a vulvic doughnut. While the students were frantic to sort the potato into one category or the other, Our Favorite Gay collapses these binaries into one: the potato and the doughnut, the phallic and the vulvic, the masculine and the feminine.
I mentioned that I had no clear idea why the girl was filming the TikTok in the first place. I would like to make a second assumption, perhaps a more believable one, that she had a (heterosexual) crush on the straight boy who was eating the potatoes. The straight boy is the sole object of focus in the frame, until the gay boy speaks and demands the TikTok’s attention. That the girl filming felt embarrassment only after the gay boy spoke marks a cisgender-heterosexual anxiety with bodies that do not conform to the binary.
And so, here I am, calling for a dramatic rewriting of our collective understanding of this TikTok. For the boy did not embarrass himself! He simply refused to understand his own humanity within the patriarchal gender binary. Any anxiety or embarrassment that the viewer feels towards The Boy Who Made The Pun is a symptom of a subconscious fear of self liberation from such an arbitrary system of meaning.
