What's Funny About the Dutch?

My friend Peter asked me about this, about the time that Austin Powers Goldmember was in the theatres. It seems to go without saying in that movie that Goldmember is pathetic and ridiculous, just because he's Dutch.

Here's Mike Myers in an interview:

Goldmember's a Dutch guy who is a bad guy. He's from the '70s. He runs a club called Studio 69. He's a type of Dutch guy that you see at the beach that wears a terry cloth banana hammock, and has a lotion bag filled with various lotions and a cell phone and wet naps.

Of course there are "Dutch courage" and "Dutch treat" from way back. Also "Dutch uncle." All funny. I told Peter that if you go back to Swift, probably the worst characters in all of Gulliver's Travels are Dutch (Protestant) missionaries.

I'm re-reading the letters of Evelyn Waugh. Page 54, note 9: "Teresa Jungman (1907- ). A devout Roman Catholic and a Bright Young Thing. Waugh was in love with her, as were many others. As she was Dutch and resisted his advances, he came to use the word 'Dutch' to mean inconvenient or awkward."

I just Googled "Dutch Uncle":

The phrases "Dutch act," meaning "suicide," and "Dutch uncle," meaning someone who is not your uncle but gives you advice as if he were, are both linguistic relics of a low point in relations between England and The Netherlands. Back in the 17th century, when both countries were building their global empires, their intense rivalry found an outlet in a wide range of popular sayings invented by each country to insult the other. Since we are primarily an English-speaking culture, the few volleys in this linguistic war that have survived are, naturally, those disparaging the Dutch, but even those are rarely heard today. Some, such as "Dutch uncle," were probably originally meant to be more insulting than we consider them today.

According to Hugh Rawson, who explores the topic at length in his wonderful book "Wicked Words" (Crown Publishers), many of the English anti-Dutch terms became popular in the U.S. because of confusion with the word "Deutsch," or German, and were often applied to German immigrants. For the connoisseurs of insults among us, Mr. Rawson lists more than two pages of anti-Dutch slurs once popular. Along with "Dutch treat," which means no "treat" at all because each person pays his or her own way, other phrases once current included "Dutch courage" (liquor), "Dutch defense" (a retreat), "Dutch headache" (a hangover), "Do a Dutch" (commit suicide), "Dutch concert" (a drunken uproar), and "Dutch nightingale" (a frog), which seems an especially low blow.

What would be the more insulting implication of "Dutch uncle"? That he is in fact your mother's boyfriend? Or you are a female and he is your own boyfriend?

Canadians were involved in liberating the Dutch at the end of World War II. Perhaps if we had known it was the Dutch, we would have been wise to throw them back. No, no, that's a bad joke.

Sat Jul 23, 2005 6:25 pm MST by robertll | Email Article |

Return to Main Page

What's Funny About the Dutch?