Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
creasinglysexual—humor.In1923,apairofyoungmusiciansinNewYork
City convinced the Skidmore Music Company to publish their pop tune
''Yes, We Have No Bananas!'' The song title and lyrics were reportedly
inspired by an immigrant fruit peddler with a limited command of En-
glish—a curious continuity from Sedgwick's 1875 comedy skit involving
bananas. The song became an overnight sensation. Copies of the sheet
music sold by the tens of thousands, and dance-hall bands played the
tune throughout the U.S. and Europe. One of the song's composers, Frank
Silver, organized a ten-piece ''banana band'' that toured the U.S. with a
set that included bunches of bananas and a backdrop with an image of a
banana plantation.
95
Around the same time, George Gershwin's hit tunes
''Let's Call the Whole Thing Off'' and ''But Not for Me'' evoked smiles
by playing with the phonetic qualities of the word ''banana.'' Other enter-
tainers,includingfolk-bluesmusicianstheHappinessBoysandBoCarter,
appropriated the banana as a phallic symbol in their respective compo-
sitions, ''I've Never Seen a Straight Banana'' (1926) and ''Banana in Your
Fruit Basket'' (1931). Silent films and some early talking pictures included
banana-peel induced pratfalls. Urban sanitation crusaders incorporated
banana peels into children's songs conveying anti-litter messages. Finally,
the word ''banana'' entered into popular lexicon via slang terms includ-
ing ''top banana,'' ''banana boat,'' ''banana oil,'' ''to go bananas,'' and of
course, the enduring ''banana republic.''
96
Not all North Americans held a carefree attitude toward banana con-
sumption. While touring western Massachusetts with Henry James in
1904, Edith Wharton found herself unexpectedly spending the night in a
summer resort in Petersham on account of car troubles. In a letter to a
friend,Wharton offered a scathing critique of bourgeois life in the United
States: ''I have been spending my first night in an American 'Summer
hotel' and I despair of the Republic! Such dreariness, such whining sallow
women, such utter absence of the amenities, such crass food, crass man-
ners, crass landscape!! And, mind you, it is a new and fashionable hotel.
What a horror it is for a whole nation to be developing without the sense
of beauty and eating bananas for breakfast.''
97
Wharton's self-described
''horror'' over banana consumption stemmed from the fact that the act of
eating a banana was accompanied by none of the aristocratic (European)
traditionsassociatedwiththeconsumptionofothertropicalcommodities
such as tea, coffee, and chocolate.
98
Instead, the banana was linked to the
''crass'' popularculture of the United States shaped by both mass consum-
erism and democratic ideals. Indeed, what seems to have bothered Whar-
