LJ Idol Season 11: Week 29 - Milkshake Duck
“Milkshake Duck” is a milkshake duck.
Forgive the tautology, but it seems noteworthy that the term "Milkshake Duck" did not age well. In fact, it hardly aged at all.
Despite small waves of meme-ery and quippy internet journalism since it hatched from a 2016 tweet, and despite being considered by several word-of-the-year lists (and ultimately obtaining said honor through the Australian Macquarie Dictionary in 2017), it remains a term that is largely forgotten and unused in 2020. Its usages appear limited to self-referential listicles that finally answer the all-unimportant question-What is a Milkshake Duck?
Those listicles mostly died out in 2018.
Curating language is an odd thing. In some cultures where a majority is bent on preserving an immaterial overarching identity, it becomes a dull tool against the implacable march of globalization, or far worse, a sharp blade against the advancement of social reform. In France, the idea of a national identity, of an innate French-ness, is such a prized and embattled conceit that law and language hinge upon its manual preservation. Almost four centuries ago, the Académie Française was established. To this day, the forty-member council (dubbed les immortels) are charged with upholding the sanctity and purity of the French language. They dictate the correct spelling, definitions, and grammar usage of words through ever-updated editions of their in-house dictionary, which is considered to be the ultimate linguistic authority.
Where’s the issue? Well, les immortels (mostly of a singular demographic type) are often at odds with the zeitgeist, scorning the French that’s commonly spoken for being too...anglicized. For every tech-centered term of Silicon Valley and every buzz word at Buzzfeed, the Académie Française creates a more palatable French alternative, so that French people can speak properly. E-mail? « Courriel. » Fake news? « Infox. » Coming out? « Jour de courage. » The Académie fought “hashtag” tooth and nail, adding it to a list of some 5,000+ English words that they deemed should not be used in official documents, in media, or in schools. However, there was a change of heart for “hashtag”, and many others. In recent years, the Académie has been less fervent in fighting the endless onslaught of English words at the forefront of public thought and the tip of the collective tongue.
Of course, subtractive language curation can have more pernicious effects. France has a staunch position of racial color-blindness. The notion could be egalitarian at its core, in that it derives from the assertion that all French citizens are equal. However, in attempting to make the language of the law match this ideal, the French government erased the word « race » (a cognate) from its laws in 2013, and then from its constitution in 2018. Should the law treat all people equally, regardless of race? Of course. Problematically, the result is that large swaths of the French population who are of foreign descent (a not so surprising consequence of being one of the world’s fiercest colonial powers) now have no lawful context with which to fight against the systemic racism embedded throughout the supposedly universalist society. The minority can be swiftly and wittily rebuked by the majority for foolishly playing the game of American intersectional identity politics. Want to wear your burkini at the local swimming pool? Sorry-France is a secular republic. That’s too Muslim, too foreign, too threatening. It’s not French.
What does subtractive language curation look like in the US? According to university scientists and state employees of the Department of Environmental Protection, in 2015, then-governor of Florida Rick Scott imposed an unwritten ban on any words pertaining to climate change (e.g., climate change, global warming, sea-level rise, sustainability, etc.)-it was of little importance that Florida was and continues to be one of the states at the most severe risk of the most harrowing consequences of global warming. These terms were flagrantly absent in policy, communication, and interactions with the media during the years that followed-years of hurricanes, record high temperatures, and a president who would cut funding for every federal scientific organization. Though Ron DeSantis would reintroduce these crucial scientific terms to the Floridian lexicon when he became governor in 2019, he leaves little hope for Floridians who pine for a reunion of policy and respect for science. Rather, he continues his predecessor’s legacy in willfully ignoring the words of the country’s leading scientists, plunging the state into one of the nation’s worst coronavirus outbreaks in a bid for commerce over decency.
In the case of “Milkshake Duck”, this language curation feels additive, like fast-fashion internet news journalists caught wind of a vaguely viral locution, then bet too much money on the wrong pony. If enough people tweet it, then it must have merit! We’ll repeat it back into the echo chamber for clicks and posterity!
Why didn’t "Milkshake Duck" find its place in our hearts, minds, and dictionaries after its 15 seconds of internet fame? One can only speculate. At first sounding, “Milkshake Duck” strikes the ear as utterly dadaist-wholly unnerving and nonplussing in its total incongruity, with two nouns cut from distant corners of the brain with no neural pathways in between. I applaud the dadaists for attempting to dissolve the perceived structures that bind us, but in the end, society marches on with its rigid structures and framework mostly intact, leaving behind their plea for cogent randomness. Perhaps “Milkshake Duck” was predetermined to meet the same fate.
The more likely cause of its demise could be that “Milkshake Duck” is simply too pleasant, both for our times and for its purpose. A cursory search for contemporaries of “Milkshake Duck” brought me to new terms that succeeded in becoming dictionary entries between the years of 2016 to 2020: non-apology, clicktivism, microaggression, fake news, to ghost, to mansplain, deepfake, to self-isolate, etc. Each of these words much more directly and succinctly encompasses nuances of the dark social quagmire we’ve endured throughout this most recent presidential cycle. “Milkshake Duck” is a bit too chipper and a bit too cleverly obfuscating to resonate.
On that chipper tonality-let’s consider the meaning of the term. If a “Milkshake Duck” is a person with some level of media attention that was once perceived to be benevolent, but in fact is ethically problematic, then who are the people that we would name as Milkshake Ducks? Is convicted serial-rapist and former Hollywood elite Harvey Weinstein a “Milkshake Duck”? Would you call J.K. Rowling a “Milkshake Duck” as she single-handedly besmirches and dismantles the legacy of inclusivity that she created in her quest to shame, demean, and marginalize transgender people? How about legendary song-writer and abusive husband John Lennon? Michael Jackson? Picasso? It's too cute to be tasteful or impactful.
“Milkshake Duck” fails to approach the gravitas of a culture thoroughly disillusioned by its leaders and idols. It does, however, perfectly encapsulate a certain American spirit reminiscent of the 50s: the cognitive dissonance of our societal woes doesn’t weigh so heavily on our minds after a milkshake brain-freeze.
If we are to curate our language, then let’s not mince words. Saccharine euphemisms won’t persist. The truth will.