Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Recent portmanteaus that were intended to be clever: Ocularpation, male-odrama.

In the news yesterday, an art event on Wall Street and in Battery Park City: Ocularpation (ocular + occupation). Participants disrobe briefly and mimic Wall Street types:

From the website 100gf | Politics and Computers:

Naked people invade Wall Street as Ocularpation strikes again

The naked show is titled Ocularpation, and it was apparently staged by Zefrey Throwell, who says he watched his mother love her life savings in the 2008 stock market crash and was then surprised to see Wall Street carrying on as usual. So Ocularpation is designed to demonstrate the lack of transparency and responsibility demonstrated by Wall Street. (link)

(There was an earlier Ocularpation in the financial district of San Francisco.)

[I quoted this particular account because it has a wonderful typo in it: love for lose.]

On to A. O. Scott reviewing the movie Crazy, Stupid, Love in the New York Times. Scott describes it as:

a smooth blend of modern comic genres with a surprising undercurrent of dark, difficult emotion. Essentially a study in the varieties of masculine sexual confusion, it travels the circuit from bromance to a kind of Y-chromosome weepie that might be called male-odrama

On ADS-L, Larry Horn remarked about this combination of male and melodrama:

A few earlier google hits for “male-odrama”, with or without hyphen(s), but maybe it will have staying power, if the genre does.

Nice juxtaposition of bromance and male-odrama. In a related development, but of greater vintage and involving a transformed snowclonelet rather than a portmanteau, there’s the expression drama king, as in this sports story by Sean Gregory from yesterday:

Randy Moss Retires: A Drama King Who Belongs in the Hall of Fame

The singularly talented Moss [of the Tennessee Titans] was part of a group of drama-king wide receivers who emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This cradle of pass catchers included guys like [Terrell] Owens, Keyshawn Johnson, Chad Ochocinco; players whose skills were only matched by their egos. In Moss’ case, he was most famous for faux-mooning Green Bay fans after scoring a touchdown in 2005. Fox broadcaster Joe Buck reacted as if Moss assaulted an old lady, calling the act “disgusting.” Moss’ memorable response to the fine that followed: “What’s 10 grand to me?”

Moss also walked off the field before time expired in one game, and squirted water on a referee in another. Besides his coaches and many fans, Moss also caused opposing defenses fits. Moss, who grew up in Rand, West Virginia, came out of Marshall; the Vikings took him with the 21st pick of the 1998 draft. He would have went higher, but many teams worried about Moss’ character.

[I included so much of the text in order to get to “He would have went higher”, with its PST/PSP syncretism.]

Drama king is a translation into (straight) male terms of drama queen (usually applied to women and gay men), an instance of the snowclonelet composite X queen (roughly) ‘enthusiast for X’. Drama queens (and kings) have histrionic personalities. The line between the personality type and the related personality disorder is none too clear; here’s a definition from PubMed Health that blurs the line:

Histrionic personality disorder is a condition in which people act in a very emotional and dramatic way that draws attention to themselves. (link)

(though the page goes on to list signs and symptoms of the disorder, with sexually seductive behavior high on the list).

This entry was posted on August 2, 2011 at 8:00 am and is filed under Errors, Inflection, Portmanteaus, Snowclones, Typos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.