A San Diego listener of Mexican descent says a scene in a Quentin Tarantino film has her wondering about the term Mexican standoff. Is it just a duel? A three-way duel, complete with guns? The end of a 1-1 doubleheader in baseball? Over time, it’s had all of these definitions. But the term appears to derive from a derogatory use of Mexican to describe something inferior or undesirable. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Mexican Standoff”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Oh, good morning. This is Marcela.
Hi, Marcela. How are you doing?
Hi, Marcela.
You’re well. You’re well. Thank you.
What can we help you with?
Well, I am very curious about an expression.
I’m Mexican, and I was born in Mexico City.
And I was watching a movie set in occupied France, and it’s Inglourious Bastards with Brad Pitt.
I heard the expression Mexican standoff, and I said, why are they talking about Mexicans during that time and in that situation?
And it was a scene where Brad Pitt, who is Lieutenant Aldo, the American Lieutenant Aldo, is negotiating with a young sergeant that is German.
And the sergeant is on a basement, in a bar in the basement.
And he’s saying, okay, I’ll make a deal with you.
I’ll come down with no guns and you give me the girl.
And so he’s coming down the stairs, but he sees the German aiming at him.
And he says, what do you mean? This is not the deal. This is a Mexican standoff.
So the German says, no, it’s not a Mexican standoff because you need three people for that.
And he says, well, if you fire at me, then my people are up there with a grenade and then they’ll fire at you.
So I got very curious and I looked it up.
But most of the discussions online were about the logistics of a Mexican standoff.
I did find a few because I wanted to know why the adjective Mexican.
Yeah, why Mexican standoff.
Yeah, my question is what do Mexicans call that?
Well, see, here’s the thing.
I went back and I realized that you have options for languages on the rented movies.
So I put it in Spanish.
Oh, excellent.
What did it say?
And what it said was…
Punto muerto?
No, duelo.
Duelo.
Just a duel?
A duel, -huh.
Nothing is conclusive.
But these are some of the things that I read.
Marcella, I think we can help you with this.
Oh, okay, great.
I think we can short-circuit some of this.
Oh, great.
One of the things that’s funny about that scene in the movie is that what Mexican standoff means actually is in dispute in English.
There are a lot of different meanings.
Yeah.
Some people think a Mexican standoff is where you manage to get away alive.
Some people think a Mexican standoff is when you have a gun in your face and there’s no way out of it, whether you’re armed or not.
Some people think it’s just when there are three people having a stare down, each one holding the gun, pointing at another person, and each person having a gun pointed at them.
So there’s lots of different definitions here.
But the Mexican in the phrase, that’s where we run into some interesting kind of like cross-cultural conflicts.
Because there are a number of phrases in American English that include the word Mexican that suggests something other than the best possible situation.
Yeah.
Kind of a derogatory term.
Yes, exactly.
And in this case, what is usually meant by Mexican standoff is that you, when faced with a difficulty, you ran.
That you just escaped.
You got away.
I think of it more as a stalemate, though.
Yeah.
Like they had it.
That’s the thing.
The canonical Mexican standoff, though, is the one where it suggests cowardice on the part of the person who gets away.
And then it’s become modified over time as we grow a little more sensitive to language just to mean stalemate.
Or even just a plain old standoff without any kind of Mexican at all.
Right.
The earliest use of it that we know goes back to baseball and the idea of a pitcher getting out of a game without getting out of a doubleheader, having won one and lost the other.
But yeah, it carries a whiff of condescension and prejudice.
And you might have thought that it goes back to one particular event, like, I don’t know, the Alamo or something like that.
But I avoid using it.
I haven’t seen it listed in dictionaries as being derogatory or objectionable, but I still avoid using it for exactly the kinds of reasons that Grant was talking about.
Yeah, I would avoid using it as well.
So standoff and stalemate work just fine if all your meaning is that each person has a gun pointed at them and can’t get away without getting shot or can’t shoot without being shot first.
And I’m interested in the subtitling.
It sounds like you did a lot of legwork, Marcella.
That’s exactly what I would have done.
Yeah, well, I just get very curious about something, and I pursue it.
Marcella, thank you so much for calling.
No, thank you for having me.
I’ve always wanted to be on your show.
Take care.
I talk back to the radio when I hear you.
Thank you so much.
All right, thanks.
Bye-bye.
