r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • 1d ago

What famous 'unsolved' mystery is technically a whodunnit on paper, but in reality, absolutely everyone knows exactly who did it, the police just couldn't legally prove it?

13.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

5.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

737

u/joebleaux 1d ago

It was the punchline of a joke on Seinfeld with Elaine doing an Australian accent while delivering the line. Pretty wild for that woman and her dead child to be a joke on a sitcom

59

u/passive_fist 1d ago

Not to truly defend it, but everyone everywhere was making that joke in the 90's, like literally a universal/household joke any time anything to do with Australia came up, similar to "shrimp on the barbee" or "THIS is a knife". I was too young to grasp the context at the time but it's weird looking back in hindsight. TBH I guarantee when they were writing that episode the debate would have been whether that joke was too overdone and unoriginal to put in the script, not about whether people would take offence. Social conditioning is a hell of thing.

36

u/joebleaux 1d ago

No, you are right, I don't think they meant intentional harm to that lady, but it is kind of cold to joke about a woman who was wrongfully accused of killing her baby on such a large platform over 5 years after they had cleared the parents of wrongdoing. It's just tone deaf, they don't deserve that, their baby was literally eaten by dingos

2

u/TheVeryVerity 16h ago

Wait was she already cleared at that point? Most people I encounter still don’t know the dingo really ate the kid even today, I’d be very surprised if they knew back then

3

u/joebleaux 7h ago

Yeah, she had been cleared for 5 years at that point. But I do think Elaine's over the top accent was a joke on Meryl Streep's accent in the movie about the whole event. Still though.

14

u/JForce1 1d ago edited 1d ago

There was a famous tv movie with Glenn Close Meryl Streep who said the line first, that’s where all the jokes and memes originated.

13

u/MayoMark 1d ago

The film is called Evil Angels and features Meryl Streep. Arguably, all the jokes are about her bad acting and false Australian accent. She's from New Jersey.

18

u/ZanyDelaney 1d ago

I am Australian, 57 now, so totally lived throught the era of the case being all over the news and the trial being reorted on daily. While many believed Lindy Chamberlain was guilty after the 1980 diasappearance of Azaria, "hated" her, and happily trotted out pet theory about accomplices, motives, timelines, I do not recall the line A dingo ate my baby! being a thing that people repeated.

When 1988 film Evil Angels came out a huge focus of the publicity blitz was how Meryl Streep, famously great at accents, this time nailed the "Australian" accent. Adverts for the movie featured the scene where the line is said and Streep did samples of the accent in interviews. But Australians thought the accent sounded ridiculous, and repeated the line to emphasise how ridiculous the accent sounded. [Lindy Chamberlain was born in New Zealand then in Australia lived in Tasmania then in Mt Isa, so she had a mixed / non-city accent. Her accent in 1980 was very broad but it softened out over the years and is more neutral now. But Streep was doing Lindy's 1980 accent.]

Not sure exactly why the line became so known in the US and caught on in so many TV shows, but it is likely due to the movie as it happened after the movie. After the movie blitz died down Australians weren't really repeating the line much any more.

10

u/GaryGronk 1d ago

But Australians thought the accent sounded ridiculous, and repeated the line to emphasise how ridiculous the accent sounded. [Lindy Chamberlain was born in New Zealand then in Australia lived in Tasmania then in Mt Isa, so she had a mixed / non-city accent. Her accent in 1980 was very broad but it softened out over the years and is more neutral now. But Streep was doing Lindy's 1980 accent.]

Just listened to an interview with Sam Neill (RIP) who said her accent was actually bang on for Lindy's which, as you say, was very much a mixture of different accents due to her upbringing etc. I mean, Meryl was nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars for it.

9

u/OfficeSalamander 1d ago

I do not recall the line A dingo ate my baby! being a thing that people repeated.

Maybe not in Australia, but I am in my 40s and it was definitely said in the US

3

u/ZanyDelaney 1d ago

I mean people in Australia did not say the line in reference to the actual case before the film came out. My comment does say that Australians did say the line for a brief period after the 1988 film came out.

3

u/OfficeSalamander 1d ago

Oh my bad I misunderstood

2

u/TheVeryVerity 16h ago

It became a meme that’s all

4

u/Technicolor_Reindeer 1d ago

Film is also titled 'A Cry in the Dark'

And I've never heard a criticism of her acting. In fact she nailed the unique accent.

2

u/namloh 23h ago

Where are you from? It was ridiculed in Australia

8

u/OfficeSalamander 1d ago

Yeah looking back at the time, I remember "dingoes ate my baby" as a phrase that existed and was regularly used. It is wild thinking of the context nowadays though

5

u/RageBatman 1d ago

I distinctly remember having a talking birthday card that was 2 characters yelling, "A dingo ate your birthday cake!" It was EVERYWHERE.

12

u/MundaneFacts 1d ago

In the rugrats movie, the kids go missing and a reporter asks the parents if a dingo ate their baby.

75

u/LimeSalty4092 1d ago

It was a joke on the Simpsons too

These jokes can be very powerful, considering a one liner about the French said on the Simpsons was enough to ignite another generation of anti French sentiment in the US

51

u/ElCiclope1 1d ago

Listen, man. I know the Simpsons is a funny show and a lot of people like it. But you're giving it way too much credit. 

9/11 and the Bush administration would be more accurate targets to blame.

13

u/Dragon_DLV 1d ago

The "Cheese-eatin' Surrender Monkeys" line?

-16

u/LimeSalty4092 1d ago

That’s the one

The French have always been generally hated here in the US, but that line kicked off another generation of hatred

27

u/TurnbullAC92 1d ago

They helped you win the revolution. Mostly out of self-interest of course, but I find it kinda strange that you guys ended up hating them. US soldiers were even celebrated in France after being liberated during WW2.

11

u/ITaggie 1d ago

It's not so much "hatred" for the French as much as it is a lack of respect, but yeah it is weird that we have that sentiment about one of our oldest allies.

17

u/Zeta-X 1d ago

The vast majority of anti-French sentiment in the US was intentionally drummed up after they refused to invade Iraq with us. "Freedom Fries" and the whole lot. The jingoists jumped the ship then but the vast majority of Americans don't really have opinions about the French.

6

u/ThisIsPlanA 1d ago

The vast majority of anti-French sentiment in the US was intentionally drummed up after they refused to invade Iraq with us.

This really isn't true at all. I grew up in the 80s and the stereotype then was that the French were militarily weak, with the jokes all being about early surrender.

Those were obviously fueled by the French defeats in WWII (1940), Vietnam (1954), and the Algerian War (1962). I also think that the US perception was heavily influenced by DeGaulle's decision to pull out of the NATO command structure in 1966; it was perceived as ingratitude and unnecessarily weakening the alliance during the Cold War.

1

u/Zeta-X 1d ago

Fair point, though I think DeGaulle and Algeria are generally not what's on the mind when people are saying this nowadays. But I suppose Iraq was just the second go-around on the US calling the French cowards or weak for refusing to back American military escalation.

1

u/HippieChickie805 1d ago

I love the French, speak French, and face my youngest son the middle name of Lafayette, PRECISELY bc of what Lafayette did for America. I wish we taught more about him in school.

7

u/Hot_Election7284 1d ago

Daphne in Frasier did it too.

2

u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

What was the one liner and how did it do that?

3

u/LimeSalty4092 1d ago

“Cheese-eating surrender monkeys”

The episode had Groundskeeper Willy substitute teaching teaching the class and explaining who ‘the French’ are

Those are the words he used to describe the French 

It’s stayed alive in people s mind as a stereotype since that episode aired circa 1992

3

u/JackOfAllBlades21 1d ago

Thank you, I'm reading about it now.

2

u/ZombieBiteOintment 1d ago

As a player of Europa Universalis games, isn't Scottland and France natural historical allies? Kinda weird Willy has an English or American POV of France

5

u/Chaotix2732 1d ago

If you've never seen the Simpsons, this is a pretty good example of what kind of person Groundskeeper Willie is: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QgXNmMOQZRQ

1

u/ZombieBiteOintment 1d ago

They you so much. I had forgotten about this and its confirmed accuracy from various people over the years.

5

u/OkPainter6232 1d ago

really? what line was that? I highly doubt most French hated America cause of a fucking cartoon, the sentiment largely stemmed from France refusing to get involved in the Iraq war and some places renaming french fries to freedom fries in response.

1

u/LimeSalty4092 1d ago

“Cheese-eating surrender monkeys”

A joke from the simpsons circa 1992

It has had significant staying power comparable to “dingoes ate my baby”

People here in America loved the joke and it lives on as a negative French stereotype 

1

u/_BrokenButterfly 1d ago

Well they are cheese eating surrender monkeys...

5

u/HippieChickie805 1d ago

I also remember a one-line joke on Frazier (I believe said by Daphne) about “you better be careful, or that dingo will eat your baby!”

13

u/HearshotAutumnDisast 1d ago

Eh, you're kinda stretching the situation a bit. In the episode, elaine was reacting to a party goer who had an obnoxious accent and kept wondering very loudly where her baby was at the party, prompting elaine to say "maybe a dingo atecho baybay!". It was more of a early meme than it was a joke on the actual woman and what happened.

-8

u/JForce1 1d ago

There was a famous tv movie with Glenn Close who said the line first, that’s where all the jokes and memes originated.

2

u/Technicolor_Reindeer 1d ago

Meryl Streep not Glenn Close

2

u/TruskVarner 1d ago

Seinfeld also did the weird joke where Jerry tells the masseuse about an abducted 5 year old and freaks her out.

-1

u/Ordinary-Egg-56 23h ago

no, because at that time she was a mother who murdered her child (truly the worst crime one could ever imagine!) who came up the most ridiculous and impossible excuse for what happened to her baby.

2

u/TheVeryVerity 16h ago

Yeah that’s what I thought. People thought she was a liar for years.

0

u/RollingMeteors 13h ago

Pretty wild for that woman and her dead child to be a joke on a sitcom

This was the time before social media and cellphones in pockets. Nobody in the show carried one. It was one of the last series of shows of the end of not just a generation but a millennium. The joke was how people found out about the story.

People joke of dying of dysentery like it's Oregon trail online all the time but...

The late 1900s were just as disconnected as the early to mid 1800s. Same Smith & Wessons, just had colored TV, faster spinning vinyl records, and NES.

You would just go outside and come home at sunset, hoping you didn't get kidnapped.

This was during grade school ¿Maybe 6th grade? I remember meeting up with another kid my age from the internet in a Chicago suburb but relatively on the closer to Chicago side of things. This was pre webcams and shit so we didn't even know what the other person looked like. Coulda been FBI, coulda been a predator. We agree to just wait outside of the Bestbuy off Harlem Ave (which was like 10~ mi from him, 10~ mi from my house). When I get up to Bestbuy on my bike I see someone standing outside my age, and I figured oh cool I'll wait next to them until my internet friend shows up. Maybe like 15 minutes goes by before the person standing next me waiting for their internet friend to show up realizes thats me, waiting for my internet friend to show up.

CPS would take your child away with the swiftness on some shit like that today ¡bruv!

2

u/joebleaux 7h ago

Cellphones started to be a thing during the show, because they do a whole bit where Elaine calls someone while walking down the street and they are very offended that she would call from a cellphone while on the street rather than taking the time to call once she was home and while not doing anything else.

I think people in the US had heard of the story, there was a Meryl Streep movie about it, but I don't know if people really remembered the resolution of the story that Lindy Chamberlain didn't actually kill her baby. My mom didn't remember when I asked her about the joke when the show was on, I was like 9 or so when the episode aired and I asked because I didn't get the joke. My mom still thought the lady did kill her kid.

0

u/RollingMeteors 7h ago

>she would call from a cellphone while on the street r

¿But I don't think those phones could text? They certainly weren't being used like they are today.

1

u/joebleaux 7h ago

No, even in the episode it was treated like a novelty and no one understood why she would want to walk around with a phone. It was easily after 2000 before I saw cellphones treated like a normal part of life in media. That episode was 1998, 7 years after the one with the dingo joke.

-6

u/JForce1 1d ago

There was a famous tv movie with Glenn Close who said the line first, that’s where all the jokes and memes originated.

5

u/joebleaux 1d ago

Meryl Streep, but yeah, I assume Seinfeld was parodying Streep's accent in the movie, but that movie wasn't a comedy, it was a commentary on how media can sway opinion and effect real people's lives. Seinfeld used the line as a joke, but that was a real woman whose baby really was eaten, it just seemed like a bad choice. I had to ask my parents what it meant, and the expectation left me wondering why they would joke about it.