this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
147 points (94.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43899 readers
1417 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't use it very often but I misuse the word "Gattaca" on purpose sometimes. In reality it's the title of the 1997 film that's named from the letters G,A,T, and C, referring to guanine, adenin, thymine and cytosine, the four nucleobases of DNA.
But on the TV show The League, the character Rafi (Jason Mantzoukas) screams it as his battle cry during paintball, completely oblivious to what it actually means or that it's the title of a movie. I urge you all to misuse this word at some point as well -- if you ever need to hype yourself up, try screaming "GATTACA!" as your battle cry!
Does the character mean to cry "Attica"? Like people who yelled it in the 70s, referencing the prison revolt?
Yep, but then Family Guy conflated it 20 years ago to "Gattica!" as a way for Peter to show his support for civil rights whilst highlighting that he's an idiot. I doubt Family Guy were the first to make that joke either
It's never explicitly explained, with the most being the other characters saying that they don't think he's ever seen the movie Gattaca and doesn't know what it's about, and Rafi later confirming he had no idea it was a movie.
Since Rafi's character is defined by being as uninformed, devoid of all decency, and chaotic as possible, I think that it completely fits though. Especially since most of his lines are improvised by Mantzoukas, who would be clever enough to use a similar-sounding movie title in place of an actual event for Rafi's character. Adding to that, there is another scene in later seasons where Rafi is getting kicked out of a store and he says that they'll have to call in the police and the FBI to get him out of there, again shouting "Gattaca" which definitely plays into your theory.
If anyone gets the chance to ask Jason Mantzoukas a question, this is the one to ask about! Until then, I think this just became my headcanon. GATTACA!