Complex Numbers

Jeté

Wrapping up my entries for June's "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+]...

jeté

(This time, I added the accent aigu myself.)

Long ago, I took a cinema class in college. I might have mentioned this before. No, it doesn't make me an expert on movies or anything; it was mostly an easy B and a different movie to watch every week.

One film that stuck in my head was an artsy French science fiction short called La Jetée. While the words "artsy" and "science fiction" may give some readers pause, it can work. It's also more of a slide show than a "movie," but that's part of the art.

The basic thrust (that's a pun, but you might not know it yet) of the film is that a kid witnesses a death on a jetée (which is the French name for the observation platform of an airport, and yes, it's related to the English "jetty").

Later, after the apocalypse, the guy's sent back into time and (spoiler alert) dies on the jetée, realizing at the end that he was the man whose death he'd witnessed in his youth.

Does that sound familiar? It should. A few years later, when 12 Monkeys came out, I remember watching it and thinking, "I really hope Gilliam acknowledges La Jetée for this idea." And, indeed, he did.

Of course, that synopsis fails to capture the metaphorical breadth and depth of the original film. It really is worth watching, and now that I know more French, I might even try to find a version without English subtitles.

As a verb, the french "jeter" means to throw. The dance term, "jeté," has a meaning closer to thrust (also, it's a past tense construction); hence the really very obscure pun above. Because one doesn't really throw a leg (unless it's a prosthetic); one thrusts it. "Jetée" is a related word (feminine gender) for a structure that's thrust out into something else, like the abovementioned observation platform, or how a jetty is kind of thrust into the ocean.

You can see I'm avoiding the more obvious, salacious puns related to gender and thrusting. Why? Not because they're salacious, but because they're too obvious for a professional punster such as myself.

What I really want to know, though, is this: starting maybe about 15 years ago, a neologism entered the English language. I despise most neologisms, but this one is inherently funny. The word is "yeet," and it's a verb meaning something like "to throw without concern." As in "I watched him yeet the ball right through the asshole's window, then walk away." What I'm wondering is if it's inspired by the French jeter— as the "j" sound sometimes does become a "y" in linguistics.

There's also some confusion over whether the past tense is "yeeted" or "yote," and I'm rooting for the latter.