Disclaimer: Rape isn’t funny and no aspect of this thread is meant to imply otherwise.
I’ve been subjected by numerous sources to casual, oblique jokes about prison rape throughout my life. The shtick is usually that a character named “Bubba” metes out a kind of vigilante justice to his fellow inmates in the form of violent rape. For the purposes of the joke we don’t really care about Bubba’s moral outlook, his identity, or what he’s doing in prison because only two of his features inform the joke:[ol][li]He is physically formidable[*]He enjoys raping other prisoners[/ol][/li]
You’ve probably heard it before: “Man, wait until Bubba gets ahold of that guy!”, exclaims an onlooker at the sentencing hearing of some ostensibly deserving criminal.
The question:
But who is Bubba? Where did he come from? And why is he our go-to guy for prison rape?
You can find endless examples of the meme by Googling some variant of “Bubba prison rape”, but Bubba’s origins have proven elusive. Does he feature in a book or film? Was he a famous rapist? According to a wiki article, the name can be significant of low socioeconomic status in the American South, but that doesn’t really get at where he came from or why he’s the embodiment of prison rape.
I haven’t seen the film, but it’s been referenced in popular culture enough for me to get the idea. That said, neither the imdb page nor the wiki article for Deliverance mention a Bubba. There was a “Bobby” (portrayed by Ned Beatty), but he was apparently one of the businessmen being raped rather than a rapist himself.
The funny thing is that in the prison rape meme “Bubba” always seems like he’s supposed to be black. But Bubba doesn’t seem like a really black name/nickname, does it? I mean, it’s obviously much worse to be raped by a scary black guy than by a scary white guy, right?
I find ‘Bubba’ to more often be just a euphemism for a large, coverall-wearing, not too bright, generally racist, southern redneck hillbilly. Because of this it’s easily borrowed to sometimes also mean a large, dumb, southern, ‘rapey’ prison cellmate…
While Bubba is supposed to be a stereotypical Southern white name, the only “Bubbas” I’ve ever heard of tended to be black- I’m thinking of football players, like Bubba Smith and Bubba Parris, and Bubba Knight, Gladys’ brother.
That’s the genius of “Bubba”. Depending on who’s hearing it, it conjures up a different horrible image. To the racists, it’s some big black dude from the South. To others, it’s a big biker, or a big hillbilly.
While I was hoping someone could point at a specific cultural artifact that gave us Bubba, I suppose I must conclude that he’s really a creation of American folklore. He’s a sort of folk antihero or boogieman who punishes unsavory characters in a way that appeals to unspoken fears and urges. People dread the idea of being raped, and yet, feel that there are some people who should be raped, and we’ve collectively agreed to name the cognitive dissonance “Bubba.”
Still, makes me wonder who coined it and why the name stuck.
The ONLY businessman being raped, actually. The Burt Reynolds character comes to the rescue before anyone else can be violated.
As for the thread question: I expect that, if the prototypical prison rapist is indeed called Bubba, it is based on the notion that that name is common among poor whites, and that such persons are more st likely to commit such horrors.
