Sag Harbor: realities behind insult formulas and alpha dog olympics

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I found Benji in Sag Harbor struggling through the same pressure of rules following and fear of embarrassment from friends as Jason Taylor from Black Swan Green. Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead follows 15-year-old Benji and details his journey navigating the African American community in the summer. Similar to how Jason follows unspoken social codes on clothing and names they’re supposed to call each kid (details on Jason check my other blog :)), Benji and his friends are also bound by rules for creating the correct insults. In the second chapter, Benji graphs out a table to correctly construct insults: First come the modifiers, followed by the -in’ verbs, and ending with the object (Whitehead 52). This formulaic approach suggests how performative these teenagers’ daily lives are. They are constantly insecure of making lame jokes or weak insults in front of each other. The formula shows their daily expressions, jokes, or insults aren’t natural and relaxed. They all learn the patterns of the right insults and repeat them to impress others. 

The element of performance can be further identified during NP and Bobby’s argument on the definition of the word “sacadiliac.” The whole incident was started by Benji mishearing a lyric and telling Bobby a funny definition of the word. Later, Bobby makes a joke using “sacadiliac” in front of NP and their girl friends, and NP questions Bobby about it. This whole incident could’ve stayed a trivial quibble. Yet, NP further intensified the argument by betting one hundred dollars. While this whole debate is relatively meaningless, Benji notes Bobby taking on the challenge as he “couldn’t back down” because “his girl was watching (251).” Bobby’s behavior is shaped by the fear of humiliation. Teenage masculinity pressures him to appear perfectly controlled, knowledgeable, and confident in front of girls. How both boys choose to escalate the matter suggests the conflict is less about the word itself but a competition over their dominance and intelligence. In Benji’s words, NP and Bobby were fighting over ‘who was the alpha dog in this double date (251).” 

Throughout this story, Benji and his friends constantly restrain themselves and monitor each other, deeply afraid of being perceived as awkward or uncool. Either through carefully engineering insults or blindly entering pointless arguments just to assert dominance, Whitehead shows how teenagers often use performance to conceal their insecurity. 

Thank you for reading! Any feedback is appreciated :D
Toodles!

Works Cited:
Whitehead, Colson. Sag Harbor. Anchor Books, 2010.

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