"Cormac McCarthy does not know who Mario is."

October 29, 2021 11:59 AM

A LIST OF OLD PEOPLE WHO I BELIEVE DO AND DO NOT KNOW WHO MARIO IS (Ben Jenkins, Gawker)
"This isn’t a question of whether or not the person has played a Super Mario game or even watched someone play a Super Mario game. The only test is whether, if shown a picture of Mario, the person would be able to say something like 'That’s Mario.' They can’t say 'That’s a computer game guy' or 'That’s the little jumping fellow from the whatsit.' They have to know his name, but that’s it. Let’s begin."
posted by Atom Eyes (72 comments total)

I had to stop reading as soon as I did the math and realized the Queen was only 55 when Donkey Kong first debuted in arcades.
posted by mittens at 12:03 PM on October 29, 2021 [7 favorites]

That was surprisingly entertaining and astonishingly less stupid than I assumed it would be before I clicked it. Now I am going to go ask my 70 year old mom if she knows who Mario is.
posted by jacquilynne at 12:13 PM on October 29, 2021 [6 favorites]

Experiment complete:

"If I show you this picture, do you know who this is?"
"No, who is it?"
"It's Mario."
"Oh, from Super Mario Brothers?"
"Yes."
"Well, I have heard of Super Mario Brothers and I know who Mario is, but not in such a way that I would recognize a picture of him."
posted by jacquilynne at 12:16 PM on October 29, 2021 [46 favorites]

Experiment complete:
Now *that's* science!
posted by Gorgik at 12:17 PM on October 29, 2021 [5 favorites]

I just read My Lunches With Orson, which is basically transcripts of conversations with Orson Welles over lunch during the last few years of his life, and I concur with Jenkins that it's very very unlikely Welles would be able to identify Mario from a picture -- I'd go further and say "or any video game protagonist." (Fun fact: there's a moment in that book where Welles and his interlocutor are trying to remember Steven Spielberg's first name, and think it's David maybe? before they remember that it's Steven.)
posted by brainwane at 12:18 PM on October 29, 2021 [7 favorites]

It reminds me a little of the (possibly apocryphal) story about a postal letter getting to Charles Schulz, when the only thing on envelope was a picture of Snoopy.
posted by Gorgik at 12:20 PM on October 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

I could have read 50 more entries in this list.
posted by saladin at 12:32 PM on October 29, 2021 [21 favorites]

That was pretty funny, thanks for posting.

"Well, I have heard of Super Mario Brothers and I know who Mario is, but not in such a way that I would recognize a picture of him."

I know Mario when I see him, but otherwise this is definitely me with most pop culture stuff from, oh, about the last 15 years or so. I am 57.

(Although, I at least know what the expression "throwing shade" means. I had to explain it to 64-year-old boyfriend when it showed up in the crossword puzzle we were doing.)
posted by JanetLand at 12:32 PM on October 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

Lacks "almost certainly knows who Mario is but will deadpan pretend they don't because they think it would be funny" representation. Otherwise, excellent article.
posted by brook horse at 12:37 PM on October 29, 2021 [5 favorites]

[Donald Trump] could identify Mario, possibly believes Mario is real and has wronged him in some specific way.

Counterargument: Trump has no internal monologue, but rather an external monologue, to which were all exposed for several years. Not once did he opine at length about Mario or Italian-American plumbers generally, and I don't recall any attempt to declare war on (and/or outright purchase) the nation of Italy in order to "get" Mario which the Joint Chiefs had to talk him out of.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:37 PM on October 29, 2021 [18 favorites]

I could have read 50 more entries in this list.

I grabbed a few candidates off the list of Time Person of the Year honorees and the Forbes Celebrity 100. My guesses:

Angela Merkel: Yes
Mikhail Gorbachev: Yes, and maybe has even been paid to star in a Nintendo ad at some point
Jimmy Carter: Would take a moment of prompting but would remember after a moment
Harrison Ford: No
Bruce Springsteen: No
Elton John: Yes
posted by brainwane at 12:46 PM on October 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

Something that would make this a lot easier is an idea of the base rate. Like, what is Mario's Q score for people older than 65? You don't need access to celebrity inner monologues to find that out.
posted by rollick at 12:47 PM on October 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

I immediately want to know the truth about this for many people.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:49 PM on October 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

Joe Manchin?
posted by Going To Maine at 12:55 PM on October 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

Bob Dylan: definitely not.

Susan Orlean: can beat the author at the game.

Bonus round: which celebrities would reply with "IT'S-A MARIO!"?
posted by rhizome at 12:59 PM on October 29, 2021 [5 favorites]

Bonus round: which celebrities would reply with "IT'S-A MARIO!"?

Barack Obama.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:01 PM on October 29, 2021 [29 favorites]

J. D. Salinder: Absolutely not.

Bill Clinton: Yes; learned his name from the NYTimes crossword puzzle.

Eric Clapton: No, although he does know Earthworm Jim.

Rudy Giuliani: Yes, but only after having considered whether calling Mario a hateful Italian stereotype would help one of his primary bids.

Steven Hawking: No; Would have thought from a casual name-drop that you were on friendly terms with physicist and philosopher Mario Bunge.

Peter Fonda: Yes, but only as a character from the Super Smash Bros. franchise.

Werner Herzog: Is in fact a Mario who escaped from a timeline in which he and Lucki were known as the Munich Bros.
posted by belarius at 1:04 PM on October 29, 2021 [13 favorites]

I had to stop reading as soon as I did the math and realized the Queen was only 55 when Donkey Kong first debuted in arcades.

But how old was the Princess?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:09 PM on October 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

Verdict: Knows he’s from a computer game, does not know his name, if pushed would guess “Alfonso.”

No fan of the Queen, but I think she's savvy enough not to guess the guy with the M on his cap is named Alfonso.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:20 PM on October 29, 2021 [10 favorites]

OK, gramma, who's this?
posted by praemunire at 1:20 PM on October 29, 2021 [10 favorites]

That is without a doubt the weirdest drawing of Bob Hoskins that I have ever seen.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 1:21 PM on October 29, 2021 [7 favorites]

counterargument on werner herzog: apparently he claims that prior to being in the Mandelorian, he was unfamiliar with Jon Favreau's previous work AND had never seen star wars, which is such a wonderfully belligerent avoidance of pop culture touchstones that I can believe he'd never even heard of the Nintendo corporation.
posted by dismas at 1:24 PM on October 29, 2021 [15 favorites]

of course, I f***ing know who Mario is.
posted by philip-random at 1:29 PM on October 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

Trump thinks he knows Mario and Luigi — they installed his low flow toilet, but he got the last laugh because he never paid the bill.
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 1:41 PM on October 29, 2021 [8 favorites]

There is absolutely no molecule of doubt in my mind that Werner Herzog has thought a LOT about Mario.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:42 PM on October 29, 2021 [12 favorites]

Fran Lebowitz (71): Knows who Mario is, but insists she has never seen him before.

Terrence Malick (77): Does not know who Mario is, but once had a weird dream in which he travelled through a green pipe and glimpsed a princess talking to a mushroom.

Paul McCartney (79): Absolutely knows who Mario is. "He was definitely interested in the medium and what it can do and what’s going on."

Bruce Lee (would be 81, but died in 1973): Does not know who Mario is, but Mario knows who Bruce Lee is.

Mario Vargas Llosa (85): Knows who Mario is because his great-grandkids joke that he loves mushrooms.

Joan Didion (86): Does not know who Mario is. Is suspicious about the cartoon man's possibly maga-adjacent red hat.

Noam Chomsky (92): Knows who Mario is, but prefers other characters; the acolytes he crushes mercilessly at Mario Tennis Aces refer to him as "Chain Chompsky".
posted by oulipian at 2:04 PM on October 29, 2021 [7 favorites]

My friend Alex did the thing that seemingly half of North American Gen-X types did, which is to go teach English in Japan. He lived there four years and came back with a solid grasp of the language and the culture. He also sometimes rolls his eyes at the way Japanese pop culture gets altered for western consumption.

Mario is one of these things: he tells me that in Japanese, Mario is actually the character’s last name, but his first name is Itsumi.

Itsumi Mario.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:07 PM on October 29, 2021 [40 favorites]

Well I think we can stop the discussion right there.
posted by goatdog at 2:12 PM on October 29, 2021 [4 favorites]

John Darnielle knows who Mario is, and wrote a song from the perspective of Toad.
posted by kaibutsu at 2:22 PM on October 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

Orson Welles died in October of 1985. Super Mario Bros. was released in September of that same year. That gives us one month where Orson Welles technically could have identified Mario from a picture.

what is with this whitewashing of the Jumpman years?
posted by Sauce Trough at 2:29 PM on October 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

This is the Ben Jenkins who co-hosts the Free to a Good Home podcast. Ever since they guested on Jordan Jesse Go a few months back, I have been pumping FTAGH straight into my veins. I'm not quite caught up to the current eps, but I have heard them discuss that bit about Salman Rushdie a couple of times.
posted by polecat at 2:34 PM on October 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

I (69) have never played the game, to the best of my memory (which ain't what it used to be) but I would have known Mario from his picture.
Luigi... No.
posted by MtDewd at 2:53 PM on October 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'd like to think that, back when Bob Hoskins was still with us, if you showed him a pic of Mario, he'd have instantly responded, "ITSA MEEEEEE!"
posted by panglos at 2:56 PM on October 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

Itsumi, in case you didn't piece it together, is a joke. Say it aloud, in an energetic Italian falsetto, followed by "Mario." There, I may have spoiled the joke, but I prevented yet another dumb urban legend from forming, I consider my action justified.

Something else I consider it important to say is that, while Orson Welles may have died when Super Mario Bros had only been out for a month, Donkey Kong had been around since 1981.
posted by JHarris at 2:58 PM on October 29, 2021 [6 favorites]

Mario is one of these things: he tells me that in Japanese, Mario is actually the character’s last name, but his first name is Itsumi.

Nonsense, we all know that his name is Mario Mario, and his brother is Luigi Mario.
posted by biogeo at 3:05 PM on October 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

C.W. McCall (92): Served as mayor of Ouray, Colorado from 1986-1992, so he probably knew who Mario was at some point. Could not be reached for comment

Ronnie Milsap (78): "Hmm... is that that Eye-talian fella?"

Dolly Parton (75): Knows who Mario is, but would prefer that kids spend more time reading books and less time playing video games

Willie Nelson (88): Has played Mario Golf on multiple platforms, but doesn't remember any of the characters' names, and instead calls them things like 'skinny Bill' and 'that prick lizard'
posted by box at 3:21 PM on October 29, 2021 [23 favorites]

he tells me that in Japanese, Mario is actually the character’s last name, but his first name is Itsumi.

So many questions. Western or Eastern name order? What's Luigi's first name? Are the Mario Brothers even related?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:38 PM on October 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

J. D. Salinder did know who Frogger was.
posted by y2karl at 3:41 PM on October 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

> No fan of the Queen, but I think she's savvy enough not to guess the guy with the M on his cap is named Alfonso.

Not every member of the Red Sox have names starting with B.
posted by ardgedee at 4:02 PM on October 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

Mario should consider himself lucky, lest Cormac turn his singular imagination toward the most grisly fate an overexposed pop-culture figure might possibly endure.
posted by thecincinnatikid at 4:03 PM on October 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

Mario, sure, but I refuse to call that little asshole Super Mario. Who even does that?

it's-a me, a huge curmudgeon
posted by phooky at 4:10 PM on October 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

would have appreciated a tfg cw
posted by stevil at 4:26 PM on October 29, 2021

How many people here know who Cheech Wizard is? Show of hands. Okay, who created him? No google!
posted by Splunge at 4:31 PM on October 29, 2021 [5 favorites]

vaughn bodé

or was it bodè, I can never remember which accent mark
posted by egypturnash at 4:42 PM on October 29, 2021 [5 favorites]

Like a lot of ‘70s pop-culture ephemera, I know who created Cheech Wizard because of the Beastie Boys.
posted by box at 4:47 PM on October 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

Sally Rooney definitely knows who Mario is and has wondered if he'd be a good lover but would totally roll her eyes and act annoyed if you asked.

Elena Ferrante has a novel in which the adulterous husband of the estranged daughter is possibly based on Mario, but she'll never confirm or deny.

Jonathan Franzen pretends he hates Mario, but in his dreams, he is Mario, jumping on mushrooms, using magical powers to obliterate bird-eating cats and social media.

Donna Tartt has for years thought that Mario was this coke-addled Italian exchange student that lived across the hall from Bret Easton Ellis at Bennington. No one has ever corrected her.

Michael Chabon is playing some variety of Mario as we speak and would be happy to tell you about it.

Richard Ford has been trying to finish Super Mario Brothers on the original NES ever since a starstruck young writer brought it back to his cabin or whatever in 1988. He has ideas about what it means about loneliness and isolation. He will probably never tell you about them .

Hilary Mantel has never heard of Mario, but strangely has an in-depth knowledge of both Princess Peach's backstory and the intricacies of the Peach regime's internal politics and its broader philosophical/economic implications for the mushroom kingdom.
posted by thivaia at 4:53 PM on October 29, 2021 [13 favorites]

Yes, I'm 72 years old and know who Mario and Luigi are though I've never played the game. But my question is, do you know what a purple capital L in vanilla NetHack is?
posted by jim in austin at 4:54 PM on October 29, 2021 [7 favorites]

(Just realized I missed the critical "old" in the original article. Never mind)
posted by thivaia at 4:56 PM on October 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

vaughn bodé

or was it bodè, I can never remember which accent mark

It's Bodē.

Why do I know this
posted by May Kasahara at 4:59 PM on October 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

But my question is, do you know what a purple capital L in vanilla NetHack is?

Well, obviously a Lich of some sort, and purple tends to be a dangerous color so I’m gonna go with Arch-Lich.

(Checks)

Well damn, those three ascensions back in my 20s were good for something, I guess.
posted by notoriety public at 5:13 PM on October 29, 2021 [6 favorites]

(cracks fingers) I got this.
posted by JHarris at 6:07 PM on October 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

My mom (75) and my step-dad (85) play Mario Kart every day at 3:00.
posted by Mavri at 6:11 PM on October 29, 2021 [17 favorites]

I like to imagine them sliding across the house exactly on time like the figures in an elaborate cuckoo clock.
posted by JHarris at 6:18 PM on October 29, 2021 [12 favorites]

I don’t think Dennis Hopper could have ever identified Mario from a picture.

Somebody, please, add a Mario icon to Dennis Hopper's grave site.
posted by peeedro at 6:50 PM on October 29, 2021

Vaughn Bodē, a fascinating artist.
posted by ovvl at 6:52 PM on October 29, 2021

…do you know what a purple capital L in vanilla NetHack is?

Waluigi, obv
posted by oulipian at 7:38 PM on October 29, 2021 [4 favorites]

Who even does that?

Hans, Greg, Dave, Bob, and, er, Man. That said I’m not at all sure if Mario, singular, is Super,it’s more that the Bros. are billed as “The Super Mario Bros.” in traditional circus act style.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 1:23 AM on October 30, 2021

This question is going to become way less interesting in about a year and a half when the Mario animated movie comes out. Right now it's interesting because Mario is huge but in a way that boomers could absolutely have missed (at one point, Mario was more recognisable to American kids than Mickey Mouse).

I think my favourite "definitely knows Mario" was Jamie Lee Curtis (her daughter works in video games; she cosplayed as Vega from Street Fighter at one point to attend an event), but Salman Rushdie is a high point.
posted by Merus at 1:24 AM on October 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

Someone do Zizek...
posted by jpziller at 2:29 AM on October 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

I think you'll find that Zizek is a DC property, not one of Nintendo's.
posted by flabdablet at 4:11 AM on October 30, 2021 [15 favorites]

I’m compiling a list of young people who do or do not think that Homer is a cartoon character.
posted by Phanx at 5:16 AM on October 30, 2021

Homer's a cartoon character?
posted by mono blanco at 6:33 AM on October 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

Totally changed my perspective on The Iliad.
posted by box at 7:00 AM on October 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

But my question is, do you know what a purple capital L in vanilla NetHack is?

Wait, your NetHack had colours?! Lucky!
posted by Athanassiel at 8:10 AM on October 30, 2021 [5 favorites]

Homer's a cartoon character?

Not originally: in The Day of the Locust (1975), Donald Sutherland plays a Hollywood art director in the 1930s. The character’s name: Homer Simpson.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:24 AM on October 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

Wait, your NetHack had colours?! Lucky!

Colors are for weaklings!
posted by praemunire at 2:00 PM on October 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

in The Day of the Locust (1975)

Although that film, which is way too long, contains some memorable scenes, please note that the novel is one of the great reads about old Hollywood.

And although I'm ten years older, I'm exactly with JanetLand on this one -- I know who he is, but I've never played his game.
posted by Rash at 2:24 PM on October 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

I just figured out who Ed Sheeran is yesterday.
posted by stray at 6:00 PM on October 30, 2021

I just texted my relatively pop-culture-hip 85yo mom two photos of Mario; one close up (the first I found) and then one in plumber regalia. No clue. Once I told her, she said, "Oh, from Super Mario Bros." No visual recognition, but she got the reference, which goes along with jacquilynne's post at the top.
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 7:52 PM on October 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

My mom (75) and my step-dad (85) play Mario Kart every day at 3:00.

AM or PM?
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:38 AM on October 31, 2021 [2 favorites]

Both, probably.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 1:24 PM on October 31, 2021 [1 favorite]

> oulipian

Bruce Lee (would be 81, but died in 1973): Does not know who Mario is, but Mario knows who Bruce Lee is.

I got nerdsniped by this.

The original line is something like, "If we try to do this on our own, we're done for!"

(The blog post author says, "The translator has a lot of courage (nerve?) to use the name of a real person.")

So, (en) Mario knows Bruce Lee, but (ja) Mario doesn't. (Or, we don't know. Absence of evidence, etc.)
posted by The genius who rejected Anno's budget proposal. at 5:10 PM on October 31, 2021 [1 favorite]