13

This is a scene from Serenity (2005):

MINGO: Quite a crew you've got.

Malcolm: Yeah, they're a fine bunch of reubens.

What does "bunch of reubens" mean? Is he comparing people to sandwiches?

Roosevelt T
  • 745
  • 3
  • 10
  • What are you quoting? If you have transcripts directly, I suspect you misheard, otherwise, provide the source of the text. – Nij Dec 10 '22 at 07:19
  • 3
    @Nij - The quote is accurate. From the novelisation; "Mingo, however, didn't acknowledge it. "Quite a crew you've got." "Yeah," Mal said, "they're a fine bunch of reubens." – Valorum Dec 10 '22 at 07:43

1 Answers1

22

Whedon has lifted this line directly from the show-song Forty-five Minutes from Broadway. In context it means yokel or country-folk and the word survives into the present as "rube".

Mal seems to be suggesting that his crew are unsophisticated (but honest and hard-working) people, or he may just like the way the line sounds.

Reuben, the Hebrew given name once popular in Protestant America, had become generic for a countryman by about 1850, and its short form Rube was in print use by the late 1890s. Rube in this sense either originated in or was taken up by carnival, circus, and show biz argot. The cry of alarm “Hey, Rube!” was put up by circus and carnival people when a local yokel for some reason complained loudly, threatened, or actually picked a fight. In 1891 Tin Pan Alley published “Hey, Rube,” a song by J. Sherrie Mathews and Harry Bulger.

One of the best known occurrences of Reuben in popular culture is in the lyrics of George M. Cohan’s song “Only 45 Minutes from Broadway.” New Rochelle, New York, just north of the city, was supposed to be the setting of the musical show of 1906.

“Oh! what a fine bunch of Reubens, Oh! what a jay atmosphere/ They have whiskers like hay, and imagine Broadway only 45 minutes from here.”

The City in Slang: New York Life and Popular Speech

Valorum
  • 689,072
  • 162
  • 4,636
  • 4,873
  • 4
    Very well done. I spent some time trying to track this down yesterday and didn’t get far enough for an answer at all, much less a solid, well-researched one like this. – Todd Wilcox Dec 10 '22 at 15:31
  • 1
    BTW I think "jay" in the song means about the same thing as reuben, and that word persists only in the compound "jaywalk" (ie to cross the street as if you are such a hick that you don't know about cars) – Andrew Dec 10 '22 at 20:55
  • I read the autobio of Dan Fante and he worked in the early 1960s on the midway of Pacific Ocean Park which was filled with old carnies -- TV was basically the end of this kind of entertainment in the USA, so this was the tail end of work for most of the carnies. They had a Pig Latin-like language used among themselves, but apparently by that time "Rube" was not current. However, dealing with belligerent customers was a big part of the job, and violence was common. – releseabe Dec 24 '22 at 13:40
  • @Andrew: I never thought of "Jay" as meaning hick and except for Jaywalk I can't think of any other term incorporating it. It must be very old indeed. But I can recall coming as close to death in London as ever had when jaywalking and looking the wrong way. I missed death by a fraction of a second -- how often being hit by at least much slower cars when people were used to horses. Not that horses are not pretty dangerous. – releseabe Dec 24 '22 at 13:48
  • Here's some background info https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/why-is-it-called-jaywalking – Andrew Dec 24 '22 at 13:49