Prominent in this geography was the nearby cemetery, almost a hundred years old by then, smack in the middle of the residential area that had grown up around it. Remembering the Midwest urban landscape of my boomer childhood, it seemed that my buddies and I lived and played amidst a jumble of tall-spired medieval-style churches, banks that looked like Roman temples and colleges that looked like castles, all interspersed among homes big and small on streets that were safe and populated by way fewer cars, and that above all else, were easily walkable, or at least bikeable on our Schwinns. What interests me most about this expression and why I think it will eventually pass from popular usage is the fact that it is grounded in a kind of urban experience that is enjoyed firsthand by fewer and fewer persons, who are more and more suburban-born and automobile-dependent. (Scout: “General Custer, sir, should we retreat? ” Custer: “Retreat? Hell, no, we’ve got them surrounded.”)
The darker meaning of the same expression which notes the foolish confidence of one who does not understand the real difficulties or even dangers of his or her situation brings to mind the Battle of Little Big Horn. The heroic scene described above also demonstrates another aspect of the more positive meaning of “whistling past the graveyard” in that an individual can actually generate real calmness and courage, and not just the appearance of these feelings, by performing some token of casualness while confronting fear.
WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD MOVIE
The second meaning describes an individual who is genuinely confident and cheerful while in pursuit of a course of action at the same time blithely oblivious to the real risks involved – i.e., clueless.Īn example of the first definition of this sepulchral catchphrase is the scene in the movie Zulu, a boyhood favorite movie of mine, wherein the hopelessly outnumbered British redcoats face down their tribal adversaries by singing, in harmony, a rousing regimental song. The first connotes a situation in which a person does something (whistling, maybe?) to make of show – to others, or even more commonly, to oneself - of bravery, or at least nonchalance, in the face of danger or difficulties. There seems to be two meanings for this idiom, both dependent on the same metaphoric setting and action - but while one is mostly positive, the other, not so much.
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