As an ex-English major and instructor, I’m hyper-aware of genre. That’s why the idea of the bingo card fascinates me – not the cards used in playing the game, you understand, but parodies of them that summarize common responses to certain issues. What fascinates me is not just that the bingo card seems less than two decades old and remains a largely unacknowledged genre, but also that it’s a product of the Internet in general, and of feminist thought in particular.
One of the first bingo cards (if not the first) was probably the Buzzword (aka Bullshit) bingo card, which is full of business cliches like “synergy” and “user-centric,” and is supposed to be used to pass the time at long meetings. Wikipedia specifically identifies the inventor as an employee of Silicon Graphics in 1993, but, as with most popular culture, how accurate this attribution is uncertain – I seem to remember the Buzzword bingo card circulating a year or two earlier, when I first started using the Internet.
What is more certain is that the idea seems to have been popularized in Dilbert in 1994, and quickly became one of those Internet memes that well-meaning people were always sending to everybody in their email address books.
However, these early uses didn’t extend much beyond pointing out cliches and expressing a mild satirical rebellion. At some point, the basic structure was taken over by feminist thinkers and became more politicized.
One possible inspiration for this second generation card is Joanna Russ’ 1983 book, How to Suppress Women’s Writing, whose cover summarizes all the ways to dismiss or minimalize women’s writing in a way that is reminiscent of the bingo card. But this attribution may be too narrow. It might be more accurate to say simply that this sort of anticipation of opposing views has a long tradition in feminist analysis, and the bingo card just happens to fit the tradition very well.
Whatever the origins, the Feminist bingo card (to coin a phrase) has proved even more popular than the Buzzword card. I know of close to twenty Feminist bingo cards, most of them with a feminist or at least an activist perspective. For example, there are Anti-Feminist and Sexist bingo cards, as well as ones for Porny Presentations, Anti-Breastfeeding, Anti-Bisexuals, Rape Apologists, Rapists and White Liberals. Almost certainly, there are more.
The Feminist bingo card keeps the satirical intent of the Buzzword card. What makes the Feminist card different from earlier cards is that (at least when done well, with the arguments organized and the free square used imaginatively) the squares on the card are anticipations of the arguments and evasions that opponents might use. Not only does it alert its audience to the replies they can expect, but, in effect, it informs opponents that they can’t possibly say anything that hasn’t been anticipated, so there is not much point in arguing. Moreover, since many of the points on any card contradict each other, when applied, a card provides quick proof that an argument lacks consistency.
You might call it an assertion of intellectual superiority, or at least of preparation for debate. You might, if you are feeling Lacanian, call the Feminist card a deconstruction of opposing viewpoints.
No matter how you describe it, when done accurately, it evokes a wry smile of recognition, like a cutting political cartoon. And should you find one or two of your own thoughts echoed on one of these bingo cards, surrounded by other viewpoints with which you disagree, it might even cause you to rethink your assumptions.
I appreciate the way that the Feminist bingo card has taken a more or less inane meme and given it a purpose. Were I still an academic, I would try to expand these notes into a monograph, going deeper into structure and interviewing the authors when I could find them (I know Mary Gardiner and Kirrily “Skud” Roberts have written bingo cards, but many other authors seem to be anonymous, or else their names have been deleted in transmission. Some cards are probably group efforts).
As a recovering academic, though, I just enjoy them, and never fail to click on the link to one. I never could resist a new or clever structure, and, with bingo cards, I don’t even try.
Off the Wall 