#the monkeys on nitrous oxide pun is in good omens (the book)

[ednav]

Of course I love how Benoit Blanc is so shamelessly, fabulously, himself. How he’s gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide [GNU Terry Pratchett]. How he doesn’t hide that his brain is peculiar, for better or for worse. How he picks the cases he likes.

But I also love that in Glass Onion Rian Johnson shows us that Blanc can choose to be himself because he’s protected by his privilege of rich, upper-class, white man.

Which in turn leads me to notice how in both movies Blanc uses his privilege to protect a working-class woman and a Black woman, but he always refuses to be their saviour. He just creates the conditions in which they can choose to be themselves and save themselves—and punish their oppressors.

[Edit: A couple of people pointed out that Marta is actually white, even if the Thrombeys would probably disagree. I’d add that Helen isn’t exactly working-class, she’s simply less rich than the Disruptors shitheads. Anyway: I apologise—I’ve edited the post.]

[neil-gaiman]

Hello Mr. Gaiman, 

My friend and I (both non-native English speaker) were talking about Good Omens recently. My friend reminded me of this quote in the book about Aziraphale:

“Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.”

 I've argued that the word "gay" might have been used with the more historic sense of  “happy, joyful, good humored" (like in regency novels) in mind.

So I would very much like to know if I was correct or if it was indeed meant in the modern sense. Thank you!

PS. I absolutely love Neverwhere! It's due a reread soon, I think.

It's a modern book, or at least, homosexual was the common meaning of gay in 1990. The pun is based on the double meaning of the word gay, so the monkeys are gay in the original sense.

Aziraphale does not act or appear gay in the sense of "happy and joyful" in the book, or in the TV show.

[neil-gaiman]

Hi, Mr. Gaiman.

I´ve only started reading Good Omens for the first time and in the portuguese translation and was curious about something. In the original book it is said that when people meet Aziraphale for the first time, they formed the impression that "he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide". But in the portuguese translation, instead of the word "gayer", they used the word "immoral" for the translation. When reading that I got quite confused and decided to research about it, and ended up finding out that, before, the word gay was associated with the word immorality (as in addicted to pleasures and dissipations), which is something I didn´t know. Do you have any idea why they would choose to go for that particular meaning?

I don't. Someone somewhere ought to compile all the different versions of that phrase in all the different languages it's been translated into. I've read dozens of them over the years (normally with an explanation of why -- for example -- the colour blue is used to mean Gay in Russian so Aziraphale will be described as bluer than the sky in a booklet advertising a tropical vacation there.)

There are a few of them listed in this Tumblr thread: