That Is Mahogany

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Part of a series on The Hunger Games. [View Related Entries]

About

"That is Mahogany!" is a catchphrase that was originally quoted in the 2012 film adaptation of the young adult novel The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Mahogany is a type of tropical hardwood with a reddish-brown color that is commonly used in furniture-making and boat building.

Origin

The phrase was originally quoted in a scene from the science fiction film The Hunger Games released on March 23rd, 2012. In the scene, Katniss Everdeen (played by Jennifer Lawrence) sticks a knife into a wooden table after becoming frustrated with former Hunger Games victor Haymitch Abernathy (played by Woody Harrelson), causing their escort Effie Trinket to exclaim “That is mahogany!”

Prior to the fillm's release, Jennifer Lawrence appeared on AOL's Moviefone blog and performed an impression of the Effie Trinket line. As of April 6th, 2012, a YouTube upload of the video has received over 53,000 views.

Precursor

On August 7, 2008, YouTube based abridging group Team Four Star uploaded their third episode of their Dragon Ball Z Abridged series. In the episode the character King Yema talks about his reality warping desk which is made of mahogany wood from an alien world called Malchior 7, where the tress are said to, "grow 300 feet tall, and breathe fire." The clips of King Yema's monologue were later edited out and uploaded to YouTube (shown below).

Spread

On March 24th, an animated GIF of Effie Trinket with the caption "That is mahogany!" (shown left) was posted to the "Pretty Messy Boho" Tumblr^[9] blog. On March 26th, an animated GIF of Jennifer Lawernce's impression from the AOL MovieFone interview (shown right) appeared on the /r/Hungergames^[10] subreddit, receiving 196 up votes within ten days.

On April 3rd, the Tumblr blog Imgfave^[4] posted a photo of a detention slip for a student who yelled "That is mahogany!" after a book was dropped on a desk. Within three days the post received over 900 notes.

The same day, Yahoo Answers^[8] user Radhi submitted a question titled “What does ‘That is mahogany’ mean?” to which many readers pointed to the memorable line from Hunger Games. On April 4th, a Downfall parody titled "Hitler's reaction to Katniss when she hit the mahogany table" was uploaded to YouTube by user Scarlette Dawn, with Hitler proclaiming how precious the tropical hardwood is.

Several Facebook^[6] pages for "That is Mahogany – Effie Trinket" have been created, with one community page^[7] reaching over 1,100 likes as of April 6th, 2012.

Notable Examples

Mahogany

Mahogany is the name for several reddish-brown tropical hardwoods with only three species considered to be "true mahogany" which are indigenous to the Americas. The wood is considered high-quality due to its durability and is often associated with wealth. In the 2004 comedy film Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, the protagonist brags that his house smells of "rich mahogany" when attempting to impress a woman.