About
Allô ! Non mais allô quoi ! is a catchphrase uttered by Nabilla Benattia, a contestant in the fifth season of reality show Les Anges de la téléréalité[1]. Her funny way of saying it as well as mimicking a phone call made her a staple of YouTube parodies involving people answering her on their phones.
The Catchphrase in French Pop Culture
Nabilla didn’t invent the catchphrase as it is. Non mais allô quoi ! has always been a common slang response by airheads, mainly girls, to signify, in an ironic and corny tone, that someone can’t be serious about what he/she has just done or said. A rough translation may be something along the line of “Hel~lo? Like, are you serious?! Wake up!” (bold added for emphasis).
Origin
The scene comes from an interview bit involving Nabilla Benattia, a contestant willing to become a model, in the first episodes from the 5th season of Les Anges de la téléréalité reality show, titled “Welcome to Florida”, in which 12 contestants have to live together in a mansion in Miami. While grocery shopping, Nabilla was startled by the revelation that some of the other contestants didn’t carry their own shampoo and had to buy their own there. Several videos of her reaction were uploaded to Youtube as early as March 7th, 2013. The most-watched one, with more than 1,100,000 views as of March 15th, is the following version:
Transcript:
Scene in the supermarket:
“Listen, I’m gonna pick up [the shampoo] for them, no need for such a big deal…”
“Well, no.”
“…I’ll get the shampoo for them and next time, they will take care of it themselves.”
“It’s nonsense.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So I can buy something for myself, too, then!”
Interview segment:
“Apparently it was Aurélie and Capucine who didn’t have any shampoo. Hello girl! Like, girl, are you serious?! You’re a girl and you don’t have shampoo? Hello? Can you hear me or what? You’re a girl and you don’t have any shampoo. I mean, it’s like saying “you’re a girl and you don’t have any hair!”
(Bold added for emphasis)
Nabilla and the Stereotypical Pretty Dumb Girl
It is worth mentionning that, in this very interview segment, Nabilla made unusually strange remarks that made her infamous as a pretty girl with no brain and an apparent lack of culture. Beside Non mais allô quoi and the meme that was born from it, she was also quoted saying things like C’est la Guerre Mondiale de 78 (“[it was like] the World War of 1978”). In a more recent episode, Nabilla quoted her own “allô” gimmick again, along with her own awkward take on a French idiom to claim that she is totally different from another contestant who came to “attack” her.
Youtube parodies
As early as the 8th of March, video parodies started popping up. One of the first and most famous parodies is an Hitler Reacts one, uploaded by FrenchGelein, which attracted more than 1 800 000 views as of March 16th.
It set the pattern for more parodies ranging from personal responses to various movie segments featuring people on their phones and trying to answer Nabilla.
Examples of Responses
Examples of Parodies using movie cuts
Spread
[WIP]
Advice Animal Spin-off
[WIP]
External References
[1]Wikipedia – Les Anges de la télé-réalité