Elephant in the room

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The elephant in the room (also elephant in the living room, elephant in the corner, elephant on the dinner table, elephant in the kitchen, etc.) is an English idiom for an obvious truth that is being ignored, for various reasons. It is based on the fact that an elephant in a small room would be impossible to ignore.

Also sometimes seen is the variant 800 lb gorilla in the room. This is a contamination from the separate idiom 800 lb gorilla, meaning a powerful contender.

It sometimes is used to refer to a question or problem that very obviously stands to reason, but which is ignored for the convenience of one or more involved parties. The idiom also implies a value judgment that the issue should be discussed openly.

The idiom is commonly used in addiction recovery terminology to describe the reluctance of friends and family of an addicted person to discuss the person’s problem, thus aiding the person in his denial.

The idiom is also occasionally invoked as a “pink elephant“, possibly in reference to alcohol abuse, or for no other reason than a pink elephant is more visible than a normal elephant (and certainly more remarkable, since pink elephants don’t exist).

The term is often used to describe a political hot potato that implicates a social taboo, such as racism, which everyone understands to be at issue but which no one is willing to admit.

Film

Alan Clarke’s 1989 short television film Elephant was a reference to this phrase; the elephant in the room in this case was “The Troubles” (or, violence) in Northern Ireland. In an attempt to illustrate the core of the problem, Clarke’s film stripped away all dialogue and plot, and was essentially a series of unrelated, motiveless shootings. [1]

Gus Van Sant’s 2003 film Elephant, which is named after the Clarke film, places the idiom in the context of a Columbine-style high school shooting — although this was apparently inadvertent, as Van Sant apparently believed Clarke was referring to the fable of the blind men and an elephant, each perceiving a different object. [2]

Literature

Terry Kettering also wrote a poem called ‘Elephant In The Room’ which deals with the subject of bereavement.

Political columnist Ryan Sager entitled his book about the conflict between evangelicals and libertarians for control of the United States Republican Party “The Elephant in the Room,” a play on both the English idiom and the Republicans’ elephant symbol.

A more literal meaning of the idiom can be found in a cook book written by Dereck Joubert and photographed by Beverly Joubert, with recipes and pictures of and from the bush. Elephant in the Kitchen: recipes form the wilderness is a hilarious and easy to use cook book with extraordinary images.