SLFK 212, February 3, 2004
Last class - contradictions in a culture are the sorts of thing that folklore deals with
Oral folklore - like stories, legends - talks about the contradictions
Jokes do too - restaurant joke
Airline poop legend
Contradictions are expressed - and you feel better having expressed the problem
Social folklore - like rituals - also deals with contradictions
Also "state" or present the problem
And then seek to resolve
In Russian and Ukrainian weddings - ritual humiliation
Of the bride
Of the parents
Ritual insults between the groom's friends and the bride's
What was yesterday?
What kind of ritual?
How does it fit ritual functions I talked about?
Before we do Russian and Ukrainian weddings - a bit more on spirits
I call them place spirits though also called
Lower mythology
Demonology
Unclean force
House spirit = domovoi
Barn spirit = dvorovoi
Ovinnik = drying barn
Bannik = bathhouse spirit
Show farmstead again
Stories about these spirits articulate contradictions within the system
Whether between one part of the system and another part
Or system and nature
Domovoi and old maid
Conflict system to system
Leshii and babies
Conflict system/nature
Desire for babies, but not deformed children
Show leshii that leads people astray - Assya example
Spirits continued - vodianoi
Polevoi
Fortune-telling with the spirits
Bathhouse spirit and babies
Barn spirit and weddings
Fortune-telling and attempt to control that which you cannot control
Parallel to Ground Hog Day - control weather
Fortune-telling - women, who do not have much control or power of initiative trying to gain some handle on their lives by knowledge of the future
Prohibitions on fortune-telling
Woman and soldier
Place spirits personify (or better animate) a place
Make sure the essence of that place is maintained
These are the stories that express the contradictory issues
And they uphold some sort of social dictate - while expressing pressure to do the opposite, or desire to do the opposite
Cleanliness and bathhouse - but not too many steams
Getting married and not wanting to
Babies, but not deformed babies
Pressure to work, acquire property and not to
American parallels
Microwave oven
Tanning salon
Kentucky fried rat
Save money, but not buy foreign
Lets look at rusalki
Female being, a being of the "unclean" force, like the various place spirits
But NOT a place spirit
Although there is a fair amount of overlap
How they come into being
What they do to men - basic tickling
Man who tries to dance with the rusalki
Baby rusalki - the children born of the women who commit suicide by drowning
Baby rusalki can also be unbaptized children
Stillborn children - no time to baptize - though various ways to get around this
Children born out of wedlock and abandoned/killed at birth
The various ballads
Stories about baby rusalki wandering around in groups begging to be baptized, but none about baby ones growing up to be adults
Rather, most stories about adult (and gorgeous) females
Though there is a difference south>north in terms of appearance
Making a rusalka a wife - it's marriage that is lacking and that makes her a spirit
To what extent does she uphold order?
Pregnancy is great - but not outside marriage
You must marry out (exogamous) - but this is too far out
Beauty is great, but work is better
She produces crop fertility by dancing - you've got to work at it because magic exposes you to the world of spirits and you get into all sorts of deep doo-doo that way
Again, things pivot around marriage
They've had one pre-Douglas look
Do survey and proceed to Douglas parallels
Human beings need order
Human beings, in fact all creatures, like order
You mess with their sense of order, they get very unhappy
Comfort in knowing where something will be when you want it
Peter's kids putting away the dishes when they visit and my reaction
They sit in the same places pretty well every time
Comfort of a routine and not wanting the routine upset
Torture technique of putting things in the wrong place, not just dishes, but other items
Torture your roommate
Upset pet by washing bed, putting pet's dishes in another place
Changing sleeping and eating patterns, times - comfort of a routine
Supermarkets changing things around - to get you to slow down, notice things and buy more
But risk reaction of anger, perhaps less so in American which is the land of the new and improved than elsewhere
New and different is part of our sense of order
America is the land of the new and improved
If people didn't try to new and improve things all of the time, that would be changing American order and you would think that something is wrong
To have a sense of order, you need to establish categories
Categories imply boundaries and, indeed, people are into boundaries big-time