Sorry for the delayed prompt this week! Please post at least once this week before class on Thursday.
Prompt: Now that we’ve made several attempts to apply Bakhtin’s concepts of the grotesque and carnivalesque to pre-modern works of literature and art, what questions about his theories do you have? What questions persist, or have newly arisen? What do you feel you are still struggling to understand or make use of in our readings from Bakhtin and his successors? Do you feel Bakhtin has any relevance for understanding contemporary culture?
One of the questions that I’ve been “struggling” with is how we can see the carnivalesque throughout our different genres and mediums we’ve explored in class thus far. I air-quote struggling because I think that it is less about knowing what the carnivalesque looks like as a whole as much as it is about seeing how ideas of the grotesque and carnivalesque manifest themselves in different time periods and societies. Because Bakhtin’s writing in many ways can be seen as at least in part politically charged, I’ve been having some trouble applying his views on Rabelais to our older writers about whom Bakhtin was not thinking or (in the case of Aristophanes) ignoring. It can be a little frustrating because I do think that we can apply Bakhtinian theories to mediums such as Fellini, yet I also think that it is sometimes harder to see directly how Bakhtin’s imagined Renaissance carnival maps onto Roman dinner culture or political parodies such as Aristophanes.
With that being said, however, I do think that we can separate Bakhtin’s ideas from the specific work on which he focuses them for contemporary works. In Western culture today, there’s a lot of forms of the carnivalesque and grotesque such as political cartoons, parody videos, and inversion of norms that directly contest the power hierarchies in society. As I said above, I think that part of the struggle of identifying these characteristics is to look at them as general ideas not attached to a specific work and how they would be perceived in a different culture. There are many ways that we can portray abundance, consumption, and inversions of norms that might not have existed when Bakhtin was writing, forms of media that developed in the age of the internet. If we take the ideas of Bakhtin rather than his form, I think we would find a lot of examples within contemporary culture of the grotesque and carnivalesque. Of course, as we established earlier in the semester, not every instance of body humor or carnival counts as Bakhtinian; yet we can use those to also define why other instances might actually count.
Today during class we brought up how senses contribute to the grotesque. I’m interested in the extent of this and if the grotesque can be present with or without these sensory features. Additionally, what are different ways that these senses can be presented? How is the viewer of a piece of artwork, literature, or theater effected differently by the presence or lack of senses? Can the lack or deprivation of certain senses make something more or less grotesque? I want to argue that the more sensory factors there are in a certain work adds to how something is perceived as grotesque, however I wonder if a single sound could be grotesque?
I don’t think that I have fully reconciled the relationship of violence with the grotesque, and how far is too far. We’ve mentioned that murder isn’t grotesque, cause that’s killing a part of the communal body/etc, but then the first bit of Rabelais we read, the giants talk about building a wall of women’s genitals (which, if actually carried out, is very violent/if not deadly?) Where’s the limit? Is it grotesque if it’s consensual? If Encolpius wants healing and so allows himself to be beaten, maybe that’s grotesque (especially for the sexual reasons he does it), but if he does not want to be raped by male prostitutes, maybe that isn’t grotesque anymore (in spite of the sexual things happening)? I feel like the line of gross/inappropriate/grotesque starts to blur for me somewhere and I’m uncertain where it is.
Because Bakhtin’s definitions of the Carnivalesque and the Grotesque are so varied and inexplicit, I find that almost every part of what we read and watch relates to the definitions in some way or another, and I still struggle to determine what “really” counts as Carnivalesque/Grotesque from a Bakhtinian perspective. Just because one aspect of the Carnivalesque can be identified in a particular scene, does this make the scene as a whole Carnivalesque? We mentioned this in class briefly today, about how many of the scenes in Fellini’s film had Carnivalesque elements, yet the mood overall was unsettling and not at all Carnivalesque. Can we identify the Carnivalesque from just its constituent parts, or is a work only Carnivalesque if it conveys the right mood overall? For me personally, I think that I need to work on narrowing or refining my view of the definition of the Carnivalesque/Grotesque to account for the fact that not every instance of shared laughter or eating, etc., is Carnivalesque/Grotesque, but I am still having trouble doing this with the definitions we have from Bakhtin. This is especially true when dealing with works outside the time of Bakhtin’s writing because, as Alice pointed out in her comment, these works are written outside the political and historical context of which Bakhtin was writing and thinking.
I feel Bakhtin does have relevance in understanding modern culture. In class yesterday someone brought up the question if a painting with one person can be Carnivalesque and I think the consensus was no. I think this is definitely true and probably extends to small groups. Large groups help make something Grotesque and Carnivalesque and I think often a lack of large bodies will cause a lack of them both.
One example of this is sporting events, which have Grotesque and Carnivalesque elements contributing to their enjoyment. Even when watching them on a devise, the noise of the crowd adds to the excitement and joy of viewing. Today, it was announced sporting events in Italy will be played in empty stadiums for at least a month. This is also the ruling for the next sumo tournament. Some are talking about extending this rule to all of Europe, and maybe even to the Olympics this summer. This last one seems especially terrible to me, as the Olympics feels like it should be a way for people to gather together.
I think before this class I would have had a hard time explaining why this is so bad for the sports and probably would have said a generic thing about “the atmosphere” at the events. But now I feel that a lack of crowds causes a complete loss of the Carnivalesque, taking away all the joy in the event. Can you imagine Bolt shattering the record to no cheers? Or Chastain scoring the winning penalty in an empty stadium? If you haven’t seen these I encourage you to watch them or think of other famous moments in sports where the players clearly feed off the fans, and the viewers’ enjoyment is increased from the fans. These moments are often so incredible and famous in a huge part due to the fans and the Carnivalesque.
I think I prefer events to be canceled or postponed rather than played in front of no one. Without the Carnivalesque, sports would feel so clean and corporate, about going out there to make money and its the fans that bring sports away from that. This is different from what I would have said a few months ago, and I feel my opinions on a lot of current culture is being effected by this class. So I definitely would say Bakhtin helps with understanding more modern things.
I really like this point about sporting events. Even when you’re just watching a sport on TV, the sound and reactions of the crowd really add to the excitement. When I think about sports, I honestly don’t often think about what happens on the field, I think more about the physical space and the atmosphere and energy of the crowd. Teams make great efforts to boost attendance, such as giveaways, ticket prices, and promotions. Stadiums and ballparks are built to draw in as many fans as possible and make the fan experience a positive one. Yankee stadium (the one built in 1923) was the first ballpark to have a three-tiered grandstand. Why did they do this? It wasn’t to improve the field and the quality of play there. It was to make room for more fans to come see Babe Ruth, and the other superstars that were emerging in the game of baseball.
In baseball, huge efforts are made to involve the crowd, by playing music between innings and play stuff on the jumbotron or over the speakers. If there is no crowd, or the crowd isn’t getting involved, it takes away the carnivalesque aspect that makes watching sports so exciting.
On April 29, 2015, the Orioles and the White Sox played a game in an empty ballpark, due to protests in the city after Freddie Gray was killed by the police. I put a link to a video below, and it’s very strange to watch, and just goes to show how much our conception of sports is tied into the crowd. Not having a crowd there is bizarre. My internship supervisor from last summer was working downtown at the time this happened, and she said she could hear the crack of the bat in her office two miles away. I think the eeriness of this clip really shows how much the carnivalesque is linked to professional sporting events, and how strange its absence is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vazNSRoITIA
As a political-theory-person, I’m still caught up on how exactly the carnivalesque is political and utopian. It’s about folk laughter, which implies a focus on the ‘common people,’ it’s utopian because of the abundance, there’s a very literal communal body which follows directly in the vein of political metaphors about the people, it interrupts hierarchies (by making fun of them and reversing them instead of forgetting them a la a Marxist-property-situation), but how this offers a model for political life still escapes me. Maybe Bakhtin would say it’s because of our near-total removal from this kind of celebration, but (and I wish this weren’t the case!) carnival doesn’t seem particularly *good* to me (in the sense that I don’t want to be in it); I cherish being a unit unto myself, the author of my actions and master of my boundaries. I can see the appeal of political intimacy and *understanding* the community as a body that regenerates and never dies–nearly every theory about what a state is includes the caveat that the ‘body’ ought to persist over the course of generations–but does this need to be rooted so fundamentally in consumption and excess? I can see the importance of making room for the kind of carnival intimacy and truth that pervades the materials we’ve worked with, but the strict Baktinian emphasis on the operations of the body in excess as the result of excess seems exhausting in the bad way. I don’t want to be the party pooper, but sometimes we’re ashamed of groteseque and carnival behavior for good reason– you shouldn’t wipe your ass with a goose. You just shouldn’t. Drinking and eating too much is bad for you. Syphilis isn’t a fun disease to have. And there’s a tragedy a never accumulating anything (time included): does philosophy in a true Bakhtinian European Renaissance carnival? Is there productive conflict in a true Bakhtinian European Renaissance carnival? Do we learn? Without space for the serious, what foothold do we have to produce thought? I think it’s imperative to remember that Lent is *also* very well-loved.
One of our readings quoted someone as saying that carnival being an unrealistic political model is obvious, and I think that’s true. But even the core concept, even following the spirit rather than the letter of Bakhtin’s description, makes me feel like the entire enterprise is more an exercise of literary conceptualization than anything else. This isn’t at all to say that it’s worth less, just that I am personally guilty of looking for a robust, well-justified and explicit account of political utopia in a doctoral thesis about Pantagruel and Gargantua. Maybe the answer to all these questions also falls outside of the boundaries of the fiction of these stories– maybe the successful political carnival is the reception of its performance, which doesn’t necessarily involve all of its prohibitive elements.
I am really interested in, and still trying to figure out, where we, as well as Bakhtin, might draw the line between the sacred and the grotesque. When discussing degradation in relation to grotesque realism, Bakhtin defines “upwards” and “downwards” as Heaven and Earth respectively, coming “down to Earth” implying degradation and therefore becoming grotesque. Bakhtin says that to degrade “means to concern oneself with the lower stratum of the body.” While I understand the basis of this theory, I am curious about how the sacred might interact with the grotesque, or if the two are mutually exclusive and do not interact at all. We discussed in class how pieces of the bodies of saints and religious figures are “raised to the Heavens” when they are transformed into relics by religious communities and rise above the lower stratum of the body. This transformation can be applied to any part of the body. Someone also brought up in class the grotesque aspects of the Eucharist in terms of consuming Christ’s body and blood. Both of these examples convey the material aspects/nature of religious figures, and, in terms of the Eucharist, of God, yet they are also symbolic of the sacred and the divine at the same time.
I am especially interested in the Eucharist here, as the mouth, Bakhtin’s threshold into the bodily underworld, acts as a sacred threshold. The penetrated/open body becomes a sacred one upon consuming Christ’s flesh and blood precisely because it is an open body. Furthermore, the ultimate union with God is achieved through the consumption of their body. This contradicts the “official” or “canonical” body promoted by the church, as the official body is a body which is a closed, finished product. The bodies presented during the Eucharist (Christ’s and the receiver of Christ’s offering) go through a transformation and are open to each other. In this way, I think the sacred and the grotesque work together, creating a body that can both sin and is redeemed, and the body’s ability to “sin” (by this I mean what we might view as traditionally grotesque – and I am only calling it sin in a Christian context, not necessarily to condemn it) is balanced through a grotesque union with God, as both can be consumed in the same way. (I got a little rambly at the end because I kind of confused myself here).
Hi Elinor,
Your comments keep inspiring me!
During our last class I was also struck/wondering about how communion is Grotesque and how modern Christians would react if the act was recognized as Grotesque. I think a lot of modern Christianity places value on how pure and beautiful Christ was–communion is contextualized as a tactile experience of Jesus’s love and sacrifice. However, in the very Protestant churches I attended as a kid, we never thought about it as like, wow we are eating our savior’s skin and blood. It was kind of abstracted and very allegorical. I remember how shocked I was when I brought an atheist friend to church one day and they pointed out we were kind of cannibalizing God.
This also brings to mind the idea that part of what defines various Christian communities is how much each one embraces the Grotesque. I took Gnosticism with Anne McGuire (which I recommend taking! It was a lot of fun) and we spent large portions of the class talking about early Christian sects that had debates among each other about whether or not Jesus pooped. I remember clearly one portion of text that said he ate but did not excrete anything. Rival sects would campaign against each other by claiming that the opposition had big friendship feasts that ended in orgies and the consumption of semen, feces, fetuses, blood, etc. By accepting the Grotesque as something to be celebrated, communities can put themselves at risk of being smeared or misunderstood by outsiders.
Sorry that this response was so rambling, but I think unpacking this concept of the Grotesque in religion, whether minority sects or the larger community, is really important to understanding Bakhtin. And there just seems to be so much to unpack.
I think––in my mind––I have a very clear image of what the grotesque and carnivalesque entails. This definition, however, has been challenged by some of the topics we discussed during class on Tuesday. I previously considered carnivalesque something that incited carnivalesque feelings both within the characters in the text or artwork as well as the viewers or readers. In Fellini’s Satyricon, many of the aspects that we consider carnivalesque are more nuanced and are harder to identify. This lack of an immediate feeling––whether it be because of the overstimulation or just general confusion––ignited my feelings of confusion surrounding the topic. But I do think that this reality is more representative of the grotesque and carnivalesque in modern media and literature. It is hard to look at contemporary examples of the grotesque and carnivalesque and find the same blaring examples of these concepts that are so clearly depicted in pre-modern works.
I think that I’m most interested in the almost romantic way that Bakhtin writes about the carnivalesque. I think we’ve discussed this in class a little bit, but I’m curious as to whether or not the very idyllic Bakhtinian carnivalesque spaces actually existed. He writes of a world where hierarchy is dissolved and stress is eradicated. Although the festivals and literature that Bakhtin writes about are/were obviously real, I guess I question how close he actually comes to capturing the truth. It seems that he’s writing about an ideal inspired by this art and literature and festival rather than about true experience.
That being said, I know extremely little about both late 1800’s/early 1900’s Russia and ancient Rome/Greece, so I could be wrong!
Several works we have come across recently made me rethink Bakhtin’s view on the subversion of hierarchy. Although we can see the carnivalesque emphasis on the material dimension which links humans, rather than on the differences and separations between them, allows for the consciousness of the continuity of human life as a whole, the hierarchy is still not erased or even emphasized sometimes. It seems that when it is out of the religious environment, and when the carnival is initiated by high-level individuals for their own purposes, hierarchy was still applied to the collectivity as a criterion. I also thought that the clear demonstration or subversion might be a difference between different genres and forms of works: Unlike Bruegel’ paintings, where we don’t find a focal point or protagonist, in literature and drama, there must be a major narrator who interprets the whole situation from his/her own perspective. Due to these different genres, the themes reflected by the authors are also very different, and these differences are not just around the hierarchy; as a consequence, we may feel that some works are not “grotesque enough,” according to what we have read from Bakhtin.
I think one thing I’m still grappling with is whether or not something can be carnivalesque if not everyone is having fun. I keep going back to Juliana’s appetizer presentation, and the question of whether or not carnival and illness can coexist. In the Bruegel paintings we’ve looked at, even though there are a lot of people having a good time, you can also see disabled people, and sick people, and people begging for food. The abundance that characterizes the carnivalesque is not available to everyone.
In Satyrica, we identified the carnivalesque atmosphere at Trimalchio’s feast, but there were still slaves at the feast and very real consequences if they messed up or if the guests didn’t seem to be having a good enough time. Hierarchies and fear are still present in this scenario. I guess it’s important to think of the carnivalesque as a concept rather than a reality. Even in the carnivals that Bakhtin describes, I doubt everyone was having fun all the time. Even in Petronius, a true utopian carnivalesque scene does not take place.
How much of Bakhtin’s ideas can be applied to real life events, and can something be carnivalesque with the aspect of utopia?
A few classes back, we discussed the extent to which Trimalchio’s feast was carnivalesque. Was he the one bringing the carnival, or was everyone a participant? This had me thinking if it was possible for one person to be “carnivalesque” or if it required a whole group of people. And if it does require a crowd of people, do they all have to be participating for it to be carnival? For example, in Fellini Satyricon, when Encoplio is being “treated” for his inability to get an erection, it seems as though everyone but him is having fun, partaking in aspects of the carnivalesque. We see this again when he is battling the Minotaur and everyone is laughing besides him. This idea grapples with the definition of the carnival as partaking in laughter with no footlights. Throughout the Satyricon, are the footlights on Encolpio? If so, does this mean the whole film isn’t carnvialesque?