This week’s readings

The May Day ritual seems to have grown more structured when it took on a political purpose. Likewise, “the content of the solagans and symbolic messages also changed”. This reminds me in some ways of the way that the German government manipulated Christmas and the symbols that surrounded it to get across their own political messages, and the way that Christmas seemed to take on a more firm strucutre in the way it was to be celebrated.

The fact that “anyone who was something else was by definition an enemy” shows the way in which identity is in some ways more exclusive than inclusive. The idea of a shared identity is based not only on ways in which a person must be to be included in the identity, but ways in which they may not be.

Bartok was also used, several years after his death, as a symbol of different ideals. Despite ways he may have been imagined in the past, in ‘reclaiming’ him the government was also able to claim the ideals that suited their purpose and present them as though they were the absolute truth. This shows the way in which an actual person can become a symbol and be manipulated just as a Christmas tree can be.

assignment query

Is there a certain number of research resources that we have to use for our assignments?

What is the word count?

Can we lay it out under subheadings, or do we need to write it as one whole essay?

Public holidays

Following the link on ritualmand’s blog, I went and had a look at some of the posts about the possibility of giving ANZAC Day a Monday off if it falls in the weekend. Very interesting.

A lot of people posting seem to think of ANZAC Day – and statuary holidays in general – as a chance to have time off. Many people seemed to consider the day in light of it’s public holiday status, rather than the symbolic purpose it serves. Also interesting was the association with Gallipoli and the veterans there, rather than any of our other veterans and soldiers. The attitude towards ANZAC Day, and the way that it’s understood, is, I think, going to be central to what I’m going to do for my assignment… whatever that may be.

Here’s a few little sound bites, but it’s worth checking out for yourself:

“All statutory holidays should be abolished. Every worker and student should be allocated 10 special holidays per year, selected at the start of every year, to celebrate whatever religious/national/military/etc events they choose.” Dave Collins (Papakura City)

“… Most countries have a “memorial day” of some sort to honour their veterans, and I think most of them Monday-ise them.  For that matter, Waitangi Day should be the same. It’s our National Holiday.” Karen (Auckland)

“Doesn`t matter one way or the other. Anzac day no longer means a whole lot to many any more and it is a real pain having it shoved down your throat every year. If the old soldiers want to remember it, let them do it without involving the rest of us. Wars have come and gone since mankind began and April 15th is nothing special, especially since Gallipolli was not the battle with the worst losses. Monday should be a holiday so we can get over the gloom of Anzac day.” Susan Gibson (Papamoa)

“…At least ANZAC day has real meaning to all kiwis though. Queens birthday, easter and Christmas are of no real relevance to most New Zealanders (other than chocolate and presents) and Waitangi day is more divisive than anything else … On ANZAC day we remember those that helped New Zealand (and our friends across the ditch) become what we are today. Should Monday be a holiday if it falls on the weekend? I don’t think so. They day is about remembering our heroes and looking at where we are today. I can do that wherever I am and whatever I’m doing.” twanger (Devonport)

“… Its about remembering and respecting those who have laid down their lives for us, not an excuse for a day off.” John (Victoria)

“ANZAC day is a day of remeberance, not a day for self absorbed people to skive off work. How about getting off your chuff this weekend and attend a dawn parade- then go on with your life, the one that others gave theirs for.” Stunned (Hamilton)

“…I wish Kiwis would check their facts before making themselves look stupid.” Kirk (New South Wales)

my ANZAC Days

My experience of ANZAC Day was, in my childhood, quite different from a Dawn Ceremony or any other organised event. It was important to us, especially my grandfather and father; my great grandfather was in WWI, and he returned,  but it effected him greatly, as it did to so many. Our family is also very close, and so sometimes I even felt as though I had some kind of bond between myself and my great grandfather although I had never met him.

My father has a piece of shrapnel that was dug from my great grandfather’s shoulder on Gallipoli, which he used to bring out on April 25, as well as other times. I think this helped to make the idea more real. He told us how it was cleaned out with iodine, and I could imagine how horrible, how painful, to have that ball of metal pulled out of your flesh and then have iodine poured into the wound. We used to have ANZAC biscuits, fresh from the oven – they used to have those in the trenches, perhaps not as fresh or as delicious, but those same sorts of simple and basic ingredients – and take pieces of cardboard up on our hill. We slid down. I’m sure that someone could suggest the descent was symbolic of that going down any of those looming cliffs, but for us it wasn’t.

There were always ANZAC ceremony type things at school as well, even when it fell in the holidays. I can’t really remember any of those,  but we had them. At highschool, they always played the last post, and “In Flander’s Feilds” was often read. The red poppy always meant ANZAC Day to me, but when I was young I mainly wanted them because I thought they were pretty; I adored them. Later, I came to understand what they meant, and I felt more uncomfortable about them. I even felt guilty for once being so superficial about them.

ANZAC assignment ideas

I’m thinking about focusing on ANZAC day as a point of identity for New Zealanders, and in particular looking at how the younger generation consider it to be, maybe in comparison to older generations. I know people say that the younger generation is continuing the traditions, but I don’t know how widely shared this is – some of my workmates know very little at all about it, and others think it’s a ‘stupid’ celebration of stupid wars.

The incorporation of Maori culture into whatever ceremony I attend may also be important in looking at it as a part of NZ identity.

I think talking to younger people both at the ceremony and some who are not might give some interesting points of view to help this.

Suicide, honour and love

The word is negative. We tend to instantly associate it with despair, mental illness and cowardice. Even looking at the way it is defined by the Oxford Dictionary gives it negative connotations instantly:

For earlier synonyms see SELF-DESTRUCTION, -HOMICIDE, -KILLING, -MURDER, -SLAUGHTER.

a. The or an act of taking one’s own life, self-murder. Phr. to commit suicide.

Of course, there are many different reasons for suicide, and they are not all considered to be negative. Think, for example, of sucide-bombers, who are commiting  “self-murder” for the honour and freedom of their nation – people making a statement, who will be rewarded for their act. We, of course, view them as terrorists, and “suicide” maintains its negative connotations with a little extra spice.

Seppuku is possibly one of the most famous forms of sucide – this is Japanese ritual disembowlment, a form of death chosen by Samuri to avoid being killed by the enemy and maintain their honour. However, it could also be obligatory rather than voluntary, a death for a disgraced samuri.

Suicide as a way to maintain honour, particularly as a way to avoid death, can be found in other places as well. Prisoners of war have done such things, chosen to commit suicide rather than face the disgrace of torture and/or helpless death at the enemies hands. The risk of giving in to torture and betraying one’s country has also led to suicide before.

The Hindu had a custom where the widow of a recently deceased man would immolate (suicide by fire) herself on her husband’s funeral pyre – either voluntarily or by force. This ritual called sati is linked to deity legends. The Vikings had their somewhat similar ancient custom. The dead were cremated on a ship and included with them were objects for the afterlife – alcohol, weapons, and perhaps slaves and women. A girl was often placed, alive, on the ship of a chieftan so that he would have someone for the afterlife. An Arab Muslim writer, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, recorded in the 10th century his observations of such a ritual.

Is this suicide though, or sacrifice? What exactly is suicide? How much can suicide involve other people?

Particularly interesting to me is the number of internet sucide pacts that we hear about online, or people who have commited suicide as the result of internet interaction. How much does this link the internet (largely chat sites and networking sites) with negative deaths?

As an English Lit (and Anth) major, I would be interested to investigate the way in which suicide features in literature (although I imagine this has been done). Lovers and Suicide is the most obvious topic – you have your Romeo and Juliet, you have the language of lovers from Medieval to Romantic poetry about the pain of love and how death and love are linked. Love itself  is quite often written as a violent thing in European/Western culture. Love and suicide – despair or self-sacrifice – can be strongly linked. I would like to go beyond the bounds of English literature as well, and see how it features in wider literature.

Would you die for love, and how would you choose to do it?

Political Sociodrama-ey

I found this week’s reading “The Sociodrama of Presidential Politics” very interesting (I use that word too often). In particular, the offensive strategy of attacking one’s opponent. Although we have that here, I don’t think we have it in the same kind of depth that it is in America. I still remember that song sung some elections ago by three Green Party members (I think… ok, maybe I don’t remember it that well) that… Ok, I’m stopping here. But you guys remember it, right? … Guys? … … Guys…???

Invoking the idea of the American Dream and targeting the “Average American” seemed to be a major part of their political campaigns. However, the article points out that in some of the methods they used for targeting and even in merely targeting certain groups they alienated others – mostly minorities.

Change seems to be a major focus in the campaigns of groups trying to get into power – it’s talked about in the article, we saw it with Obama, and we even saw it with John Key the Donkey. The candidate/party comes to be a symbol for Change, which is a good thing, contrasting with all that has not been achieved or has gone wrong from the previous government.

The Green Party’s campaign last year I thought to be quite effective (even if the results may have not shown such). It expressed the values they hold that could appeal to the majority of people. The image below, for example, ties in both the natural world, New Zealand specifically, and youth/the future. It suggests that voting for the Green party is voting for all these things – and who could turn down that sweet little face? Not voting for that sweet little face makes you somewhat heartless.

some unauthorised thoughts on Easter

It was interesting to note in this week’s articles the way in which groups (government-based) made use of existing celebrations (Christmas, the Olympics) to help reinforce their own ideologies. It reminded me a little of the way that Christians took some pagan festivals and took elements of them as a basis for their own celebrations, making their jobs of conversion far easier.

Death and resurrection themes have been celebrated by pagan people for a long time, which makes perfect sense; when your mode of existence is tied so heavily into the natural cycles of the season, here the change from winter to spring, you would be inclined to recognise them.

Eggs and rabbits have, as far as I’ve been able to figure, very little to do with Jesus. He probably liked rabbits, and eggs, quite a lot. I do. Rabbits are nice and cuddly (even if one did bite off the end of my little finger when I was small, and sometimes they smell funny) and they can also be a tasty addition to broth. Eggs also are delicious. But more than their meal appeal, what rabbits – or hares – and eggs have in common is their symbolic representation of fertility and new life. Rabbits breed like rabbits, and eggs hatch out little baby birds (or various reptiles).

Eostre is one of the names given to the sabbat on the Vernal Equinox, which seems to be derived from the lunar goddess of the Anglo-Saxons, Eostre (a very scholarly-elusive and mysterious goddess, but seeming to represent youth, beauty, purity and new life). It’s easy to see where the name “Easter” may have come from. The feast of that celebration was timed to the first full moon after the Equinox, and a similar kind of calculation was used for the Christian Easter, which gives some kind of explanation as to why it shifts about a lot.

The death and rebirth of gods is also a common theme in many different cultures. Many pagan religions had gods and goddesses that died to be reborn in the spring time, such as the Crone is an aspect of the Celtic goddess in winter that represents the decline and death before her rebirth (through the cauldron of rebirth! We’ve really got that tasty stew thing going on here) into the Maiden. Similarities between religious ideas also make it easier to accept change as its not a complete departure from a way of understanding the world and living.

I’ve heard people talk about how the egg is representative of the cave that Jesus was locked in and then emerged from reborn. The theme of rebirth here is, obviously, very important. The rabbit, however, I have yet to hear an explanation about – although I certainly am no well learned scholar on the matter. The egg and rabbit are symbols of Easter that remain and have been used alongside the Christian values. However, they don’t seem to have taken on new meaning in the way the Christmas tree did for the Germans under the Third Reich – – but it’s still interesting.

 

A couple of interesting, related links here http://atheism.about.com/od/easterholidayseason/p/PaganChristian.htm and here http://www.religioustolerance.org/easter.htm

This week’s readings and Nineteen Eighty-Four

This week’s readings made me think very much about Orwell’s Ninteeen Eighty-Four in some respects, particularly the first reading (“Christmas under the Third Reich”, Esther Gajek) . For those of you who haven’t read it, do so, immediately (you can skip the bits from The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein).  It’s based, like Animal Farm but far darker, on Stalin etc and demonstrates the way that symbols and rituals can be used to enforce ideologies and alter the way that people think and understand the world. It’s a very interesting book for anthropologists and sociologists, as well as people who enjoy reading good books, but be warned – it is not a joyous read. It is the most hopeless book I have ever read, in terms of there being absolutely no hope whatsoever at the end.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is set in a totalitarian regime. ‘Newspeak’  is perhaps one of the more famous things from this, and this is an example of how symbols (language being a symbol) can effect the way that people think. By limiting and altering the language, with the goal of having only the minimum number of words possible to express all that needs to be express, creates a sense of dependance on through a kind of devotion to a system. The ‘Big Brother’ figure was the focus of their attention, and the assemblies in the morning helped to remind them of this,  and also offered a means of getting rid of energies that perhaps carnivals offer in the hatred towards the figure of Emmanual Goldstein and ‘The Brotherhood’. The way that the Christmas festival was manipulated with a sense of responsibility towards the government/community reminded me (not surprisingly) of some of this. Having the one tree for all, and the custom of “Bringing Home the Fire” are good examples of this.

I found the pamphlets  that provided instructions on how to celebrate Christmas (and other celebrations) fascinating. It provided a very strict meaning to what the celebration meant and also a sense of unity – everyone had to celebrate it this way – and a kind of reliance on the government, who were the ones controlling the way the celebration was run. The symbolic pastries were also interesting; small things like this that intrude into people’s lives are the things that really give something meaning. The meaning and also of the Christmas celebration and ritual became surrounded by the idea of people needing to behave and think in a certain way that was decided on by the people in control; the phrase “characterisc of the race” implies that to belong to the group you have to behave in a certain kind of way, which is the right kind of behaviour. Because it was also a time of change, it may have made the extreme changes more acceptable. The way that the National Socialist festivals “were predominantly based on existing dates and traditions” made it, no doubt, easier to instigate changes and enforce their ideologies, because it wasn’t a complete change.

Wartime also seems to be an opportunity throughout history (and in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where perhaps the so-called war they are involved in is not a real war, but simply that society is being told they are in war; those bombs that fall may well be being dropped by their own government) for those who have some power to sieze more. This is due to fear. Fear is something easy to take advantage of to unite people under an idea through the offer of protection.

Like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, this article made me consider just how easy it can be to manipulate people. Action reinforces ideas and what is percieved as truth, until it actually becomes the truth.