The term “Carnival” comes from “carnem levare”, to abolish the flesh; in fact it once indicated the farewell banquet to flesh that took place before Quaresima, a period of abstinence and fast. It has the same origin of “carnasciale”, an old way to indicate the same concept. The word indicates a particular period of the year in which took place certain rites and celebrations.
Also exists another origin for the term "carnival", most credited in the dutch carnival tradition, which describes as the word comes from "Carrus navalis": in the ancient Greek time the population brought the decorated boats (carrus navalis) to the Acropolis (uppertown). It was a propitiatory rite celebrated in spring, in auspice of a good fishing sesason.
Carnival developed spontaneously in human society, taking more and more importance in it: fantasy, energy, spontaneity, popular imagination find expression in this event, whose symbolic weight goes beyond a simple feast.
It is opposed to the official religious rites; Carnival is the people’s feast, the world of laugh and extravagance, of the jokes, of materiality and abundance. During this feast everything is possible: every hierarchy disappears and the relationships become spontaneous, free and open, surpassing the restraints imposed by social rules and the obstacles created by difference of age, class and sex. The individual loses his personality to mingle with the joyous crowd in the feast: the exhilaration, the dance, the music, allow everyone to lose oneself to join the others and share with them emotions that lie outside common life, emotions in which the material and the symbolic elements find their synthesis.
The parody of institutions allows everyone to emancipate from the dominant authority and see for a moment the chance for a completely different world. The feast becomes in fact a moment of break of everyday life, breaking the common rules, overthrowing the social hierarchies.
The ritual of the fool who is proclaimed king, offers a representation of an upside-down world in which everybody overturnes the relationships high-low.
The dominant classes try to present their ideas as objective and untouchable, to cement thier powers through the control and the manipulation of people’s minds, trying to abolish every sign of difference.
Carnival has so represented a way to relieve the exuberance and popular vivacity, “legalized” as a feast, through a process of “normalization”, neutralizing the subversive ideas. Anyway, this process is uncomplete, associated to prohibition and repression during the rest of the year, it has the only aim to allow an outburst to the crowd.
Actually, this temporary upsetting of roles and reality represents a strong need of men: for this reason it survives still today, in spite of the control and the manipulation carried on by the ruling classes; today Carnival takes the value of an amusing feast, but also of a way to relieve one’s own feelings.
The way of conceiving the world during Carnival is symbolized by the mask. It’s one of the most important and full of significance element of the popular culture: to wear the mask it’s a way to get away from everyday life, to get rid of one’s own social role, to deny oneself to become “other”. During the years, the mask has assumed a negative value: it has become an element that hides, deceives and conceals. Nowadays, in our society, where ipocrisy is normality, the mask may paradoxically assume a new (or old) significance: it doesn’t deny, but reveals, it reveals denying. The mask may, hiding the face, show our real being, strenghtening our identity.
Mail us what do you think about Carnival, clicking HERE.....
