An Interpretation of "Carnaval"

Abstract

What would an interpretation of mean? First of all, it would be a reflection on the relations between everything about the event called Carnival that is explicit and everything about it that is implicit or hidden. We know that man is the only animal who can hide himself in his creations in such a way that his life is characterized by a curious demarcation between the things that he says, does, and reveals, in contrast at times violent to what he thinks, does not do, and keeps silent. If our dearest and most loyal friends were to know what we often think of them, friendship would probably be impossible. And we all are familiar with the incredible suffering of the man who had the misfortune to read the thoughts of his fellow villagers. Social events such as Carnival, civic festivals, sports ceremonies, and presidential inaugurations, graduations, and garden parties, and even the most rigorous religious rituals, also possess these two planes. On the explicit plane, we find the aspects relative to the rules that direct the setting up and production of the event, both as episode and social process. They are the norms that govern the ways of constructing the festivity, of giving it a form as social reality: everything that must be done concretely to bring about the ceremony or rite (I use these expressions without distinguishing between them) and that establishes its code of dress, speech, song, gesture, scenarios, characters, and the groups that should participate in it. This is fundamental because the event simply cannot take shape without a conscious awareness of these norms. Thus, there are cultural recipes for and civic rituals, for execution ceremonies (such as firing squads or hangings), and for births, for initiation rites and more routine commemorations such as weddings and Sunday lunches (which are very popular in Brazil). Just as there are rules for playing soccer, there are norms for preparing a birthday party, norms which the participants must know and dominate, both in the case of the game and in the case of the ritual. Clearly, the distinction between game and rite is complicated (as is the famous anthropological distinction between ceremony and ritual which I have questioned theoretically in another place.') Both have rules or formulas: in a game, the rules operate as fixed laws and therefore there are winners and losers, good and bad players, good and boring games, and so forth, while in the case of a ritual, the rules tend to operate not as laws but as formulas, since the owners, offi-