To Jason:
If someone were to do a musical based on the Padstow
Oss custom (or paint a picture of it, or write a poem,
or anything else creative), this would be a possible
topic of analysis for an academic studying modern
theatre, painting or literature. But it would not
interest the academic folklorist professionally
(though we'd probably find it fun, on a personal
level).
Jacqueline
--- jason winslade <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> Maybe I'm taking this in a different direction,
> but I think the question becomes whether a source
> being historical or a-historical is ultimately
> relevant to the practitioners. Perhaps the 'idea' of
> the hobby-horse as a fertility symbol (accurate or
> not) is more important and the participants are
> achieving important spiritual insights and communal
> and/or divine connections from the rite. This comes
> down to a whether it 'works' or not question.
>
> You can do a ritual that's completely based on
> fiction (say a Harry Potter rite or a Jedi rite) and
> it can still have profound effects for
> practitioners.
>
> And the differences between a communal ritual and
> a Broadway musical seem to be pretty obvious. This
> seems to creep into other questions of postcolonial
> tourism. For instance, is a Balinese dance done
> mainly for tourists 'authentic'? Does it still have
> the same efficacy if it is done for an audience of
> non-Balinese?
> JLW
>
> kaligrafr <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Aloha,
>
> On 1/16/2006 at 10:00 PM Sabina Magliocco wrote:
>
> >Lomax, who was a purist and considered revivals and
> >revitalizations to be "fakelore," would have been
> horrified had he known
> [about the Neo-Pagan use of his material].
>
> And here we have it!
>
> A notion like *fakelore* implies a critical
> apparatus of some sort that
> (some) academics and scholars use to determine
> authenticity and
> legitimacy--
> for example, Padstow May Day is *folk-lore,*
> Berkeley May Day is
> *fake-lore.*
>
> Sabina mentioned the Berkeley May Day
> re-construction based in part on an
> ethnographic film being seen by one of the film's
> creators as *fakelore.*
> The
> question that immediately popped into my mind was
> what if some Broadway
> producer did a show *Oss, Oss, Wee Oss--The Musical*
> based on the same
> film.
> Would that musical also be considered *fakelore*?
> For the same reasons?
> Would a new versions of one or more of the May Day
> songs and dances?
>
> Jacqueline lists some characteristics of Murray and
> her work, among them
> a generally non-historical or a-historical approach.
> Non-academics may
> make a-historical use of academic resources--for
> instance, developing
> pastiches of folk customs from different periods and
> regions side-by-side.
> Is the academic critical judgement of both uses
> equivalent? Or does some
> extra critical notion inform judgements of
> non-academic uses?
>
> I'm asking list members to contribute various
> attributes of this critical
> apparatus that includes notions like *fakelore* and
> similar ones from other
>
> disciplines and specialties.
>
> >We don't, however, get to decide how our work is
> used once we put it out
> >there.
>
> I agree. Just to be clear, in my earlier post, I
> wasn't asking about
> authorial
> or specialist control of academic resources. I was
> asking about how and
> with
> what critical concepts academics might evaluate
> non-academic uses of those
> resources.
>
> Musing OMG! They Encultured Me When I Wasn't Looking
> Or Listening! Rose,
>
> Pitch
>
> <>
> --Ashleigh Brilliant: Brilliant Thoughts
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Photos
> Got holiday prints? See all the ways to get quality
> prints in your hands ASAP.
___________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Photos – NEW, now offering a quality print service from just 8p a photo http://uk.photos.yahoo.com
|