What insights does Bakthin’s concept of the carnivalesque provide to help better understand Animal House and its cultural functions? What do you see as the politics of such seemingly “transgressive” examples of popular culture? How might this approach offer different perspectives than psychoanalysis?
Theories of Popular Culture
Class blog for AMST0355, Spring 09, Middlebury College
Wow, well that was definitely different from the texts we’ve read thus far which for the most part have been highly critical (or at least do not give much credit to) of ‘low culture’. Instead, Bakthin’s recounting of the carnivalesque has a strong sense of nostalgia for this fading tradition which embraces what he refers to as ‘carnivalistic mesalliances’. Bakthin points to the effect the carnivalesque has had on literature and we can see these in more contemporary texts as well. A number of carnivalistic aspects drive the plot of Animal House as the two fraternities, one representing the ‘monolithic and gloomy official life’ and the other representing the ‘free and unrestricted life of the carnival square’ struggle for survival. Bakhthin explains, “[Carnival’s] participants live in it, they live its laws as long as those laws are in effect; that is, they live a carnivalistic life” which could be said about Delta and is epitomized by Bluto.
Psychoanalysis argues that our repressed animalistic tendencies are repressed and thus are channeled into our dreams. However, Bakthin would argue that these repressed desires can be performed during carnival as “a free and familiar attitude spreads over everything”.