Monthly Archives: May 2021

The Owl… as a Fool?

Nationality: Indian
Age: 48
Occupation: Sales and Media
Residence: Mumbai, India
Performance Date: 31/03/21
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi, Punjabi

The Interviewer will be referred to as ‘I’, and the informant as ‘P’. Translations for Hindi words will be italicised and in parentheses. The Informant is a 48-year-old Punjabi woman, born and raised in North India.

P: Saying “ullu ka/da pattha” (child of an owl) is just an insult, it’s an abuse (in this case, the word ‘abuse’ is referring to a curse word or insult). It literally means ‘child of an owl’, but is used more like ‘child of a fool’, because ‘ullu’ (owl) has come to mean fool more in the way we talk.

I: The owl is usually a symbol of wisdom in Western cultures — why do you think it’s so different here, why would it mean fool?

P: Um… I would presume because owls are nocturnal, and generally, people don’t relate with that? It’s unusual, weird… and usually when people do unusual or weird, or, or foolish things, the response of calling them ‘ullu ka pattha’ is normal, but now it’s just become more like an abuse, like… ullu pretty much means fool more than it does mean owl. So, a person who behaves in unusual or silly ways — saying you are the son of a fool. Which is also weird because why would that make sense? You’re abusing (insulting, cursing out) the parent, you’re just saying that he is the son of a fool, not that he is one. 

Analysis:

Insults can tell a person a lot about a culture and its values, and here, one thing that stands out to me, other than the owl discrepancy, is exactly what also stood out to my informant: the act of insulting a parent rather than the person themselves. This is especially apparent in many Indian insults, where there is an equivalent to essentially any imaginable animal as or sexual act being performed upon a parent, or a relative (usually a sister or a mother, which points to sexual taboos and gender-centric disparities). I think this points to the family-centric nature of Indian culture and its values, where an insult about a family member is an even more grievous insult than an insult to the self. The owl part is largely explained by the informant, and I concur with their explanation, the idea of acting unusual or weird as being foolish, worthy of being insulted (or having your family insulted, in this case), even though the owl is a creature of wisdom in many Western cultures, for example, within Greek mythology, the owl is representative of the goddess Athena, primarily known to be the goddess of wisdom and strategy, among other things.

Whistling at Night In Japanese Culture

Nationality: Filipino
Age: 47
Occupation: Police Officer
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/18/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is the uncle of the Interviewer from the mother’s side. Informant has lived in Hawaii for all their life and has worked as a police officer for 6 years.

Context

Informant discusses Japanese superstition of whistling at night. Interview takes place at the Interviewer’s grandmother’s house during a family dinner gathering.

Transcript

Informant: “Like um, whistling at night, it’s a superstition. That’s like an old wivestale, folklore, supposed to be, in Japanese culture, summoning the dead, stuff like that, that’s all. 

Interviewer: “I mean that one’s good, yeah. I’m stealing that from you now, so I’m gonna write about the whistling at night. So that’s just, summoning the dead in japanese culture, do you know where that comes from or?”

Informant shakes head

Interviewer: “Yeah I don’t either.”

Informant: “I mean it could be just Hawaii, might not even be in Japan, cuz I mean, uh, the whole Japanese culture in Hawaii dates back to like sugar plantation days, it could derive from then.”

Thoughts

Hawaii is a melting pot of a bunch of different cultures and traditions, but it’s been a melting pot for so long that ethnic groups have developed cultures and traditions that do not exist in the original population. Large amounts of Japanese immigrants came to Hawaii over a hundred years ago to work the sugarcane fields, and in this time have diverged greatly from mainland Japan. While whistling at night is a common trope in a surprising amount of cultures, but the traditional Japanese version holds a slightly different meaning. Whistling was supposedly used as a communication method for folklore monsters or criminals, so whistling would attract unwanted attention. It’s interesting how the same action can have two different outcomes but equally negative connotations in two, on paper, identical racial groups.

Practical Jokes in the Police Force

Nationality: Filipino
Age: 47
Occupation: Police Officer
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/18/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is the uncle of the Interviewer from the mother’s side. Informant has lived in Hawaii for all their life and has worked as a police officer for 6 years.

Context

Informant discusses practical jokes played in the police force. When the interviewer asked about hazing they were told that does not happen in the police force. Interview takes place at the Interviewer’s grandmother’s house during a family dinner gathering.

Transcript

Informant: “I dunno, we do stuff like, uh, as if, if you want to go as far as HAZING… sometimes on the printers, we’ll put a note that says: “Printer upgraded to new voice activated more”. So they’ll be there like “print! Print!” like stuff like that.

Interviewer: Aww that’s cute!”

Informant: “Yeah, yeah, but nothing like hazing though. It’s um, Our department has over 2,000 police officers and you don’t know everybody so like people come and go, what we have is called “personal movement” and it usually happens every month, so, we-we meet and, people come and go so often, and you really can’t get close to anyone, cause like, work with so much different people, uh, that’s all.”

Thoughts

I had no idea there were over 2,000 police officers on the island of Oahu, let alone in a single department, so that caught me off guard. I also had no idea about how quickly police officers come and go, and how they’re moved around by the police themselves for “personal movement”. My Uncle didn’t elaborate on that further, but my guess is that maybe the police force wants to keep things pretty strictly business oriented given the nature of the job, so getting close to others may be somewhat frowned upon and practical jokes or hazing totally not tolerated. I is interesting to hear that practical joking does take place in the workspace still takes place, even if on a minor scale. I would imagine that having a practical joke played on you from one person you most likely don’t know with 2,000 coworkers is a much different experience than a practical joke in a tighter-knit workspace.

Kohelepelepe

Nationality: Asian
Age: 55
Occupation: Businessman
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/23/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is college educated and has lived on Oahu, Hawaii for their whole life. Informant was dating the Interviewer’s mother for around a year.

Context

Informant discusses a Hawiian legend about the formation of the Koko head crater on Oahu. Koko head is a long dormant volcano.

Transcript

Informant: “Kohelepelepe?”

Interviewer: “Yes.”

Informant: “Koko head, if you look at it from an aerial shot, it looks like a vagina.”

Interviewer: “Oh, alright, there we go!”

Informant: “And the story is, is that Pele’s sister, Hi’iaka, they were fighting over, uh, Kamapuaa, the pig god. So pele’s sister threw her vagina, landed by koko head, and that’s how that became Kohelepelepe, which means labia lips. If you look at it from the top it looks like-”

Interviewer: “It looks like a vagina.”

Informant: “It looks like a lady.”

Thoughts

    Many Hawaiian legends, like the legends of many other cultures, have a strong emphasis on human reproductive organs. While throwing a vagina may be something completely foreign in modern western culture, stories like this exist not only in Hawaii, but other cultures as well. Off the top of my head, there’s an inuit legend of a woman cutting off her breasts and throwing them at her brother who raped her in her sleep; the sister ran away and the brother went after her, the pair would go on to become the sun and the moon. The sterilization of any talk of human anatomy in not only western legends, but western social norms as well shows how taboos are culture specific, and that actions are only taboo when society says the topic is taboo.

Fertility Rock

Nationality: Asian
Age: 56
Occupation: Teacher for the Deaf and Blind
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/23/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is the mother of the Interviewer, she has been the mother of the Interviewer since the interviewer has existed and has raised them ever since.

Context

Informant discusses a folk practice that is supposed to aid in fertility that she participated in. This practice is attributed to why the Interviewer exists in the first place.

Transcript

Informant: “How about the one that relates to my getting pregnant?”

Interviewer: “…what?”

Informant: “So there’s uh, there’s a fertility rock, that uh, what’s it called? I forgot what it was called… It’s like a fertility rock on Moloka’i, so when I couldn’t get pregnant, you know we found out about that, so we went to Moloka’i with Uncle dean, and I went, oh the Phallic Rock! So I went onto the phallic rock and I was like I need to get pregnant, so I like-”

(Informant bucks her hips and twirls a fake lasso, like she is riding a raging bull.)

Interviewer: “You rode the, th-the dick rock?”

Informant: “And I got pregnant after, It’s just one of those things, I had Katie after.”

Interviewer: “Wow.”

Thoughts

    Rocks in Hawaii have a great spiritual presence. They can hold energies from fertility, to the gods, to souls of the deceased. You’re not supposed to move rocks from island to island, as you will be cursed and have to seek out either a Kahuna to dispel the bad spirits or return the rock to its original location, leaving offerings of beer and food to please the spirits. I have encountered spiritually significant rocks in my life, but have never actively sought them out for spiritual or personal reasons. Hearing that my mother utilized the help of one of these rocks was interesting, as I did not know she believed in Hawaiian traditions before that. I am not convinced of the effectiveness of spirit rocks, but I respect the practice and the rich culture behind their existence.