Author Archives: Genevieve Marino

Onion Sugar for a Cold

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Dad: You take an onion, uh, usually I put it– I cut it in half and I put it inside a cup and then I sprinkle sugar on it and then I let it sit, um… At some point someone told me that this is called sweating an onion

Context

Dad: You give it to somebody who has a cold or, you know, where there’s just congestion or respiratory stuff going on or whatever. I mean, not pneumonia obviously, and this became, in our family, uh, what we called magic juice and so, then I would feed the magic juice to, especially my son when he would get a cold, which were quite, um, productive, lets just say. Um… I would feed him a spoonful. Now, is it just a spoonful of sugar with a little bit of onion flavoring? Who’s to say. But I’d give him a spoonful of, of, what we called magic juice, um, whenever he had a cold. And it was something he kinda looked forward to. And I don’t know if it made him feel better, but certainly the ritual was something that made, I think us both feel better in some degree– to some extent.

My dad learned of this home remedy from his good friend RL. RL is of Chilean descent, who grew up in the bay area of California.

Analysis

I remember taking this cold cure when I was younger, but it was never as important for me as it was for my younger brother. He used to have the worst colds when he was growing up that were violently contagious, so it was important that he felt cared for during those difficult periods.

As my dad points out himself, he is not certain of the benefits of this home remedy. That is not what is important to him. In the case of the ‘magic juice,’ the most important component is the fact that it is a remedy that takes time and care to make. It served much of the same purpose as a chicken soup in that it makes you feel cared for. In fact, my dad never made this home remedy for himself, and he stopped making it when we grew up.

The Backrooms

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C: “originally, I th- it was off of a seemingly random 4-chan post. I think it was a 4-chan post. Um… where it was an image of this oddly yellow, liminal space, seemingly going on forever, where it was captioned something along the lines of detailing these wet – these damp, musty floors, the flickering and the drone of the fluorescent lights. And this almost established a medium or a vessel for many many creatives to then come forth and expand on it in ways never thought imaginable. Um… there are – there is a highly expansive backrooms wiki, um, going across how this first yellow, um maze-like interior was the first level of the backrooms going areas such as um, tunnels with piping, hotels, uh, office buildings, pastures with houses, um, birthday parties, carnivals, any sort of environment where things are presented that are seemingly infinite and just not right, incredibly uncanny in their description and existence. Though beyond that, I feel the most interesting aspect of it is how um.. Esp– like beyond just the image or, uh, text-based creatives, how a lot of visual, how a lot of content creators have taken it to make games about it. I, being one of them myself. Um… Or cane pixels probably making the most, uh, kind of canonizing the backrooms in a way. Being a person to establish these foundations that explore the backrooms, the systems for which they operate aswell as now, later, making a movie about it aswell.

Amost related to it in a sense, before the backrooms were a thing, before they were massively popularized, the internet equivalent of it prior would definitely be the SCP archive or Secure, Contain and Protect where a completely open database or wiki where people, creatives, um… writers who’d effectively go into this archive, write a creature entry, a entity entry for any of these things, whether it’s safe, hard to contain, or incredibly dangerous, um, based off of like what it is, what it does, and all these within the lore of SCP have a place, have an existence because the binding agent is what brings it all together and similar to that, the backrooms — many people can go and make different levels, make level 666, make level 1, make level fun, all these different iterations off of the same start that then now have a breath of air to breath this kind of truth, which is fascinating that, in a way, this fictitious thing is a way for creative minds to bring about how they feel in a medium from back then to the present day”

Context

A fellow folklore scholar told me about their experience with the backrooms during a conversation about digital legends.

Analysis

Legends like this one that grown on the internet are unique in that the collaboration between contributors is recorded in great detail. This means that those who develop the folklore are able to take partial ownership over the role they played in “creating” a legend. You can even see in the informant’s language about “text-based creatives” and “content creators” that there is significantly more agency given to these performers of the legend than the storytellers of the past. On the internet, parts of folklore can be “authored” as the legend continues to grow and morph in new ways.

Sana, Sana, Colita de Rana

Context

A: My dad is from Mexico, my mom is from Guatemala and we speak Spanish in — er — mostly Spanish. I speak… uh, I speak to my parents in English, but for most of my life, they’ve spoken to me in Spanish. And I remember my family, like my mom, my aunts, or even my grandma, when we would get hurt, uh… there would be this saying.

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A: I’m going to say it in Spanish and then I’ll try to translate it. It was Sa–uh sanita sanita, colita de rana, si no a menesa bien hoy, a manaces bien mañana, which is like… Frog butt, frog butt something — er tail, if you don’t wake up better today, you’ll wake up better tomorrow. Or something like that. I probably butchered that but, um… yeah. And so… whenever we like got hurt, uh, they would like rub like wherever it hurt and say that.

Interviewer: Did it have, um… Do you recognize a convention of frogs or something to do with frogs?

A: You know what, wait. Sana — oh, it’s sana sana, colita de rana… yeah, sana sana colita de rana… yeah, si no a manasas bien hoy, a manáse — a ma-manasás bien mañana. I think that’s the saying. I don’t know what the connection is. I actually didn’t think much about it… like the translation of it… um, but yeah.

Analysis

The process of recalling this saying is interesting here because it is an example of the ways in which folklore can change over time. The informant remembers a slightly different version of the saying at first that involves a diminutive suffix “ita.” The informant also remembers the spell slightly differently from how it has been recorded in the past. In this case, they use the verb “manar,” which means to get better, but the more well-known version uses the verb “sanar,” which means to heal. By including these slight variations, it is easy to see how folklore changes over time. It might even be the case that it is more common to use the term “manar” for this spell in Guatemala.

The verb also “sanar” helps identify the significance of the “sana” (or frog) in this spell. Initially, when I asked about why the spell might involve frogs in case there was a cultural significance I was missing, the informant said he didn’t know about any such connection. Now that I have seen the more typical version of the spell, it is much easier to recognize that a frog is likely mentioned because of it’s similarity to the word for heal.

Rocky Horror Picture Show Callback Response

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Hey! I heard this movie was made in New York City! *group response* New York City? Get a rope!

Context

The informant is a cast member in a weekly performance of the Rocky Horror Picture Show that takes place on Saturday night at midnight. While the movie is being screened, there are many vulgar things the audience shouts back at the film at specific points. There are also actors on stage performing scenes from the movie as it is being played.

This particular callback happens in response to the character named Frank dieing.

Analysis

The screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show serves as a sort of festival for alternative and queer youth. By developing and memorizing all of the callbacks involved, audience members communicate their dedication and belonging to the folk group. Some callbacks are universal such as calling the character named Janet a slut and the character named Brad an asshole, but others are regional or specific to a particular cast. Therefore, based on the callbacks you are familiar with, you might be communicating your identity within your local community or an international one.

Rocky Horror Picture show is infamous for being a place for the vulgar and the taboo. Many of the scenes and callbacks are not deemed socially acceptable in the real world, even by the alternative community that find so much belonging in the show. In this way, screenings of Rocky Horror Picture Show serve as festivals in that they provide an opportunity for social norms to be turned on their head. In doing so, they may provide a socially acceptable form of release of tension just to return to reality or serve as a rehearsal for revolution.

This informant attributed this particular callback to a salsa advertisement in which a cowboy is in distress because he has run out of salsa. When he is given a less than sufficient replacement, he exclaims, “This stuff’s made in New York City?!” The rest of the cowboys respond by saying, “New York City?! Get a rope.” This pop-culture reference is an inside joke that is related to the scene taking place.

No Brain, No problems (Hebrew Saying)

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אין שכל אין בעיות

Translated roughly to no brain, no problems.

Context

The informant said that this saying might be used “if you do something dumb or if someone else does something dumb.”

Both of the informant’s parents were born in Israel, and the family all speaks in Hebrew to one another.

Analysis

The term “no brains, no problems” may be used in a situation where a person near you has erred, and the person enacting the statement wants to point out the error without being rude or offensive towards the other. By offering a sense of humor, it allows the user to diffuse the tension which may otherwise come from pointing out a mistake, and lets the other person admit to fault.