Category Archives: Signs

Prognostications, fortune-telling, etc.

tattoo as taboolistic Sign: dragon on shoulder

Text:

“You should not tattoo a dragon on your shoulder because you cannot burden its weight. Eventually it will kill you.”

“The way to eliminate the effect of the dragon on he should is to tattoo a Nezha, or 哪吒 on you. Because Nezha can defeat the dragon, so that will keep you safe.”

Context:

My informant is a student at USC. Here is his intepretation of this piece.
“How I take this(tattoo) is like, you are putting a figure onto your body, then it really is on your body. And if you tattoo a dragon on your shoulder, there is a real dragon on your shoulder and you cannot possibly bear it.”

Analysis:

To provide some background, Nezha, or 哪吒 is a mythic figure in Chinese mythology. Nezha is a child that had a pregnancy of 3 years. He had the power to fight the dragon prince in the east sea of China. Eventually, he killed one of the dragon princes. Thus, in the case of the tattoo, putting Nezha as one of the tattoos by the dragon on the shoulder would serve as a suppressor of the dragon.

A tattoo is a sign. A dragon tattoo is a sign that one cannot bear on one’s shoulder. Fortunately, there is a remedy for those who had tattooed dragons on their shoulder without knowing the consequence. This remedy is the conversion of superstitious belief. However, this conversion is no less superstitious.

My informants’ analysis of the piece shows an interesting connection to the folk belief in magic. This tattoo is both contagious and homeopathic under his analysis. It is contagious because tattoo happens on one’s body. It is homeopathic that the tattoo dragon actually becomes a real dragon that kills people, and Nezha actually becomes real and kills the dragon. It’s fascinating isn’t it?

Chinese promise gesture and accompaning phrase

Nationality: China
Age: 20
Occupation: student/rapper
Performance Date: 2/21
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

Text:


“Here is a gesture that might be interesting. The gesture is for making a promise. I think the U.S.’ is very similar. You hook your pinky finger with your friend and touch your friend’s thumb.”


“But what’s different in China is that at the same time, you need to say ‘la gou shang diao yi bai nian bu xu bian.'”


“The two thumb touching is what we say like putting a stamp on the promise.”


Context:


FG is a student studying history and economics at USC. He is currently in a program in Ireland. He performed this folk gesture and folk speech to me through a zoom call. This piece of folklore is something that is performed many times by the informant when he was young.


Analysis:


This is a combination of folk speech and folk gesture. The folk speech has to go in combination with the gesture to make any sense. As a matter of fact, because this folk speech has been around for too long, part of the content doesn’t make sense anymore. “La gou shang diao yi bai nian bu xu bian,” or “拉勾上吊一百年不许变,” translate directly to “hook, hang, a hundred years no change. ” The “hang” part doesn’t make sense because as this piece of folklore spread in China, the original word for “shang diao”， or “上吊”， or hang, actually is a transformation from the homophone “上调，” which also is “shang diao,” but the meaning is very different. “上调” means the thumbs pull up and meet to put a red stamp on the things we want to promise.


On the other hand, another explanation is formed for the transformed version of “shang diao,” or “上吊.” People start to say that it means we keep our promises til we die. Because “上吊” specifically means a method of suicide: hanging on a rope. Folklore rationalizes itself with different transformations. It intrigues me when I think of the transformation and the rationalization of this particular piece.

Slenderman

Text: “Well we were all scared of Slenderman. Slenderman is a really really tall slender man, and when we were younger whenever kids were like especially malicious– so not if you were talking back to your dad or something, but like if you were severely bullying a friend. Then there would be an incident where you would be “slendermanned” and everyone knew that he was not real kind of, but like kids would make up other stories to tell kids he was real. Anytime that there’s like a sus murder in the news and no one could figure out what it was most people would just say it was him [slenderman]. It all started in 2014 I think when there was another kid who almost stabbed a 12 year old kid to death. Slenderman like he doesn’t kill you, but he gets someone else to do it for him pretty much. When slenderman is around you have this type of feeling, and you get really paranoid and you can’t get rid of him. We talked about that from a very young age as kids, like we were walking around talking about that. The whole idea was like the original kid that killed the girl was possessed like would do anything for slenderman. Anytime someone does something unexplainable like setting their house on fire or suicides all of that goes back to slenderman. There’s also the idea that he has a daughter and her name is skinny Sally, but I don’t know anything about that really.”

Context: M is a twenty one year old student who grew up in Chicago and went to school on the Southside. She currently attends USC, and says she doesn’t as frequently hear references to the story above anymore, but believes that’s more due to age than location. 
Analysis: I had heard of Slenderman before talking to M, but never any of the background on him or why he was considered so terrifying. Before researching, both M and myself were unaware that the story of Slenderman originated on the internet. He’s usually represented as M and his name describes: a tall, skinny man, but also as a faceless shadowy figure. Slenderman first surfaced in 2009 when he was posted under a photoshop contest thread. Since his inception countless threads and communities online surfaced building upon the original narrative into several different horror stories. Transferred from site to site there is no canon, or singular correct version of Slenderman instead there’s multiplicity and variation. Slenderman’s evolution continues today, and was adapted into a 2018 film. The folkloric quality of Slenderman is well documented and has been researched by Andrew Peck who considers its popularity to be due to its “collaborative nature.” Still in spite of this “collaborative nature” Slenderman has been copyrighted by Eric Knudsen the 2009 poster of the images that inspired the narrative.

Throwing beads

Text (ritual/folk belief)

“Throwing and collecting beads is a traditional practice and brings good luck.”

Context

My informant has lived in Louisiana for 4 years and participated in the Mardi Gras festival twice where this practice occurs collecting many beads to wear around her neck in participation of the celebration.

Q: “What is the significance of beads at Mardi Gras parades?”

A: “The practice of throwing beads on Mardi Gras stems from 19th-century French customs where the king would throw jewels and gold to the ‘common people’”.

Q: “How do you get beads?”

A: “The people on floats are above you at the parade and you can reach your hands out or jump and wave to insinuate for them to throw beads down, or people also commonly will flash their boobs to get beads. I didn’t do that though haha. There used to be a legend that University of Lafayette students wore beads to stand out during Mardi Gras and the custom spread to now where beads are commonly worn and exchanged at the festival”

Analysis

Originating in the 19th century, bead throwing is a traditional ritual/practice taking place where those of higher status or class would assert their position originally throwing any small trinkets to spectators of the parade. The evolution to throwing beads began in the 20th century as people of higher status would begin to dress up themselves and their floats in beads colored in line with the Mardi Gras theme as a symbol of creativity and expression. Today these beads are representative of the Mardi Gras season expressing appreciation for and participation in New Orleans cultural practices asserting a shared cultural identity. The traditional custom of wearing brightly colored beads and the ritual of exchanging or throwing said beads act as a way to show participation and involvement in the festivities as well as a symbol of good luck. Frazer explores the concept of homeopathic magic and the idea that like produces like. Many people partake in bead-throwing rituals in hopes of receiving good luck for the coming year partaking in this homeopathic ritual. His work provides a framework for analyzing the role and significance of rituals, symbols, and practices in various cultures. Recently, however, there has been some controversy regarding the environmental friendliness of throwing around thousands of plastic beads. Many people have called for more sustainable alternatives to this practice which is an integral part of Mardi Gras culture. This conversation touches on the adaptation and transformation of folklore over time to be more accommodating to 21st-century ideals and the evolution of folklore practices to fit the modern standards of societal and cultural norms in the United States.

Don’t Answer to Your Name

Context:

The informant,KO, is a sophomore and one of my closest friends here at USC. We met in our freshman dorm and often exchanged cultural stories since we had very different backgrounds. He spent the beginning of his childhood in Nigeria, and at age 7 he and his family moved to Toronto, Canada.

Main Piece:

Interviewer- So I know we’ve talked about it a lot but tell me about a superstition from your childhood or even now that has stuck with you.

K.O.- There are so many, Nigeria is very superstitious but there’s one that always comes to mind. So y’a know how sometimes you just randomly hear your name? You’ll be walking or just chilling, and you look around because you hear your name but no one’s there. It happened to me a lot when I was young, and my parents used to tell me never to answer. They said it was a witch calling my name to lure me out. I don’t know if I necessarily believed it, but I definitely thought about it when I would randomly hear my name.

Interviewer- Did you ever answer just to see what would happen?

K.O.- (Laughs) Uh yeah, and then I would be terrified some witch was going to come after me!

Analysis:

This folk belief that KO shared with me is based upon an occurrence that has likely happened to everyone at least once, including me. This type of belief can be considered a sign superstition or sign magic because it is based on an unexplainable event in real life that is viewed as a sign or warning. These folk beliefs can reveal a lot about the culture and people who live by them as they share amongst their folk. KO’s superstition shows the significance that witches and curses have in Nigerian culture and a societal fear of bad magic. It is common within all types of folklore for children to be the target of evil spirits or witches, so it makes sense that KO’s father would have heavily emphasized the superstition when he was young.