Category Archives: Gestures

Gay-Dating Tips

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Downtown LA
Performance Date: 4.22.14
Primary Language: English

The Informant is 20 years old, a junior at USC studying Screenwriting, and is from Denver, Colorado.

Him: When I first got to college I didn’t really know much about the gay-dating world just because I don’t know I didn’t have much experience in it. But then I would go out with some of my gay friends or I’d hear from them the next day about them making eye contact with people at clubs or bars or something, and I’d be like, “What? I didn’t know that was a thing.”

Me: What is it?

Him: Well, apparently, and this is according to my friends, like, if you make eye contact with a man at a gay bar for 3-seconds, it means that it’s okay to go home with them for the night. But like, it can be funny because you’ll hear stories like, “Nope, he only looked at me for like 2.5 seconds, it’s a no!”

Me: Has it worked for you?

Him: I mean. Yes? I’m pretty sure it’s a thing just because I hear it so much, but I’m afraid to just stare a guy down and him be weirded out, especially if he’s straight and doesn’t know what’s happening.

Me: Where did your friends hear it from?

Him: I’m assuming they also heard it from friends in high school. It’s just something that they came to college already knowing, so I had to pick up on it. This kind of stuff isn’t really talked about a ton so you have to learn by experience or through knowing people that have experience.

Analysis:

I think that this type of folklore is informative due to how specific of a demographic it adheres to. Particularly young, gay, males, which is not a demographic whose idiosyncrasies are often discussed in textbooks, news segments, or a lot of popular culture. If anything it gives view to a different side of the young dating world that most of us are familiar with. It’s also interesting to me that these sorts of tips are the tips that you’d have to go to your peers to learn. It seems that the Informant could only get this information from the demographic itself because of how specific a gesture, or “folklore performance” that it is. The Informant also spoke of other gay-dating tips that he learned, but he had read them previously on gay websites. But this tip he had no clue about and never found when researching gay dating tips and couldn’t experience until he had “lived through it”.

Haircuts and Rejections

Nationality: Japanese
Age: 23
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/4/2014
Primary Language: Japanese
Language: English

The Informant:

My friend is someone I met two years ago when I first came to USC. She and I lived on the same floor and had similar classes. She was born in Japan and immigrated to the U.S. when she was less than four years old. She heard this reference when she was visiting her friend back in Japan in high school.

When a girl cuts her hair to make a drastic change, it means she was dumped by her boyfriend or rejected when confessing to someone. 

The Analysis:

The saying falls along the lines of a sort of remedy to channel the girl’s sadness or frustration at rejection. It represents the rejection but also a new beginning that comes after a type of failure. The cutting of one’s hair signifies that one has abandoned the faulty past and is working to move one to the future. The hair is significant because a maiden’s hair is a major form of attraction for men. Cutting off this form of attraction can mean that the boy had no attraction towards the girl so she might as well cut it off. The importance of hair in the Japanese culture accentuates the act of cutting it and this in turn accentuates the meaning behind it.

Pointing at the Moon

Nationality: Taiwan
Age: 50
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Bay Area, California
Performance Date: March 15, 2014
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English, Hokkien

If you point your finger at the moon, you would anger the moon, and the deity living on the moon will slice off your ear when you sleep.

—

The informant is not sure why this is so or who the deity living on the moon is. However, this superstition may be rooted in respecting the deities, and could possibly be linked to the myth of Cháng’é (嫦娥), the Chinese goddess of the moon. She lives on the moon because she had swallowed the elixir of life and became light, floating away from the earth. Her husband Hòu Yì (后羿) was a mortal archer known for shooting down nine of ten suns that were scorching the earth. Cháng’é lives on the moon with a jade rabbit.

It is interesting to note that pointing is disrespectful in cultures all around the world.

P.L.U.R.

Nationality: USA
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Frat House
Performance Date: 4/24/14
Primary Language: English

My informant is a sophomore student at USC that grew up in the Bay Area.

Me: Tell me about Electric Daisy Carnival

Informant: So ever since my senior year of high school I have been going to EDC in June.  Its in Las Vegas now but it used to be at the Coliseum and its basically one of the biggest raves in the nation and all the best DJ’s come perform for three nights.

Me: Sounds fun.  Has this been around for a long time or somewhat new.

Informant: Uh no idea when it started but I would guess after I was born.

Me: Ok, since you have been going for a long time what are some of the big traditions you have noticed?

Informants: Uh well [haha] people do a shit ton of drugs but I wouldn’t call that a tradition.

Me: More of a culture?

Informant: Ya sure, umm I guess P.L.U.R. is a big tradition that people participate in at raves.

Me: P.L.U.R?

Informant: Ya it stands for Peace. Love. Unity. Respect.  Basically people wear a bunch of colorful bead wristbands and exchange them through a handshake, while saying “Peace. Love. Unity. Respect.”  I know it sounds fuckin weird and hippy but you make a lot of new friends that way.

Me: Huh, and someone taught this to you?

Informant: Exactly, at my first EDC a girl “PLUR’d” me one of her bracelets and said she was my rave mother.  I thought it was pretty fuckin weird at first but got into it pretty quickly when I saw how many other people did it.

 

I didn’t really get much else out of the interview but it seemed obvious that P.L.U.R. was a big part of EDC’s culture and probably all of “rave” culture, given EDC’s size.  Ravers seem to embrace a non-judgemental, loving attitude and P.L.U.R. is a way for them to express to others that they embody these ideals. Meeting random strangers isn’t easy but trading bracelets with them is a harmless and easy way to break the ice.  It may be the music, and it may be the drugs, but Peace. Love. Unity. Respect. seem to be the all encompassing rules at EDC.

King Elephant

Nationality: Latina
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 27, 2014
Primary Language: English

Context:

I had met with one of my friends for lunch, and we got to talking about games we had played as children and teenagers.

 

Interview:

Informant: Here’s something that came from the theater world. It’s a game called, I’m gonna go with “King Moose,” no it was “King Elephant.” I’ve played this game in other places where it was called King Moose or King Whatever, but the game we played was called King Elephant.

Me: Okay.

Informant: Yeah. And it was a passing game and you had a rhythm. And it was like hit your thighs clap your hands, hit your thighs, clap your hands.

Me: Oh yeah.

Informant: And we would have – there was only two signs that had to be in there, you had King Elephant who would have a trunk with like one arm over the other with the bent one holding their nose.

Me: Okay yeah.

Informant: And then you had dunce. Which was just a really crappy hat. Some people would do chopped liver which was just kind of spazzed out, ’cause you were chopped liver. You know? [Laughter] But most of the time we just played dunce. When we wanted to be mean we would do chopped liver. [Laughter] and so everyone, as many people as you have, sit around in a circle, and the first time around each person picks a sign. And its just like a word or a name and then a gesture. It doesn’t have to be animals, but I have played this game where it was only animals, and played it where it could be anything you could think of. We had a couple of ones that everyone knew, like 7-eleven was like two guns, New Yorker was a “screw-you” sign, we had fish, sometimes it would become Nazi fish, [laughter] because people would get too excited (me mainly) and instead of waving their hand like a fish swimming it would go up so it became Nazi fish. [Laughter] And like sometimes there would be inside jokes. One of my favorite ones was pink, and it was ’cause, I think it was my freshman year, and there was an improv show, and this guy in our theater troupe was supposed to like, paint something pink. And so he got up, moved his body about and was like, “Piiiink.” [She stood up and waved her body from side to side as she waved her arm in exaggerated painting motions] Like he was splashing paint everywhere, so that was one of the signs that we would always use, was pink. I mean people would do like Batman [she demonstrated the gesture], they could do whatever they want, as long as it was an easy sign to remember and do. And that sign became attached to the chair. And the whole point of the game was to get to the king elephant’s spot. And the to that, you had to knock people out. And so the king would set the rhythm and then he would call out his name and do his sign and then would call out someone else’s name and do their sign. And then it would pass to that person who would have to do their sign and then someone else’s sign.

Me: Oh yeah.

Informant: And it gets randomly passed around the circle.

Me: I’ve played something similar before.

Informant: Yeah. And if you messed up the beat, said a sign that didn’t exist, or you messed up on a sign, then you were kicked out and you had to go to the dunce’s seat, and everyone moved up a seat. And of course, you had to learn a new sign because you were in a new seat. Which of course causes more people to get kicked off, since they forget whose sign is whose. And so yeah it’s a fun game, trying to get to the king’s spot.

Me: Yeah, I’ve played something similar where there is no dunce seat, it’s just going round. It’s essentially just an elimination game, there is no king elephant or dunce. Yeah, I’ve played something similar.

Informant: Yeah we had one where it was king moose and it was just animals, but I like king elephant better because you could get really crazy. And then we would do murder round, for the people who were really into it, where the beat would go really fast. We had to come up with a new rule where you couldn’t go back and forth more than three times, ’cause what people would do, especially people who were really competitive, would simply go back and forth on and on, which became really boring for the rest of us. So we had to make a rule that you couldn’t go back and forth more than three times. It’s a fun game.

Me: Yeah it is. I haven’t played it in years.

Informant: Me neither. But it was really fun.

 

Analysis:

This is a children’s game that to me would encourage creativity, quick thinking, an understanding of rhythm, and memory. My informant went to school in Northern California, where she played the game, and I went to school in Washington, DC – o the opposite side of the country – where I also played this game, albeit slightly differently. This game is something that I played with my sports teammates before practice, and sometimes before games, as a warm-up to get the blood going, or even as an icebreaker-type game to get everyone to know each other a little bit better. The fact that it is children and young teenagers – middle and high school students – that play this game could possibly mean that it is a game that is used more often than not to bring a group of people together, such as a sports team made up of people that you might not know very well. I have fond memories of playing such games with my volleyball team back in high school, and it helped us get out some of the competitiveness and animosity that some of us may have had with and towards each other. After all, better to work that out off the court than to have it interfere with the game on the court.