USC NROTC Dining In

TEXT

At the end of the spring semester, USC’s Naval ROTC has an yearly celebration event called dining in, where midshipmen (ROTC students) wear their formal dress white uniforms and enjoy a nice, catered dinner at an off-campus venue to celebrate the end of the semester and their hard work. The highlight of the celebration are the “skits” and “roasts”, in which midshipman are allowed to address the entire room to make jokes or call out fellow students. Any individual that is found “guilty” of what they are being called out for, violate celebration customs, or make a joke/skit that the room deems unfunny, are required to drink out of “the grog”, a disgusting drink created from blending and mixing a variety of drinks, food, and condiments.

CONTEXT

This informant is a 20 year old USC sophomore studying aerospace engineering. In addition, he is a part of the USC Naval ROTC battalion and hopes to be a submarine officer after he graduates. His relationship to this celebration is that he is someone who takes part in this celebration, and he first learned about this celebration last year from an older NROTC member when he was a freshman. He recounts that he was cautioned to not go on stage and make a joke, as anyone that addresses the entire room will eventually be forced to drink out of the grog. The informant explains that he looks forward to the event every year not only for the good food, but also the fun jokes and skits, and the fact that this is the one event they are allowed to wear their dress whites, which he believes looks cool and gives him “aura”.

ANALYSIS

This yearly ritual from the USC NROTC folk group functions as not only a celebration for the end of the school year, but also a way to reinforce group identity through formal uniforms that invoke military pride, a shared dinner, and skits/performances that are based around inside jokes that only midshipmen and staff would be able to understand. In addition, with NROTC and its different classes/ranks based on the midshipman’s academic year, dining in provides a unique opportunity where this hierarchy is temporarily challenged from midshipman being allowed to make a joke about another midshipman regardless of rank. However, with this strict hierarchy being the backbone of structure in the military, the punishment drink grog and specific celebration customs/rules continue to maintain a sense of order, ensuring the core values of the military are always maintained.

Korean military folk food: ppogeuri

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Ppogeuri (뽀글이) is a slang name for instant ramen that Korean soldiers often eat. The food has to be eaten at a specific time, and that is late night after a soldier comes back from night watch. What makes ppogeuri different from regular instant ramen is that because cup noodles weren’t available during the time my informant was a soldier, they had to use the plastic packaging the instant noodles came in as the cooking pot and plate. With no kettle and hot water only being available during shower times, you would have use cold water and put the packaging near a radiator to actually boil and cook it. With Korean culture’s emphasis on age and the strict environment Korean soldiers train in, my informant talked about how only sergeants were allowed to secretly make this dish after night watch. The only time he ate ppogeuri as a lower-ranked personnel was when he was a private and one of his superiors allowed him to have a bite, which he described that first bite as heavenly.

Context

The informant is a 51 year man born and raised in South Korea. As a South Korean male, he was required to serve in the military, and he served in the Korean army from October 1994~ December 1996 after his freshman year in college. This topic came up when we were talking about military food, when I told him about my worries for food quality at my military training center for ROTC. He first saw this folk food when he was coming back from his first night watch as a private, when one of the superiors he was standing watch with cooked ppogeuri as a late night snack. Even after his discharge, he said he tried cooking instant noodles the same way but said the noodles tasted raw and the soup was chalky. His interpretation of this dish is that it can only be enjoyed by people who went through the same military experience – during his service, when barracks were old, cramped, and soldiers often trained hungry, soldiers could at least count on ppogeuri to fill their stomachs after a grueling shift of night watch.

Analysis

Based on what I learned, my takeaway from this folklore is that ppogeuri is a vernacular folk dish that can only exist under specific, strict constraints. To start, its preparation method was created due to the lack of cooking tools on base, and can only be eaten by superior ranks while lower ranks can only hungrily watch or stand lookout. In this way, ppogeuri symbolizes the hierarchal nature of militaries, where even simple acts like cooking ramen is denied. However, just like my informant’s first experience with the dish, when a lower-ranked personnel is allowed a bite, this goes beyond an act of kindness – it creates an unforgettable moment of bond as one individual directly contradicts the system he’s supposed to blindly follow for a fellow soldier. Finally, the timing of when one eats ppogeuri, which is after a long night of watch, reflects the shared struggle a folk group (soldiers in this case) go through. As such, it may not even be a stretch to say that one way to identify membership within the folk group of Korean soldiers is if one has ever ate and enjoyed ppogeuri under these same conditions. All in all, ppogeuri is a reminder of how folk dishes can be crafted from creativity that is developed to get around constraints. At an individual level, I believe ppogeuri holds a great personal value for former Korean veterans, as it is a dish that symbolizes the strict system they adapted to during their youth, while being a source of comfort and nostalgia they can look back on.

-maxxing and -mogging joke

Text:

This folk joke is when someone adds the word “maxxing” to whatever adjective, action, noun, or verb to describe what another person is doing, and adds the word “mogging” to compare themselves to another. The punchline/joke can only be understood by fans of an online influencer named Clavicular, as for outsiders, the phrase simply sounds unnecessarily complex or nonsensical. For context, Clavicular is an influencer best known for looksmaxxing content, which is a term for an online trend where one goes through drastic changes in their daily routine to optimize their physical appearance; while it initially started off with the intention of increasing your self-confidence, the general connotation nowadays is negative, as many view the trend to be extreme and over fixated on physical experience. An example of this joke would be if I was to walking into my apartment and see my roommate studying, I could simply say, “Wow you’ve been studying all day – you’re so much more disciplined than me.” In contrast, a fan of Clavicular in this situation would say “Wow you’ve been studymaxxing all day – you’re lowkey disciplinemogging me”.

Context:

This informant is a 19 year old USC sophomore from Irvine, California, who studies environmental science. He also is my suitemate this year, and he told me a variation of this joke when he saw me scrolling on my phone, explaining that I was “scrollmaxxing and lazymogging him”. After explaining the joke to me, he told me that he saw this joke from an Instagram Reels video of Clavicular using this same joke, and says he loves using this joke on a daily basis.

Analysis:

This piece of internet folklore, which started from just a niche fanbase, demonstrates the huge effects folklore and internet transmission can have, particularly among gen-z, as we are the first generation that grew up with this technology and internet access. The specific words that make up this joke, maxxing and mogging, not only function as insider vocabulary that can help this folk group’s members identify each other, but the fixed structure of the joke creates room for all sorts of variation and creativity. To add, with short-form content platforms like IG Reels, TikTok, and Youtube Shorts with countless clips of Clavicular circling around, it only takes a couple of swipes for these clips to find their way to people’s algorithms, showing the limitless capacity of the internet in terms of transmission.

Finally, it’s important to note that just like the ridiculous nature of the joke, what makes such looksmaxxing content and influencers like Clavicular famous is the shear absurdity that makes it hard to turn away from what they are doing. These types of media over fixate on minute flaws within one’s appearance, and often recommends ridiciulous and dangerous methods like jaw-smashing (smashing one’s face with hard objects to reshape their jawline) that only fuels insecurities and unrealistic beauty standards for young, impressionable boys and girls. As a result, the absurdity of this folk joke can serve as a parody to its own folk idea it was created around, reminding both the audience and user of the joke just how ridiculous this concept of looksmaxxing is.

Delta Sigma Fraternity tradition

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At Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), the Delta Sigma fraternity has a big-little tradition as part of their initiation process for pledges. Big-little is a mentorship program where a pledge (new member) is paired with a brother (active member), and the big (brother) helps the little (pledge) get adjusted to the new frat. As part of their initiation to becoming an official brother, the pledges are required to complete a scavenger hunt in one night, where they are tasked with various tedious tasks, such as taking a picture with a statue on one end of campus, and then having to look for an item on the other side of campus. The pledges are not allowed to return to the frat house until they complete their scavenger hunt, and once they are finished, they need to guess who their big was based on the type of tasks they were given, as each task is often representative of a specific brother. The pledges are given a punishment for wrong guesses, and are only given an official big once they complete the scavenger hunt and correctly guess their big.

Context

The informant is a 22 year old man living in Cleveland, Ohio, and a former CWRU student. He was a part of the delta sigma fraternity during his time in college, and this topic came up when I asked about if he had any interesting folklore to share about his university. The informant’s first encounter with this tradition was during his freshman year of college when he was pledging, and he remembers that it took him until 2 AM to complete this process. When asked to reflect upon this experience, he believed it was tedious at the time, but looks back at the memory as something that honors a unique tradition of his frat. Ultimately, he told me that he was glad he had this experience, as his frat was where he made some of his best memories in college and found his closest friends.

Analysis

This initiation ritual, which blends a fun activity like a scavenger hunt with real consequences, uses this contrast to function as a rite of passage for new members and a building block for brotherhood. The long and tedious tasks becomes a way to see the commitment the pledges are willing to put in, and this ritual being something every member had to go through allows it to hold its place as a significant tradition that characterizes this frat. This ritual is also a reflection of Victor Turner’s concept of communitas, as it creates a tight bond among the pledges from a shared struggle, and the scavenger items being personalized to the pledge’s big becomes a fun way for new members to learn about their new peers in this folk group.

To me, as someone who never took part in Greek life, it’s easy for an outsider to see frats as unneccesary – from the yearly dues and the weeks of doing pointless tasks as a pledge, it may seem like one is paying to get hazed and make friends. Listening to the informant’s experience, however, and through the lens of folkloric significance, I can see the camaraderie this ritual would build and its importance towards becoming an official member of a particular group where you can find lifelong connections.

Fukusui bon ni kaerazu

Text:

Informant: “My grandpa taught me a phrase called, “fukusui bon ni kaerazu”, which means “spilt water never returns to the tray”. It’s basically saying what’s done is already done, so don’t stress about it too much, and I really like it because it’s like a really zen way to live life, you know?”

Interviewer: “Oh yeah for sure, do you mind sharing when you first heard this, and the kind of effect this had on your life”

Informant: “Yeah, so my grandpa told me that during my senior year, and I was basically telling him how there was a part of me that regretted being set on going ROTC for college early on instead of trying to like actually go further with hockey, since I didn’t try to talk to any college coaches or like go to more camps, since I was like always just set that it’d be better off to go to college since the chance of making it pro is so slim. And I think what made me regret so suddenly was just watching all the other guys I grew up playing with going onto play higher levels either in pros or college but him telling me that and kind of explaining how it’s useless to stress about the past helped me get closure and just move on, since I could still play hockey at USC in the club team even if it might not be as flashy as the pros.”

“I think in general the phrase just helped me learn to not take everything too seriously, and just let things happen instead of trying to control everything, since whatever happens happens.”

Context:

The informant is a 19 year old sophomore at USC, who is studying environmental science. He grew up in Irvine, California, and played hockey all his life, and still plays to this day on the USC men’s club hockey team. This topic came up after I came back from playing intramural basketball, and told him about how I missed the feeling of playing actual organized sports and wished I was good enough to have had the chance to play in college, even if it was a small D3 or JUCO school. Relating to the experience, he shared his hockey experience and our conversation reached this topic. As shown in the interview, the phrase was told to him by his grandfather, who was a second-generation Japanese American; for the informant’s interpretation, it seems he took the literal meaning to heart, and uses it in his life to help him mentally not stress too much about past regrets or mistakes.

Analysis:

This Japanese proverb is a perfect exemplification of a traditional verbal folktale, as it is a long-standing saying in Japan that was passed down orally through family for this informant. The context of use for this proverb is to offer emotional wisdom, emphasizing that it’s what’s past is past, and that it’s foolish to let any form of regret from the past continue to affect one’s life. For this informant, just as how verbal folklore is passed down intimately between individuals, he learned this proverb from a family member. This informant’s story also holds cultural significance, as with the informant being a fourth generation immigrant who is culturally closer to the U.S than Japan, him still finding meaning within a Japanese proverb and its application to an important decision in his life shows how folklore can be meaningful across multiple cultures.