Doe slaps

Text:

AB: “It originated from ‘Give me my dough,’ which may have been more of a universal thing, If someone said something stupid, you’d say ‘Give me my dough’ and then hit them on the head. But then it transformed into, like, the most complex thing ever. It turned into ‘doe slaps,’ so when someone said something stupid you could say ‘doe slaps’ and hit them on the head. But there’s so many different rules. There’s ‘doe slaps extra hardies,’ ‘no returnies.’ But basically, if you don’t say certain things, they can slap you back… it just involved getting whacked in the head for saying something stupid.

I think it started in middle school and it went into the high school. It was big in high school, like if someone said something stupid in class, people would go up and be like ‘doe slaps.’ If it was your friend. It was fun. It was endearing but people slap hard.”

Context:

The informant is a 19-year-old college student from Montclair, New Jersey. She remembers “doe slaps” being pervasive among boys and girls, in middle school but especially in high school. She says that the tradition has died out among her friends from high school, but her younger brother attends the same school and has seen people in his peer group do the ritual.

Analysis:

I think that this game and ritual, like the Circle Game, where one is allowed to hit another person if they make them look at their hand making the “OK” gesture, conveys the competitive, emotionally complex social dynamics between adolescents. Teenagers are very critical of one another and often use the failures or missteps of others to bolster their own self-esteem. While it could be seen as a way to perpetuate power dynamics or convey social status through bullying, it also can be interpreted as egalitarian, since the act demands justification and can technically be carried out by and to anyone. Kids sign a sort of unwritten social contract, allowing them to give people “doe slaps,” but also agreeing that they can receive them.

This ritual involves humiliation and physical pain, however, giving someone “doe slaps” is also a kind of act of endearment carried out between friends. While the act is humbling, the practice conveys someone’s status as an insider or outsider. Being able to give someone “doe slaps” indicates a degree of closeness or a person’s belonging in a social group, since it wasn’t acceptable to do it to people you didn’t know or weren’t friends with. Moreover, the elaborateness and specificity to one school in one town in New Jersey makes the practice a cultural identifier, something which people from Montclair can use to understand and connect with each other. Because there’s no cultural understanding of “doe slaps” outside of the town, and because hitting people under any circumstances is generally not socially acceptable among adults, it makes sense that this practice fizzled out when the kids who practiced it graduated high school and left Montclair.

Keriyah

LG: “In the Jewish tradition, when someone dies, you are supposed to make a tear in your clothing to show that you’re in mourning. And the reason for that is, I guess, or the reason that tradition evolved is because people used to tear their skin, they were so anguished they would pull their hair out. Jews are not supposed to do that. It’s called Keriyah, you rip your clothes to show you’re in mourning.

[Jews are] not supposed to pierce or tattoo because your body belongs to God, so you’re not supposed to make marks on it or tears at it.”

Context:

The informant is my mother. She is a 57-year-old woman of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry who was born in California and currently lives in New York City. Her father was a German refugee who escaped Nazi persecution as a child and conveyed to his children the value of carrying on Jewish beliefs and traditions. She learned about this practice in the Torah study group she takes with her rabbi.

         She learned that this tradition was derived from a biblical story, Leviticus 10:1-7, in which the sons of Aaron light a fire in the temple to honor God despite His commands not to do so. As punishment, God kills Aaron’s sons. However, he also punishes Aaron by inhibiting him from mourning practices, which included tearing one’s clothing. LG said that because Aaron was specifically prevented from mourning because he dishonored God, people interpreted that they should tear their clothes as to preserve the meaning of God’s punishment.

Analysis:

There are many Jewish cultural traditions which take place when someone is mourning. These practices rely heavily on members of the community caring for the person who lost someone. I think that Keriyah is a visual symbol of mourning that indicates a person’s desire for support.

Moreover, grief is a visceral experience and confronting the futility of words in the face of it can lead people to hurt themselves as a way to communicate or express their agony. Tearing one’s clothes is a physical manifestation of grief that can substitute harming one’s body, which is sinful according to Jewish belief because one’s body belongs to God. However, I think that the practice is not merely grounded in piety, but also a practical way to care for the mourning, to make sure they don’t physically harm themselves. 

Aswang

Text:

MA: “In Filipino lore there’s this thing called the Aswang, but it’s basically like a Filipino vampire. And, I don’t know if I’m confusing this with something else, but this is the story that I was told, that like, they’re kind of like vampires but they’re, I believe, can be connected to trees. They fly and they’re only half a body or something like that. But the big thing is, the thing that scarred me as a child, is that they prey on pregnant women. So, what they’ll do is fly to people’s windows, and they have really long tongues, so their tongues will go and go through a woman’s belly button and suck out the baby. And that’s what it feeds on.”

Context:

The informant is a 20-year-old college student who is from Orange County, California and of Filipino descent. She says that the Aswang is a popular legend among Filipino people. MA’s maternal grandmother and aunt are interested in the supernatural and say that they can see ghosts, so she thinks that they told her this story. She is not sure what message the story is intended to convey, but she thinks that it may be meant to warn children against staying out late, warn pregnant women against engaging in any behaviors that may endanger their unborn child, like sleeping on their stomachs, she said, or to explain miscarriage.

Analysis:

Legendary monsters often represent cultural fears, provide explanations for tragedies which people can’t understand, or maintain the status quo by illustrating horrific repercussions of defying cultural norms. Just as folklorists have interpreted the legend of La Llorona both as a reflection of societal views about motherhood and female morality and as a way to teach children to be cautious around bodies of water, the Aswang can be interpreted as sending messages about gender norms and safety. I think the legend conveys ideas about women and children, by virtue of the monster preying on fetuses, being vulnerable. It promotes a kind of sheltered or cautious existence for these groups, since this monster, perhaps a representative of men or malicious adult figures, victimizes them. The legend could also be intended to impart ideas about sexual morality. One could interpret the Aswang’s mode of attack as representing sex, and its devouring of women’s unborn children as punishment for female promiscuity. I also agree with MA that this legend may have been used to explain miscarriage.

For another description of the Aswang, consult page 250 of the following source:

Nadeau, Kathleen. “Aswang and Other Kinds of Witches: A Comparative Analysis.” Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, vol. 39, no. 3/4, 2011, pp. 250–266., https://www.jstor.org/stable/23719118. Accessed 28 Apr. 2022. 

Rituals for Nervous Flyers: Getting on the plane with your right foot and touching the ground after kissing your hand

Text:

SP: “I always get on with my right foot, and I bend down and kiss the ground of the plane. I kiss my hand and put my hand down on the ground of the plane. Getting off, I kiss my hand and put my hand down to the floor.”

Context:

The informant is my grandmother. She is an 83-year-old woman of Ashkenazi Jewish descent who was born in New York City and currently lives in Fort Lee, New Jersey. SP is an extremely anxious flyer and has been for her entire life. She said that she has done these rituals since the first time she flew on an airplane when she was a young girl. Though she doesn’t remember specifically learning or coming up with these rituals, she remarked that the Pope kisses the ground when he gets off a plane, so she expects it was inspired by that. She said that when she does this ritual, specifically kissing the ground, people often stop or look at her. At this moment, she usually tells the flight attendant that she is a very nervous flyer.

Though my grandmother is the only person in my family who has a fear of flying, I was always encouraged by other family members, who make a ritual out of doing so, to step onto airplanes with my right foot.

Analysis:

It’s interesting to me how these rituals for flying on airplanes seem to be derived from other folklore or cultural practices. I imagine that the idea of it being good luck to get onto a plane with your right foot is connected to the phrase “starting off on the right foot,” which is an expression used to indicate that someone or something is starting in a positive way. Thus, this ritual can literally be seen as starting a flight off on the right foot. Moreover, my grandmother described how the Pope kisses the ground when he gets off a plane, which may have inspired her in this ritual. She may have seen him do this on television or in the newspaper. However, the act of kissing one’s hand and touching an object is a common gesture done during a blessing. For example, in Jewish culture, parents place their hands on their children’s heads when doing the blessings for sons and daughters. Moreover, on certain holidays, rabbis carry Torahs around the synagogue so that congregants can touch it with their prayer books. Sometimes people kiss their books after touching the Torah and some do it before, so this ritual can be seen as an individual blessing the Torah, blessing themselves through their contact with it, or both. Thus, my grandmother my grandmother kissing her hand and then touching the ground before flying can be interpreted as her blessing the plane so that she will have a safe flight.

I didn’t know about my grandmother’s ritual of kissing her hand and then touching the ground of an airplane upon boarding and exiting. Upon speaking to her about it, I realized that this may be a way to convey how she feels to the people around her. She said that she often uses flight attendants’ confusion at her performance of this ritual as an opportunity to tell them that she’s a nervous flyer. For this reason, I think that this ritual may serve a practical purpose as an emotional or spiritual one. Because she communicates her fear, the flight attendant may be more inclined to be caring or considerate to my grandmother, perhaps soothing her anxiety.

These good luck rituals are deeply comforting to my grandmother. She has never been in a plane accident, so she has no reason to believe that these rituals don’t work. Though my other relatives are not afraid of flying, I think they partake in the ritual of getting on the plane with your right foot similarly because it has never been disproven, so they have no reason not to. I also think that they do this out of an emotional impulse to feel close to my grandmother and to carry on her endearing idiosyncrasies. 

Twitter Slang: “Drinking from the mother lake”

Text:

FC: “There’s a saying, when someone serves seismically, you say that they drank from the mother lake. And the mother lake’s not a real lake, believe it or not. It’s kind of a metaphorical, symbolic source of power for, like, motherly behavior. And motherly behavior, anyone who serves, who delivers some sort of jaw-dropping performance, piece of media, they’re mother. They’re queen, they support me, they nurse me. And in order to gain those powers, that ability, they had to drink from the mother lake. The primordial source of power.”

Context:

The informant is a 20-year-old college student from St. Louis, Missouri who has been using Twitter since his early teens. He describes the community he occupies on the app as “stan Twitter,” which is an online community of young people who bond over their fandom for certain musical artists or pop culture interests. Stan Twitter has a specific sense of humor and vernacular, much of which is derived from the cultural practices of the LGBTQ community, of which which many members of the online subculture are members. Black drag queens in particular are responsible for the creation and proliferation of much of the language employed by stan Twitter users.

“It’s very common to talk about celebrities, music icons as, you know, people say “queen” and a lot of that comes from LGBTQ slang, like drag slang,” FC said. He believes that the term “mother,” a reverential term colloquially applied to usually female artists whose work an individual finds exceptional or resonant, was taken from drag and ballroom culture. Since many people involved in these subcultures found themselves alienated from or rejected by their families because of their queerness, drag houses and drag families, or communities of queer people and drag performers, substituted as the kind of support networks which traditional families usually provide. In these groups, “there’s always a mother of the drag family who is the most experienced queen or ballroom performer with the most knowledge and experience to share,” FC said. “They are just held on a very high pedestal and their abilities and servery is applauded, and I think that’s a lot of where ‘mother’ comes from.”

FC described how stan Twitter humor often involves taking one foundational joke or vernacular element, and continually modulating it into absurd derivations. He thinks that the term “drinking from the mother lake” formed through this process, beginning with trends of calling artists “queen” and “mother” and coming up with increasingly extreme, peculiar, and culturally specific ways to express this same admiration.

Analysis:

         This slang term, and slang used on stan Twitter in general, is deeply grounded in LGBTQ history and identity. Young people on this platform connect with previous generations of queer people by using their language and traditions, arguably creating a community or uniting people of queer identities through common experiences or a common culture. Moreover, stan Twitter users form a community by fostering common interests, a sense of humor, and a vernacular style often derived from culturally specific references. To understand the linguistic traditions used by this community, one must understand what the lingo refers to and how humor functions on the platform. Someone’s ability to employ these vernacular traditions, communicate, be funny, or find others funny identifies them as a member of the community, as a member of the in-group, and provides the opportunity to bond with others who share interests and experiences.

The collaborative process by which this slang term evolved strikes me as particularly folkloric. There is no individual author, instead, people add onto each other’s versions, with different derivations branching off and becoming popular in different circles. With every iteration, a new dimension of strangeness and cultural specificity is added, so appreciation for a song or an artist can be expressed by saying that such artist “drank from the mother lake.”