Week 6 The Carnivalesque and the Grotesque
Required Reading:
Mikhail Bakhtin, “Introduction,” Rabelais and His World (Bloomington: Indiana, 1984), 4-30.
Umberto Eco, “The frames of comic ‘freedom’,” Carnival (Amsterdam: de Gruyter, 1989), 1-9.
When describing the grotesque image, Bakhtin writes that it “reflects a phenomenon in transformation, an as yet unfinished metamorphosis, of death and birth, growth and… Read More »Bakhtin and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
“The bodily lower stratum of grotesque realism still fulfilled its unifying, degrading, uncrowning, and simultaneously regenerating functions. However divided, atomized, individualized were the “private” bodies,… Read More »Carnival/Grotesque r/CreepyPMs Reaction Video
Mikhail Bakhtin explains how the carnivalesque in comedy stems from the jesting that took place at medieval feasts and markets. Comedy fit into these occasions… Read More »The Grotesque and Carnivalesque Butler
Umberto Eco’s definition of the ‘comic effect’ in relation to the carnival follows a specific formula based on the breaking of a certain rule by… Read More »“They took away my legs but they can’t take away my spirit!” – Rickety Cricket as the Grotesque
Arguably, social media platforms operate as a kind of 21st century Bakhtinian ‘Carnival’, providing a virtual “second world”, that fosters the playful transgression of social… Read More »The Mukbang and Grotesque Realism
Trigger Warning: faeces Mikhail Bakhtin elaborates on how medieval comedy helped to build a second world outside officialdom. Similarly, the first season of The White… Read More »Carnival Comedy and Crap 💩
Bakhtin writes that “all [forms] of grotesque realism degrade, bring down to earth, turn their subject into flesh” (20). In other words, Bakhtin describes this… Read More »Slitheen and the Grotesque
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In ‘Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin describes the concepts of the ‘grotesque body’ and the ‘carnival spectacle’, which occurs when a typically serious ritual is… Read More »Bakhtin and Hot Dog Fingers
Bananas (1971) a film by Woody Allen contains aspects of both carnival and humor as defined by Umberto Eco. In this film an uneducated man,… Read More »Carnival in Bananas