Farewell to the Flesh
Ashley Denny Petch
The Carnival is Town
As far back as I remember, I always wanted to be a carny.
And why not? It’s a perversely glamorous world to inhabit: roaming from town to town, never in one place long enough to form attachments, all for the purpose of putting people under a temporary spell of reverie and merriment.
What is the essence extracted by that familiar broadcast “the carnival is in town”? A burst of ancient joy. Medieval laughter. Transgression and emancipation.
What exactly do I mean by the term carnival? By carnival, I do not mean the Carp Fair or Canada’s Wonderland. By carnival, I never mean Disney World. I don’t even quite mean Coney Island. A carnival is so much more than all of those things.
Before suppression comes expression.
Let’s indulge in some light time travel and head to the early 13th century. Carnivals are a big deal in the lives of medieval Europeans. Carnival was a time period, a season, rather than a single event - the festivities happened on a continual basis from Christmas all the way to Shrove Tuesday. It was an opportunity for townspeople to celebrate before the penitential practices of Lent began.
Carnival was a feasting period for common people to eat as much as possible before the fasting period began, especially the meat and dairy products which would no longer be preservable into the final winter months. But beyond simply food, Carnival was a time to consume with abandon. It was an opportunity to defy the rigid quotidian morality advocated by the Church by subverting social norms. This meant sexual licentiousness, drinking to excess, crossdressing, wearing masks, games, singing, dancing, fake battles, and even political satire that included mock trials, and simulated executions.
The origins of Carnival are murky. We know that they’re rooted in some sexy Pagan rituals like the Dionysian festivals of Ancient Greece or the Roman Saturnalia. In the middle ages, Paganism was, shall we say, ‘frowned upon’, and priests were unhappy with their parishioners engaging in these debaucherous activities. Nevertheless, the Medieval Church was consigned to a ‘if you can’t beat em, join em’ type of pragmatism, and so these practices were re-characterized as an opportunity for common people to visualize sin and remoteness from God and thus Carnival was formalized into the liturgical calendar.
(When the Reformation arrived, those Lutheran wet blankets had little patience for the profligate Carnival practices. As Protestantism grew across Western and Northern Europe, Carnival lost its importance and influence.)
Russian philosopher and Carnival superfan Mikhael Bakhtin identified Carnival as ‘le monde a l’envers’, an alternative world for common people - which allowed them to experience the real and the ideal simultaneously. Carnival was a temporal border against the harsh conditions of regular life. Carnival was a ‘second life’.1
Naturally, the carnival that I keep in my mind’s eye is more North American shaped. It’s the 20th century evolution of the medieval celebration, heavy on the merriment, but hold the haunting spectre of Lent.
It’s the 1930’s depression-era style carnival that is still regularly conjured up in popular culture. With the carnies and freak shows. The rickety rides and the funhouse mirrors. It’s the carnival from the Simpsons episode where Cooder and Spud take over the house. It’s the carnival in the final scene of Grease where feminist hero Sandy flies into space with John Travolta. It’s the carnival from Ja Rule & Ashanti’s perfect no-notes music video homage to Grease.
The Carnival is in Town.
The Carnival inhabits a space only temporarily - typically a street or a parking lot. These places are not designed for a carnival. Nowhere is. You can not architecture yourself into a space for carnivals, nor should you try (see Disneyworld, Dubai or Frank Gehry). This is because Carnival is a festival of time, not place. The defining element of the carnival is that it’s a traveling show.
A carnival is a moveable feast, literally.
The Carnival invades. It’s intrusive in its imminence. By the time you hear that the carnival is in town, they’re almost ready to head out again. The carnival suspends the city in time.
Renewal through transgression.
Have you ever been in a food fight? There’s a reason that they’re a movie trope. They’re glorious. In my own life, I can recall three:
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October 2007 at Magda’s Regina street apartment: My friends and I just hanging out. Like any legitimate food fight, it began organically. It involved strawberry shortcake, and then when we ran out of cake, it became a water fight. My belated apologies to Janina, Magda’s mom. I’m sure our cleanup efforts were sorry at best.
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Canada Day 2010 on the balcony of my boyfriend’s apartment in the Glebe: More cake. (I worked at a bakery in those days so I was lousy with the stuff) This was a duel between me and my best friend Marissa. No other participants - just observers. A dollop of cake icing got on his stereo and my boyfriend was so mad he broke up with me on the spot. We reconciled, but I had to promise to never throw food again,
- January 2011 at the Ottawa Curling Club: The aforementioned promise was swiftly and decisively broken that evening (boyfriend was long gone by this point). It started with an innocent fry being thrown across the room aimed at my brother Andrew, but it soon engulfed all bonspiel participants, young and old, into an all-out throw down. I’m proud to say it was all my fault.
Food fights are fun because of the uninhibited temporary chaos. It feels good to break the rules of social decorum. It feels good to throw food with your hands. It feels good to be in your body. As evidenced by many extant events, food fights are the perfect evocation of the medieval Carnival spirit - they are joyful and intoxicating and besides the odd uptight boyfriend, there are rarely any casualties.
Bakhtin writes about the “grotesque body” and how it transgresses its own limits. In their revelry, carnival goers place particular emphasis on the orifices of the body and how they connect the body to the world: that is, eating, drinking, sex, pissing, defecating, etc. The grotesque brings the sacred, the spiritual and the abstract down to a material level, a more knowable and fertile level. A collective spirit like Carnival can conquer (at least temporarily) the fears brought on by these concepts and express a folk perspective of the world, one that was normally hidden or suppressed. Here was this ‘second life’ pounding on the temporal door and pushing its way in, via subversion, laughter, invigoration, regeneration.
So perhaps we can find freedom in a food fight. In bodily utopia. Or even, in the utopian promise of an immortal social body. A second life. A time for free expression and abundance.
The Carnival is in town.
All this to say, of course I want to be a carny. Who wouldn’t? Former Carny Ron Bennington put it succinctly enough: "All the world is just carnies and rubes." 2
I don’t want to live the rest of my life like a schnook.
Thumbnail image: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/v72jf4fk
