Q1- Clowning among the Murik

This was a facinating article about the Murik people and how they incorporated clowning, or joking behavior, into everyday life to serve a variety of purposes.  Through a complicated system of real and honorary relationships, joking serves as a way to teach children how to be a part of the community.  Jokes are used to re-order social structure following a death, to ease tensions in almost any situation, as a teaching tool, as a form of cultural protest, to show status, and to handle major transitions in life such as birth, entering adulthood, and death.

Clowning partners are also considered extended family and they play important roles like protecting a woman from an abusive husband or serving as a "time out" for an overworked mother who might be over zealous in disciplining a child.

Clowing partners also handle initiating young Murik's into adulthood.  The secret societies also serve as secret keepers for initiates.

Clowning relationships train young Murik's in the ways of their people, through the joking relationships, the young people learn how to be a Murik and what is appropriate behavior in their culture.

I found the relationships confusing and hard to follow but the culture described was facinating and the end note from the author was completely understandable- she wrote that her studies were confusing and any misinterpretation was her own.  I think that you would have to grow up in this culture to understand the subtlties of it, most of us would be like the outsider in the second article who was mercilessly mocked for his doltish ways. This is a culture filled with intricacies and nuances that make it an anthropologists dream!

Here is a video in the Murik langauge of Noah's ark (I am guessing!)- lots of laughter!
http://youtu.be/sEUOlxfzDBg


This is a scene from an initiation ritual: