Roslyn M. Frank 1.0. Introduction In the first chapter of this ... - Dialnet

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Roslyn M. Frank
this fashion adults impress upon their offspring the importance of carrying out
certain ritual practices that they themselves no longer perform or believe in.
In this case, there is a sort of collusion between two generations. On the one
hand, although the parents portray themselves as believers in front of their offspring,
they themselves are situated, cognitively, on the outside, and from that
vantage point they view the belief and/or activity as appropriate for children but
not for adults. In this respect, there is a kind of tacit collaboration on the part of
the parents in terms of conserving the belief and social practices related to it.
While the parents no longer represent the agents who believe in the efficacy of
carrying out the social practice, they continue to be active participants in the
sense that they insist on fostering the belief in their own children. Naturally,
over time even the participation by children can become further demeaned, e.g.,
consumerized where the material trappings of the practice and/or purely its entertainment
value become the focus of the performance.
As we shall soon see, a typical example of this is represented by the degeneration
of the phenomenon referred to as «good-luck visits», discussed earlier
(Frank 2008b), where groups of adults wearing masks, often accompanied by a
«bear», moved through the community, visiting one household after another, in
an action that was considered to bring «good-luck» and protect the householders
and their farm animals against evil influences. In other words, in times past
the «good luck visits» were performed by adults with specific purposes in mind. 17
As we have noted, the visitations were understood to have a cleansing or healing
function and it was not unusual for the «bear» character to be played by a
flesh and blood bear.
Indeed, one of the principle reasons behind the persistence of such performances
is the fact that the motley crew of masked actors along with their earthly
bear or a man dressed as a bear was believed to be fully capable of carrying
away the maladies and misfortunes of their households visited and/or the entire
community (Frank 1996, 2005; Vukanovitch 1959). Consequently, the performances
were considered to be of fundamental importance to all members of the
community: a method of insuring the health and well being of the social collective.
At the same time, the «good luck visits» acted as a complex and resilient
mechanism in terms of their ability to insure the storage and transmission of the
ursine belief system from one generation to the next, even though over time the
17 For a detailed discussion of the typology of the «good luck visits», cf. Halpert (1969). For
additional bibliography and a discussion of modern versions of the performance, cf. the collection
of essays in Halpert and Story (1969).