THE GROTESQUE BODY

Notes /quotes from Rabelais and his World by Mikhail Bakhtin and its relevance to Trinidad's carnival, in particular jouvert and the concept / theory of grotesque imagery and the grotesque body.

The grotesque image reflects a phenonmenon in transformation, an as yet unfinished metamorphosis, of death and birth, growing and becoming. The relation to time is one determining trait of the grotesque image. The other indispensable trait is ambivalence. For in this image we find both poles of transformation, the old and the new, the dying and the procreating, the beginning and the end, the metamorphosis. 24

The grotesque image remians ambivalent and contradictory; they are ugly, monstrous, hideous from the point of view of "classic" aesthetics, that is, the aesthetics of the ready made and the completed.

Main elements in the system of grotesque images are copulation, pregnancy, birth, growth, old ag, disintegration, dismemberment.

“Mountains and abysses, such is the relief of the grotesque body; or speaking in architectural terms, towers and subterranean passages.” 317

The grotesue concept of the body is not a closed completed unit it is unfinished, outgrows itself and trangresses it own limits. It focuses on the parts of the body that are open to the outside world, where the world can both enter and exit and through which the body can also exit. therefore it emphasises on the apertures and convexities of the body, the open mouth, the genitals, the breasts, the phallus, the pot belly and the nose. The bodies disclosed its essense as a principle of growth which exceeds its own limits only in copulation, pregnancy, child birth, the throes of death, eating , drinking or defecation.

Common in the carnival events is an exposure of one’s body, there is blatant sexual behavior that during the two days of festivity is not frowned upon but almost expected, to all it is a time to “get on bad” and where “all o we is one”. 'Wining' a term used in Trinidad to refer to a dance that is the gyrating of ones pelvic region and it is used in a popular song in the carnival of 2010, which states “man wining on anything, woman wining on anything”. It is a motto of sorts for those partaking in the festival. Anywhere you look there are people wining on people, walls, post, pretty much anything … a release of built up energy, an opening of the body and its fusion with other bodies. This is most evident in Trinidad Jouvert which is the opening of the carnival parade , beginning in the early hours of the morning and finishing with the rising of the sun. During these hours ,participants and unexpected spectators are covered and pasted with mud, paint, oil and most recently chocolate. It is here in particular that all hierarchical systems and seperations by race, gender, culture and class are thrown out the window. It is the one equalizer that unites all bodies, there is no longer the individual but a unification of the masses. in the darkness all covered in the same mud with only the sound of the music and the direction of the collective to guide them.

It is here that Bahktins notion of the grotesque body comes into considerations. Bakhtin explains the grotesque as exaggerated and building on the negative and what is deemed inappropriate. The grotesque body is also defined as a body in the act of becoming. It is incomplete as it continually built up creating another body in the process. It is an open body that is connected with its environment and the other bodies within that environment. This is what jouvert encompasses. It is a metamorphosis.

As the body is the site that is built on during carnival , I would like to begin with the grotesque body in its rawest forms and continue to build on that body by studying how the grotesque body is furture communicated through costuming and exaggerations of various kinds, that aid in removing the individualistic private nature of the classical closed body and instead present an open body that is subject to heightened sensory awareness and sense of community and unity with other bodies during the carnival.