Carnival Has Never Been Family Entertainment

Saint Lucia Carnival 2019, deemed a huge success by the government and most other commentators, has been criticized by the usual sectors. The last cited group described this year’s Parade of the Bands as indecent, over the top, a phenomenon of recent vintage. Some have claimed the demonstrated revelry is alien to the morals and values that once guided our carnival.  

Earlier this week, Senator Fortuna Belrose observed that participants in carnival “need to understand that there are certain criteria pertaining to self-respect and personal behaviour associated with the festival”. She referenced the children who form part of the street audience and reminded adults of their responsibility toward them. 

“We cannot be seen having sex on the streets of Castries during the parades,” she said. “We need to have some self-esteem and class within ourselves to know that there’s a behaviour for behind the scenes and not in front of every Tom, Dick and Harry.”  

But just what are the established standards of carnival? Putting aside the fact that carnival has its roots in Saturnalia and Bacchanalia, feasts named after the eponymous pagan patrons, a quick look at the early days of the sanitised version to which critics wish to return would easily demonstrate that there never was a carnival that did not feature what most of the then population did not consider unacceptable behaviour.

The mythical gods depicted were associated with “over the top behaviour”, just as now. One of the earliest conceptions of modern-day carnival was the Venetian masquerade or carnevale, described as “a space where people could enjoy fleeting liberty from social, sexual and psychological constraints” (Masquerade and Identities edited by Efrat Tseëlon 2001). Standards? This is supported by other sources.   

In Explore the Origin of the Venetian Mask, an illustration of the typical carnival in the Venetian Republic is provided: “The immense amount of travellers coming through the city meant that sexual promiscuity was commonplace and acceptable . . . Women’s clothing became more revealing; homosexuality, while publicly condemned, was embraced by the populace. Even the nuns and monks of the clergy, bejewelled and dressed in the latest imported creations, wore masks and engaged in the same acts as the majority of their fellow citizens.”

Again I ask, what standards? During the July 18 edition of Rick Wayne’s TALK, the host referenced the Feast of Fools, which the French clergyman John Gerson (1363-1429) described as “a detestable mockery made of the service of the Lord and of the sacraments where many things are impudently and execrably done. . .” Done by whom? The “ecclesiastics (churchmen/priests) either on the day of the Innocents or on the day of the Circumcision or on the Epiphany of the Lord, or during Carnival, throughout the churches of France . . .”

And what exactly was done at the Feasts of Fools during Carnival as well as on other occasions? The University of Paris Letter against the Feast of Fools provides a hint: “What intelligent Christian, I ask, would not call wicked those priests and clerks seen masked in monstrous visages at the time of divine office, dancing in the choir dressed as women . . . and running and leaping through the church not blushing at their own nakedness; then driving through the town and theatres in shabby carts and carriages and rousing the laughter of their companions and bystanders in infamous performances with indecent gestures and unchaste and scurrilous verses?” The author added: “There are many other abominations of which I am ashamed to remember, and which I shudder with horror to recite.”

This all occurred, not in the 1980s and 1990s but during the 15th and 16th centuries and even before, in “Catholic/Christian” Europe, as part of the “Christianised” and sanitized version of carnival. As the saying goes, there’s nothing new under the sun. 

In short, carnival has always been an excuse for egregious bad behaviour. As for those who would clothe in “culture” raiments, let them be reminded that culture is not automatically decent by universal measure. Some downright evil practices involving animals have been going on forever. As Tourism Minister Dominic Fedee put it recently: “I think that those people who were offended by what they felt was too much nudity had a choice. They did not have to attend.”