Outsider
Artist Statement
The situations where we understand and are understood are pleasant and comforting, but what happens when we step outside of what is habitual and are now confronted with something completely unfamiliar? Alice, from Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” faces a similar situation when a rabbit hole transports her to the mysterious abyss of strange events and characters.Alice’s misunderstandings, questions, and confusion can be found in almost any page of the novel as she continues to explore the world and meet its habitants. One of the numerous examples of this can be found in Chapter VII, A Mad Tea-Party, where, in a conversation with the Hatter, each word separately made sense, even though Alice could not put it together to grasp a coherent meaning (Carroll, 2005). Like a newborn, Alice needs to explore the meanings and recreate her understandings about the functions and patterns of the world.
However, isn't it curious that Alice is the only character that finds the customs of Wonderland odd? To all other creatures, the world they live in is not strange at all. They have their own rules and patterns with which the members of Wonderland are familiar. For instance, nobody is shocked that the caterpillar can talk and smoke a hookah, nor is it odd that a Cheshire Cat can appear out of nowhere and change its shape.
Similarly, many situations like this can be explained by the concepts of multiculturalism and otherness. The members of the culture are very well aware of the way their culture functions; the outsider observers, however, will find it difficult to understand. A notable article written by Miner (1956), “The Body Ritual Among the Nacirema”, demonstrates this bias by changing the perspective on something that the reader is, in fact, familiar with. The author describes the life patterns of a group of people living between Canadian Cree and Tarahumare of Mexico. When first reading this article, one will most likely perceive the described events as novel and perhaps even odd: mouth-rite, holy-mouth man, charm box. All of these, however, are just the descriptions for brushing teeth, a dentist, and a medical cabinet. In fact, “Nacirema” is just "American" spelled backward. Once the reader understands this, the vast distance between the reader and that group of people living between Canadian Cree and Tarahumare of Mexico disappears.
In the illustration, you see something that perhaps would seem quite odd, if not shocking, to Alice. In the center of the image is a burning in flames scarecrow dressed in human clothes. Silhouettes are dancing around it, holding hands. You can also see Alice, who might have been confronted with a similar scene in Wonderland and have the same reaction of confusion. However, this is not a Wonderland, this is reality, and the situation you are observing is an Eastern Slavic holiday celebrated in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia and called “Maslenitsa” (Taylor, 2019). On this day, people gather together to celebrate the end of winter; they bake pancakes with caviar, organize joint dances around the burning scarecrow lady, and even fight each other (Godoy, 2013). It might seem odd and even barbaric as the symbol of fire and an image of the burning person might encode (Topp, 1973), yet people are smiling, laughing, singing, and dancing. In their reality - the reality of the “Maslenista,” all those events seem perfectly normal even though this might feel like a Mad Tea Party from an outside view.
References
Carroll, L. (2005). Alice's adventures in Wonderland. Bookman Books
Godoy, M. (2013). It's Russian mardi gras: Time for pancakes, butter and fistfights.
NPR.https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/03/14/174097702/its-russian-mardi-gras-bring-on-the-pancakes-and-butter
Miner, H. (1956). Body ritual among the Nacirema. American anthropologist, 58(3), 503-507.
Taylor, A. (2019). Photos: An ancient ceremony to celebrate the end of Winter. The Atlantic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/03/photos-ancient-ceremony-to-celebrate-the-end-of-winter/584569/
Topp, D. O. (1973). Fire as a symbol and as a weapon of death. Medicine, Science and the law, Topp, D. O. (1973). Fire as a symbol and as a weapon of death. Medicine, Science and the law,
