Magic Power of the Obscene Language in Womens’ Revena

Abstract

The theme  of this paper is the magic power of the obscene words and jokes in traditional Serbian culture, on the example of women’s only festival revena in Banat. This ritual represents one day holiday that was celebrated in the beginning of spring, before the Eastern Fast. During revena women gathered for a celebration during which their behavior was completely different than usual, transgressing all the strict  norms that prevailed in everyday reality  of patriarchal  society.  Except for  the  excessive  drinking  and  eating,  women  expressed  their sexuality freely and they spoke about it in the most obscene way. Apart from the verbal part, the ritual of revena had also its performative side. Thus women were proving their female sex by raising the skirt (in the Kumane village), and this act functioned as some kind of pass to enter the revena. During the  holiday, some women were dressed  up as men in order to fulfill the necessary male roles for the sexual games, because no man (except for the musician) was allowed to be present on this holiday. The analysis in this paper, devoted above all to the magic power of the obscene language in the traditional culture, is inscribed into the Bakhtin’s theory of carnival. It is applied here not only to the carnivalesque behavior, but also to the concrete verbal obscene content. These obscenities are inseparable from laughter, so the magic power of laughter (as defined by Veselin  Čajkanović) is also analyzed in this paper, and, apart from appearing in revena, it represented important part of the funeral ritual.