Cultural Transmission, Morality and Didacticism in Alternate Realities What is Tradition? ‘It is an inherited, established or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior. It is the cultural continuity in social attitudes, customs and institutions.” The most common way a tradition is carried over from one generation to another is by handing down the information, beliefs, and customs by word of mouth or through examples of oral narrations. So, when a group of children gather around their grandparents or sit around a campfire listening to stories from an elder with rapt attention, it not only results in the creation of one of their fondest childhood memories but also in the conditioning of the younger generation’s social selves in the garb of entertainment. Folktales, fairy tales, cartoons, fables or parables - all make use of the form of Alternate Reality. Impossible becomes possible in these tales, while animals speak and emote in parables, and cartoons make use of a composite of all these. In India, fairy tales and cartoons take the form of Panchatantra tales, Hitopadesas (Gujarat) and Thhakumar Jhuli stories (Bengal). However one thing common in all these forms is their service to the end of moral didacticism. They help to cut across the generational barriers and thereby maintain a cultural cohesion in a region, big or small. Be it the race of tortoise or the sharing of cake between two cakes or the clever fox who fooled many other animals, children’s stories – a popular form of folk culture - always abound in lessons of morality. Even cartoons, for that matter, like Noddy or Chhota Bheem are fraught with teachings of courage. In fact, studies have unanimously agreed how these cartoon cultures – Western and Indian alike – have been trying to prepare children to manage difficulties from their early days and be honest amidst the hardest of situations. Formal education is received through institutions while informal education of what is valued and preserved in a cultural society is transmitted through the generations in the form of these Alternate Realities. Folklore or Folktales teach or explain to the new generation, how something came to be known as the ‘creation of myths’. They always have a didactic lesson or a moral to teach and thus they become a tool of traditional education. In other words, tradition is ‘veiled’ in the various forms of Alternate Reality. But why are these morals taught? Fafunwa through the observation of African folktales says that- “The aim of traditional African education is multilateral and the end objective is to produce an individual who is honest, respectful, skilled, co-operative and conforms to the social order of the day.” Tradition is based on Ideology. When a tradition transmission takes place through these various forms of Alternate Realities; it is basically the conscious as well as unconscious conditioning of one’s beliefs, goals and behavior. As Louis Althusser, says that ‘ideology’ “interpellates” human individuals as subjects, thus grounding their sense of personal identity in their “imaginary relation to the real conditions” of their existence. The folk-tales always are formed by a hegemonic thought or ideology. Their ideologically charged narratives naturalize the dominant social positions and relations. For example: the Idoma Folktales teach the younger generation of that culture about moraluprightness, courage and to teach the child to stand against vices such as theft and dishonestly as observed by Halima L. Amali. Maria Tatar says that Didactic patterns in folktales have become more prominent in the recent centuries. According to her, even the most basic works of children literature under Folk-Tales have an ‘unusually cruel streak, one that especially affects women and children and are known as ‘moral correctives’. The Folk-tales becomes the tool to teach the children the specific code of conduct of a particular gender. Simone de Beauvoir suggests that- “one is not born a woman but, rather, becomes one” through the construction and formulation of gender and the Folktales makes the dichotomy between masculinity and femininity more pronounced to the point of it being rigid. The male protagonists are usually characterized through virtues such as heroism, leadership and physical prowess whereas the female characters immersed in mandatory preconditions for marriage which was usually their only chance to Vol 1.1
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