26. Cultural Transmission, Morality and Didacticism

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

move up the social ladder like for Cinderella. The only way she could escape her impoverished condition and poverty was by marrying Prince Charming. The ‘ideal’ female character was characterized by her obedience towards her father or husband, diligence, modesty, humility and endurance and if the woman failed in these criteria they were chastised and punished like in Catskin and Allerleirauh, and the female protagonist was reduced to a servile position. Tatar writes that a similar pattern of punishments associated with female disobedience can be seen in European Folktales as well. To illustrate her point, she describes the death penalty for adulterous females. The first is from the collection of the Grimm Brothers’ “The Three Snake Leaves” where the unfaithful woman is sent out on the sea with her accomplice in a boat filled with holes and the second is from an Italian folktale “The Lion’s Grass” where the woman condemned is hung first, then burnt and then her ashes are thrown to the wind. According to her, no folktale ever depicts such a cruel punishment for an adulterous man. This teaches young girls to behave in the way prescribed by the society so as to save themselves from the cruel judgment. Another example is our most basic Fairy-Tales and Roopkathas that teach the young to be the perfect patriarchal archetype of woman delineated in the examples of Cinderella or Ariel or any Princess from the Roopkathas. The Evil Queen from Snow White or Ursula from The Little Mermaid, are known for their hunger for power and a woman wielding power and basking in freedom is always seen as a figure of contempt by the Patriarchal society, so young children are conditioned to abhor these figures for their radicalism. A pure ploy created so that the prevalent patriarchal norms are never questioned. Red riding hood’s mother warns her to stick to the path as the woods are dark and scary. She also asks her not to talk to strangers but Hood naively talks to the wolf and tells him where she is going. The consequences later on teaches generations of kids to listen to their parents but especially the females against the possible threats from the space of forests and strangers. In a way, these folktales intensify the already existing gender-bias.

An alternate reality story also often presents us with a different reality to our current situation or past. Kathleen Ann Goonan in her book In War Times presents an utopian alternative to our reality; she gives us a place where the Cold War did not happen. A reality where peace overcomes conflict and mutual technological advances were shared between Russia and America through the protagonist Sam Dance’s alternative reality. It tells what the present would have been if a different course of action was taken. As mentioned in the book Trauma in Contemporary Literature: Narrative and Representation, “Goonan’s novel is driven by an aching sense of the losses not just of the second world war, but of the trajectory American politics took after 1945.”Time-travel, often a trope for Alternate Reality becomes a tool for a visionary experience which teaches us a moral. In H.G Wells’ Men like Gods we see, several Englishmen are transferred through an accidental encounter with a cross-time machine into an alternate universe featuring a utopian Britain. When the Englishmen, led by a satiric figure based on Winston Churchill, try to seize power, the utopians of that world, point a ray gun at them and send them to a different dimension.

On one hand where some morals and norms are upheld and passed on so that the prevalent society may continue, some other ideals of our ancient world are gradually dissipated with such a change representing a change in the era. In the book, A Cultural Sociology On Middle East, Asia and Africa : An Encyclopedia, it is maintained how the ancient folklore of Africa that talked about the long tradition of slavery was later replaced by folk culture like jazz music that had therapeutic effect against the culture of slavery and the dehumanization attached with it. Similarly, until the growth of modern urban Bengal, the folktales and Patachitra paintings used to delineate the importance of river as a means of migration, sustenance, geographical relocations and trade through the tales of Krishna and Behula-Lakhindar. In fact, the folk culture of India for long maintained the image of women as the ‘Mother India’. The idea of nation was personified in the woman and hence the suitable qualities of being sacrificing, nurturing and docile were expected of her. This remained an unquestioned belief

Thus, by providing an alternate to the current reality it not only helps show us our traditions or remind us our morals or the follies of the past but also sometimes the repercussions it could lead to if we continue in our set pattern. Going by the cliche of literature - Alternate Reality reflects and responds.

Kathakali Dutta

Sayantani Chowdhury

II Year