Rituals of Release: Popular Spectacles of Subversion Across Cultures

 That's a fascinating connection! The Dutch event you're thinking of, often involving a greasy rope or a slippery eel and a subsequent brawl, is a similar manifestation of a popular cultural ritual. It, like the Great Cat Massacre, involves the lower classes, animals, public spectacle, and a release of social tension.

Rituals of Release: Popular Spectacles of Subversion Across Cultures

Robert Darnton's analysis of the Great Cat Massacre and similar European rituals, such as the Dutch greasy eel or rope game (where prizes were fought over, often resulting in chaos and injury), highlights a universal phenomenon: the use of public spectacle and ritualized violence to express and temporarily resolve deep social and class tensions. While European examples often featured the animal as a substitute for an oppressive master or a witch, East Asian traditions tended to channel aggression through seasonal festivals, theatrical mockery, and animal sacrifice tied to spiritual appeasement.

Cultural Parallels in East Asia

In East Asia, particularly China, cultural control over public order has historically been strict, meaning open, spontaneous riots disguised as rituals (like the Cat Massacre) were less common. Instead, social release was often channeled through highly ritualized, state-sanctioned, or seasonal popular festivals.

1. The Lantern Festival and Licensed Mockery (China)

During the Lantern Festival (元宵節, Yuánxiāojié), the closing event of the Chinese New Year, order was frequently inverted. While not involving animal cruelty, this festival allowed for licensed mockery of local officials, the wealthy, and scholars.

• The Spectacle: Popular theatrical troupes would perform satirical plays and skits, openly lampooning the powerful. For a brief period, the ruling elite had to tolerate being the object of the lower classes' laughter and scorn.

• The Function: This public shaming acted as a ritualistic pressure valve, allowing the common people to air grievances against the local bureaucracy and the wealthy elite without facing direct reprisal. It served the same social inversion function as the European massacres.

2. Animal Sacrifice and Appeasement (China and Southeast Asia)

In many traditional East Asian folk religions, particularly those focusing on placating angry or malevolent spirits (like hungry ghosts or plague deities), animal sacrifice was a common, highly public spectacle. While not an act of socialrevenge, it was an act of spiritual appeasement often carried out by lower-class temple committees on behalf of the community.

• The Spectacle: The ritualistic slaughter of pigs, oxen, or goats was a key part of temple fairs and festivals, providing a potent, bloody demonstration of communal resolve against spiritual threats. The subsequent feast often redistributed food and power within the community.

• The Function: The drama channeled collective anxiety (be it famine or plague) into a public event, binding the community together while symbolically restoring cosmic harmony.

3. Ritualized Fights and Aggressive Sports (Korea and Japan)

In Korea and Japan, certain traditional sports and games, often associated with harvest or seasonal change, functioned as structured ways for different social groups or villages to express rivalry and aggression.

• Korea's Sseumbeok (Korean-style wrestling): Historically, village wrestling matches were fiercely competitive and sometimes violent, with the victorious village gaining symbolic prestige and, occasionally, even temporary rights to water or land. The aggressive physical rivalry served as a structured release for inter-village tension.

• Japan's Shinto Festivals: Many Shinto festivals feature chaotic, aggressive elements—such as purposefully ramming enormous floats together—that function as a controlled way to release collective, often class-based, energy and excitement.

Conclusion

Across cultures, when formal political structures fail to provide justice or social mobility, the lower classes turn to ritualized public spectacle to perform their grievances. Whether it's the satirical burning of an effigy, the public torture of a symbolic animal, or chaotic festival games, these events function as a vital, if often brutal, safety valve for collective frustration, temporarily reversing the established order through a shared moment of transgressive laughter or violence.