Dimitar Trendafilov
On Rituals of Hurting and Killing People - the Significance of Some Aggressive Ritual Practices Occurring in Cultures and Cult Movies
Summary:
Rituals are an integrated and important part of common life in societies (even the most complex ones), in fact, they are an essential part of culture as mechanism of sharing information and meaning between its members by means of words, gestures, roles and performances. What makes them different and crucial are first of all their extraordinariness and the enduring imprint they leave on the community consciousness. We could encounter them in different kinds and formats, woven into the texture of life and cultures, as sacred practices, games, parts of narratives (mythological and/or pop-cultural). The following pages are dedicated not especially to the nature of ritual itself but more accurately to those rituals existing across cultures and familiar texts in which human aggression and deadly violence participate as a main element. Furthermore, emphasis is put on the acts of killing or maiming other men in which efficacy goes beyond the brutal murder. The efforts and the tools devoted to the topic are interdisciplinary and probably they would not be fruitful if we examined the ritual from one perspective only. The paper takes two samples from different cultures in which we could observe violent acts not as damaging the community but as sanctioned by. In addition, ritual representations in popular movies are analyzed such as The Godfather, Pulp Fiction and The Passion of the Christ as case studies. The latter are very useful examples uncovering the characteristics and structure of the initiation and/or transformational rituals which includes use of violence and even killing(s).
