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11. Safe for the Bourgeoisie (Belgium)
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. Safe for the Bourgeoisie () W engage directly with the Christian narrative and its seasonal rituals, but most invoke the opposing theory of Carnival’s link to preChristian rites. The motives for doing so vary. Spanish rural Carnivals invoke pagan antiquity as a sign of their moral distance from Franco’s Catholic triumphalism and as a proof of age and status. The great urban Carnivals of the Caribbean, such as that of Port of Spain (Trinidad), appropriate the precedent of classical Bacchanalia as a license for present excess. Some northern European Carnivals incline more to bourgeois respectability than to dissipation or religious challenge. Eschewing all but the mildest social satire and keeping transgressive behavior well in bounds, they reinforce rather than contest the prevailing standards of morality and status. In the small Belgian town of Binche, where I spent the last Carnival of the old millennium (), pre-Christian antiquity is invoked not as a marker of rebellion but as a measure of local integrity and a repudiation of earlier theories of Spanish courtly influence. On Carnival Sunday morning, I parked my car along a snowy side street at the edge of town and joined a group of cross-dressed men carrying pretty parasols. These mam’zelles, in eighteenth-century wigs and elegant dresses, danced demurely to the fairground melodies of a portable street organ. The organist’s wife told me that her husband, Josselin Lebon, was one of only three or four men in all Europe who still made such orgues de Barbarie (Barbary organs). She also explained that women in Binche do not wear fancy dress for Carnival because they are too busy preparing meals and sewing costumes for the children and the men. She was herself expecting fifty-two guests for lunch. In a bourgeois Carnival, men dress as women without subverting gender roles. We made our way to the Grande Place, where a cornucopia of costumes filled the square: mandarins with painted faces fresh from Chinese opera + . Masquerader with painted face. Binche, . (Fig. .), Tibetan monks with orange pompons hanging from their hats, fatbottomed pairs of Telly Tubbies, and pollinating bumblebees. While some groups danced in small circles to a Barbary organ, others marched in place to the military rhythm of several snare drums and a single thudding bass drum. Crusaders, clowns, and courtiers mingled with Red Indians, a regiment of tin soldiers from Hans Christian Andersen, and aristocrats en route to a masked ball. Male cocktail waitresses flaunted hairy legs, blond wigs, and plastic breasts but otherwise behaved themselves: no transvestite flirting here. In Loíza I had seen the marginalized assert themselves and in Laza the rural poor make fun of those in power, but in Binche I saw the middle class dress up in costumes that aspired to the exotic and the silly. Masqueraders proudly posed for photographs.1 In the afternoon, some fifteen hundred travestis (masqueraders) in a dozen distinct sociétés—heirs to the sociétés joyeuses—descended from the railway [3.88.16.192] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:31 GMT) + station at the top of town to the Grande Place. Brass bands added a robust melody to the drums. Spectators in warm coats, three or four deep, lined the street. Some threw confetti. The parade offered very little in the way of satire and no hostile mockery. Occasional groups of masqueraders poked fun at the doping scandals of the previous year’s Tour de France or at the inflation that had followed the introduction of the Euro, but none made fun of local or even specifically Belgian life.2 There was no enacted threat of violence or obscenity. No act or costume risked offense. No one dared the anonymity of complete disguise. Faces were painted or eyes covered, but the wearing of a full mask was a privilege reserved for Binche’s beloved Gilles, who would appear only on Carnival Tuesday.When the last of the masqueraders reached the Grande Place, it was already cold and dark. Children roamed the streets on Monday, the older ones spraying plastic string from cans and playing at confetti terrorists, littering the streets and passersby with colored dots. Once it had been flour, ‘‘which damaged clothes irreparably,’’3 but thrift and cleanliness now ruled amid disorder. Plastic bags of punched paper holes were selling well. I filmed and fled from gangs of friendly paper hoodlums. Afterwards, I sheltered from the cold inside a bar where confetti piled like...