Ribaldry
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Revision as of 10:12, 23 August 2011
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Ribaldry is humorous entertainment that ranges from bordering on indelicacy to gross indecency. It is a third, and somewhat neglected, genre of sexual entertainment. It is often confused with pornography and erotica. It is also referred to as "bawdiness", "gaminess" or "bawdry".
Unlike either pornography or erotica, which play sexual intercourse or sexual fetishes "straight", ribaldry aims at humor. Sexual situations and titillation are presented in ribald material more for the purpose of poking fun at the foibles and weaknesses that manifest themselves in human sexuality, rather than to present sexual stimulation either excitingly or artistically. Also, ribaldry may use sex as a metaphor to illustrate some non-sexual concern, in which case ribaldry may verge on the territory of satire.
Like any humour, ribaldry may be read as conventional or subversive. Ribaldry typically depends on a shared background of sexual conventions and values, and its comedy generally depends on seeing those conventions broken. Depending on their attitude, viewers can perceive this either as poking fun on the poor souls who suffer the consequences of breaking the taboos, or as flouting the taboos themselves.
The ritual taboo-breaking that is a usual counterpart of ribaldry underlies its controversial nature and explains why ribaldry is frequently a subject of censorship. Ribaldry, whose usual aim is not "merely" to be sexually stimulating, often does address larger concerns than mere sexual appetite. However, being presented in the form of comedy, these larger concerns seem to censors to be un-serious. Moreover, the presence of satirical content in ribaldry tends to arouse the wrath of authorities, who may overlook more explicit sexual entertainments in order to prosecute comedians whom they perceive as attacking conventions they wish to maintain.
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Examples
An example of an ongoing (approx. 400 years) tension between censorship and ribaldry can be seen in the continuing story of the De Brevitate Vitae, a ribald song which, in many European and UK-influenced universities, is both a student beer-drinking song and an anthem sung by official university choirs at public graduation ceremonies. The private and public versions of the song contain vastly different words.
Ribaldry has likely been around for the whole history of the human race, and is present to some degree in every culture. Works like Aristophanes' Lysistrata, the Menaechmi by Plautus, the Cena Trimalchionis by Petronius, and the Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass of Apuleius are ribald classics from ancient Europe. Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale" from his Canterbury Tales is a classic medieval example. François Rabelais showed himself to be a master of ribaldry (technically called grotesque body) in his Gargantua. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne and The Lady's Dressing Room by Jonathan Swift. Mark Twain's long-suppressed 1601 certainly falls in this category.
More recent works like Candy, Barbarella, L'Infermiera, the comedic works of Russ Meyer, Little Annie Fanny and John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor are probably better classified as ribaldry than as either pornography or erotica.
Etymology
The word ribald was originally a noun and referred to a military unit found in French and Italian armies in the Middle Ages. Ribalds, led by their "king", were vagrants or other lower-class members of society, who fought with little or no clothing, and whose main objective seems to have been to expose themselves to the enemy in order to disgust or shame them. They were usually massacred by the enemy, but they were considered an expendable unit, to be used before the real battle began. They were also in charge of any prostitutes following an army, and were responsible for pillaging enemy camps. By the 16th century, the more familiar definition of "ribald" had developed, to the dismay of those who remembered them as a respected military unit.
Bawdy song
A Bawdy song is a humorous song which emphasis the physical song of sexual relationships. Historically these songs tend to be confined to groups of young males, either as students or in an environment where alcohol is flowing freely. An early collection was "Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy" published between 1698 and 1720. Sailor's songs tend to quite frank about the exploitative nature of the relationship between men and women. There are many examples of folk songs in which a man encounters a woman in the countryside. This is followed by a short conversation, and then intercourse. Neither side demonstrates any shame or regret. If the woman becomes pregnant, the man goes back to sea. Rugby songs are often bawdy. Examples of bawdy folk songs are: "Seventeen Come Sunday" and "The Ballad of Eskimo Nell". In 1892 "The Scottish Students Song Book" (ed by John Stuart Blackie) was published, containing 200 songs. Many were saucy. In modern times Hash House Harriers have taken on the role of tradition-bearers for this kind of song.
See also
- Bawdy
- Dirty blues
- Drinking song
- Grotesque body
- Toilet humor
- X700 – X799
- Toward a Motif-Index of Erotic Humor
- Rationale of the Dirty Joke
- Sex comedy
- Subversive humor
- Erotic folklore
