Paper Short Abstract:

“Strigatul în fășanc” is a particular sequence of the spring carnival from Banat region.This is a moment that privileges the public performance of obscene texts. The moment functions also as a form of social recognition of the community’s members emphasized on this occasion.

Paper Abstract:

Proposed paper focuses on the Lent carnivals organized in Banat cross-border region. These carnivals have different local names: fasching, moși, fărșanc, poklade, leoarfe or corni. They represent real milestones in the regional festive calendar. These Lent rituals follow the structural rules of European carnivals converting villages into a "world turned upside down" when all the forbidden everyday behaviors are allowed. The vulgar expressions, the costumes and sexually suggestive gestures are part of these rural carnivals.

Current paper draws, describes and tries to analyze a carnival scene, called either ”strigarea în fășanc” or ”strigarea darurilor” (the shout of gifts). This is one carnival sequence when a person from the community publicly presents (”shouts”) a text that is meant to be an satiric chronicle of the social life of the community for the past year. Shouted text occasions the presentation of situations related to community’s everyday life, including supposed love affairs. Cases that are otherwise ordinary are often presented by resorting to public obscenity, by turning ordinary cases into pornography. The community is carefully accounting who exactly is characterized on this occasion since when the social recognition equals the code of obscenity.