FAIVA FAKAOLI: THE TONGAN PERFORMANCE ART OF HUMOR.

Autor: Māhina, Okusitino
Zdroj: Pacific Studies; Mar2008, Vol. 31 Issue 1, p31-54, 24p
Abstrakt: This essay will critically examine faiva fakaoli, literally translated as "the art of funny things," in a number of separate but connected unique and universal contexts. I wish to make clear right from the outset that this essay is not an exercise in theoretically and practically reviewing the existing literature on humor, nor an attempt to make a comprehensive examination of what humor is, i.e., its form and content, nor, for that matter, what humor does, i.e., its social function. While the theoretical and practical, ontological and epistemological, or qualitative and utilitarian questions are extremely important, my principal concerns are with faiva fakaoli, i.e., the Tongan art of humor. I will situate my topic in the broader theoretical-practical, ontological-epistemological, qualitative-utilitarian contexts of the subject of humor, but only insofar as some of its relevant associated aspects have merged with my investigation of Tongan humor. I hope, then, to contribute some answers to these broader-based, more generalized questions as to, at least, what Tongan humor is and does. There have emerged some new insights into Tongan humor, amidst many other things, when it is theorized within my new general tāvā (time-space) theory of reality (Ka'ili 2005; Māhina 2003a, 2004b: 186-98; Māhina et al. 2004; Māhina, Ka'ili, and Ka'ili 2006; cf. Adam 1990; Harvey 1990). Specifically, this Tongan art form will be examined in the wider context of the ontological and epistemological dimensions of tā and vā (Māhina 2002b, 2004b: 86-98). In ontological terms, tā and vā are the common medium in which all things are, in a single level of reality, connecting nature, mind, and society. But, in epistemological ways, tā and vā are social constructs, involving their relative human arrangement within and across cultures. In particular, Tongan arts, like arts in general, are underpinned by tā and vā as a common medium of existence and of art as a special way of life. As such, tile ontological dimensions of tā and vā are epistemologically transformed by means of form and content, and are peculiar to each of the arts, as in the individual art forms such as faiva hele'uhila (cinema or film), tufunga faitā (photography), and tufunga tātatau (tattooing), among many others. In an attempt to redefine art in a novel way, I will situate it in the broader context of both tile ontology and epistemology of tā and vā. In doing so, a number of unexamined issues of immense aesthetic significance such as the form, content, medium, and function of art will be briefly scrutinized. Some specific examples from Tongan performance and material arts will be examined, mainly in view of their universal tā-vā basis. Similarly, I will consider the lack of distinction in Tongan thinking between humor as a work of art concerning human absurdities and the laughter arising as the human response to them, as well as the general ambivalence in academic and popular attitudes toward humor. Following, I shall discuss a particular kind of humor by one of the well-known Tongan humorists or comedians, the late Selemā, who effectively produced it in the context of a dream. In this context, both humor and dreams, like art generally, have common investigative, transformative, and communicative capacities which lie in close proximity to both psychoanalysis and hypnosis. While psychoanalysis involves a transformation from the conscious to the unconscious, hypnosis undergoes a movement that begins with a myth and ends with a dream within an environment of toted concentration and complete silence (Māhina 2003b). Thus, humor, dreams, and myths have a universal psychoanalytic and hypnotic effect of an extreme therapeutic nature (Māhina 1999b, 2003a; cf. Bott 1972; La Fontaine 1972). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Databáze: Supplemental Index