reflection on my in-class response


 
‘Body Ritual Among the Nacirema’ by Horace Miner is probably the most distinct essay that I have ever read. The standard of judging the quality of essays has been how well the words are able to convey the author’s message or intention to the readers in the most direct and explicit way. Also, the skills that I thought was necessary to write a high quality essay were strictly limited to those regarding the abundance and consistency of the context. However, Horace Miner has changed this train of thought by introducing a perfect counter example. It was astonishing how Miner shocked every single one of my classmates who have read the essay, including myself without even clarifying what his ultimate intentions were. He is basically being sarcastic about certain ways Americans live which deserve some criticism, and maximizing the effectiveness of his delivery by referring them to the rituals of an imaginary tribe called Nacirema.

Although Nacirema is merely a word that spells ‘American’ backwards, the overwhelming majority fail to notice it. Miner utilized hard vocabularies and sophisticated rhetoric in order to make the essay look like an official article related to anthropology. He replaces simple nouns with fancy words that usually denote religious or tribal matters, as seen in the examples of the bathroom, and the dentist which are translated into ‘religious shrines’ and the ‘holy-mouth-men’ respectively. This whole combination of methods implemented by the author made me feel like a fool and thus gave me a strong impression of the author’s intention once I realized what the essay was really about.

Before I realized that this essay was talking about Americans, I firmly believed that there was indeed a tribe called Nacirema. It makes me feel even stupid how I really thought there was a community based on market economy that I have never heard of between Canada and Mexico, where it has to be the US territory. I even contemplated the possibility that Nacirema could be something similar to Navajo. When I wrote a reflective essay under these conditions, I remember vaguely writing about the importance of respecting cultural diversity as long as they are compatible with human dignity. My new reflection of my previous response is that it was clever of the author to take advantage of how people always try to differentiate themselves from other cultures when they come across such exotic information, or in this case, familiar information elaborated exotically. I concede that I am also a victim of the instinct mentioned above. As a student who loves to study history, I have learned about diverse civilizations and origins of modern cultures. Unfortunately, opulent information was not always helpful. I naturally felt the necessity to categorize them with ‘superiority’ and ‘inferiority’, although I always argued its immorality with my mouth. In this case, the general image that Nacirema’s customs are barbaric and irrelevant to my life dominated the way I interpreted the essay. 

The moment when Mr. Menard, our English teacher announced the shocking truth of ‘Body Ritual Among the Nacirema’, everyone looked back at the essay and gave a dubious look. Then we all made a uniform sound, just like the one you make when a sensational idea strikes your head, and realized how meaningless our incomplete reflection essays were. For me, everything started to make sense. The magical potions were cosmetics, ‘latipso’ was ‘hospital’ spelled backwards without the ‘h’, and the entire essay was being sarcastic about the ‘lookism’ of Americans by repeating the words ‘religious’, ‘ritual’, and ‘magical’. However, the fact that Miner published this essay in the year 1956 raises another question: was ‘lookism’ so different from now? My conjecture is that it is worse now. People these days have wider access to aesthetic enhancers such as plastic surgeries, cosmetics, and beauty cares due to the development of technology and colossal demand of the public that satisfy the suppliers. I believe that is also a factor that contributes to the awe of knowing the truth of this essay because the subjects of criticisms are portrayed so realistically as if the author is living in the same decade as us.

Finally, I dare to speak the changes to how I view the various cultures around the world and interact with them. If I were to summarize my impression of realizing the truth of Nacirema into one word, I would say ‘ashamed’. After all this disdain I kept to myself upon the customs of Nacirema during the first scan, I was ashamed that they were practiced by the citizens of the strongest country of the period, the United States, and about present day Korea. I learned that there are no standards of cultural superiority and inferiority among diverse cultures, and the practices of even the most developed nations comprehend and follow the basic instincts of humans. It is just the cover that is different. To a certain extent, the fancy cover illegitimately provides a reason for differentiation and discrimination although the essence is similar. Maybe that is why some people argue that humans are selfish animals.   

             Even though ‘Body Ritual Among the Nacirema’ was quite different from the types of essays I have read so far, I proudly argue that it has brought me the most significant changes. Not only the stereotype in my head regarding how essays should be written has drastically changed, but also the lens I view diverse civilizations with has changed. Miner succeeded in delivering both his message to the society and a hint of humor, and this effectiveness is what I consider as the fundamental value of this essay.