Body Ritual In The Nacirema, By George Gmelch

Baseball Magic by George Gmelch discussed superstition and the use of “magic” in baseball. Baseball Magic did not give definitions for ritual, taboo, or fetish, but one can derive their meanings from context and the examples given in the reading. A ritual is an action or behavior performed to produce some sort of effect such as: improved fertility or increased luck. A taboo is an object or action that is avoided in fear of transgressing or producing some undesired outcome. A fetish is an object with a supernatural or magical meaning attached to it. A fetish is believed to have some power such as: granting good luck or making the bearer a better speaker. Gmelch shows that in the context of baseball, ritual, taboo, and fetish were common in pitching …show more content…
The purpose of the article is to highlight how strange common practices are if seen without our usual justifications and explanations. As I have read this article before, I knew what to expect and was able to identify many of the practices in the reading. However, there are some practices described in the reading where the author’s explanations fittingly highlight oddities in those behaviors. The last part of the reading, which reads “There are ritual fasts to make fat people thin and ceremonial feasts to make thin people fat,” provides an excellent description of the strangeness of some of our dietary habits and fad diets. Just like we tend to think when Americans think of the magic practices of other countries, society’s faith in fad diet techniques does not line up with the lack of results many such diets produce. The end of the article also does a fair job of showing our distorted body image and the fact that most of the images of celebrities, which are presented to us as the ideals of human appearance, are unrealistic and …show more content…
One example of magic in modern culture is the idea that a groom should not see the bride in her dress before the wedding or it brings bad luck. The habit of saying “bless you” after someone sneezes was a magical practice meant to protect the sneezer from evil spirits or bad luck, but in recent time the magical meaning of the action has faded away and the practice is just habit. When dealing with machines and computers people sometimes try to solve the problem by kicking or hitting the problematic machine, although many times this does nothing to solve the problem. People also have developed the tendency to yell at and threaten their devices, although such devices are unable to understand or react to a person’s words (unless they have some voice command functionality enabled), in the hopes that the device will start