Diablo Valley College Salamanders Short Film Discussion

Please watch the short film (12 minutes) “Salamanders”

https://www.folkstreams.net/film-detail.php?id=113

Bizarre rituals are not the unique province of far off ‘others not like us’ (whoever ‘we’ are). Classically speaking, all rituals can be divided into three components:

1. Preparation, the getting ready;

2. Liminality, in the middle of it all, neither here nor there quite yet;

3. Incorporation, a full fledged member of the group.

What can you discern about ritual and social status from watching the film “Salamanders”? Can you think of other rituals that you have watched or participated in? Might you be engaged in one now? If so how? If not, why not?

Response 1: After watching the film “Salamanders” I concluded that social status has a lot to do with the ritual being preform. The kids that were considered “cool” were the ones eating the most salamanders and were supporting the yearly ritual within the frat. Everyone was super excited to see who could eat the most salamanders and looked forward to this yearly event. Although people were trying to stop the frat from eating the live salamanders they didn’t care because the meaning of the ritual meant more to them than the way they killed the animals prior to dunking them in beer. Rituals are preform with groups of people repeatedly and usually passed down throw generations, which in this case had been passed down through the brothers of the frat. When I was in high school every Friday after the football games it was a ritual to go and get wings with the players and my friends. This ritual has been passed down through the years as the incoming freshman join in and was a fun thing that brought us all together, which has given me some of my favorite high school memories with my friends.

Response 2: After viewing the film “Salamanders” I can conclude that rituals can be a fun way to bring people together. Rituals are similar to traditions in which something is done time and time again as an initiation into a particular group. In this case, at the frat the people who participated in eating salamanders were seen as fun, cool, and daring. Rituals can also be used to gain social status, in this particular film people competed to see how many salamanders they could eat. Personally, I can not think of any rituals I have engaged in but I have heard many stories from frats and seen lots of rituals in movies.