Nice

Horace Miner’s view of our cultures of our body rituals, are misleading, problematic, and ambiguous. He uses manipulative word structure and diction to make it sound as if he is thoroughly inspecting this so-called Nacerima colony. It’s almost as if he is an American not talking about America, which is why it is difficult to comprehend this story the first time. He tells us a world of shrines, magic, temples, and the “latipso”. This world does not sound like America in the beginning but you’ll realize soon after reading the essay, it is.

To help you understand how he bends, and twists the words of the American culture around, here is a statement by Miner in Body Ritual among the Nacirema: “While each family has at least one shrine, the rituals associated with it are not family ceremonies but are private and secret. The rites are normally only discussed with children, and then only during the period when they are being initiated into these mysteries” (503). It is important to us that we go to the bathroom privately and teach our kids how to use the bathroom this way. Miner skews the sentence to make us sound like we have shrines, not bathrooms. Saying “While each family has at least one bathroom, many keep their business to themselves, talking about pooping is not polite and shouldn’t be taught to children” would have been more appropriate, even for the 1940s.

He does this throughout the essay, making it seem like these are a poor people and they believe in unnatural things such as potions and magic. He writes, “The focal point of the shrine is a box or chest which is built into the wall. In this chest are kept many charms and magical potions without which no native believes he could live. These preparations are secured from a variety of specialized practitioners” (504). What is mentioned here by Miner is that we use a medicine cabinet, to hold our medicines like Advil, or things like lotion for are skins, and Chap Stick for our mouths, or eye drops...