
Body Ritual Among the Nacirema (1956) - Tomte
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Body_Ritual_among_the_Nacirema
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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17844301](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17844301)

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duskwuff
If you enjoyed this, you might also like David Maculay's "Motel of the
Mysteries", which imagines a 41st-century archaeologist attempting to
interpret a 20th-century motel (and getting it hilariously wrong).

> Perhaps the single most important article in the chamber was the ICE (No.
> 14). This container, whose function evolved from the Canopic jars of
> earliest times, was designed to preserve, at least symbolically, the major
> internal organs of the deceased for eternity. The Yanks, who revered long
> and complex descriptions, called the container an Internal Component
> Enclosure.

[https://www.amazon.com/Motel-Mysteries-David-
Macaulay/dp/039...](https://www.amazon.com/Motel-Mysteries-David-
Macaulay/dp/0395284252)

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pjc50
Fans of this may enjoy "Industry and Sexual Repression in a Po Valley
Society", in Umberto Eco's _Misreadings_.

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UncleSlacky
There's also "The Mysterious Fall of the Nacirema" [PDF]:
[http://faculty.wwu.edu/oussele/331/The%20Mysterious%20Fall%2...](http://faculty.wwu.edu/oussele/331/The%20Mysterious%20Fall%20of%20the%20Nacirema.pdf)

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tomcam
I have a special connection to this topic. When my then-girlfriend was in
college (early 1980s) she mentioned this essay to me. Crucially, I didn’t see
the word. Just heard it from her. She took the whole thing seriously, even
though she mentioned it sounded just like modern folk.

So she wrote an earnest essay taking the anthropological parallels seriously,
and got a C because she hadn’t got the joke. She was a tensely serious student
and correctly talked the prof into a higher grade because there was no reason
she should have got it.

Thing is, I was constantly reading words backwards all the time just to hear
them pronounced. It must have been annoying as hell. In my head when I heard
the word, never having seen it, I spelled it “Nassirema” which isn’t
interesting backwards. So for once in the many years we went out I didn’t
bother to blurt out the word in reverse. She was the kindest person I have
ever known, but she was a little annoyed.

Sorry, Elizabeth Green, wherever you are! I’m still ashamed of myself for that
one.

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mighty_bander
I'm ashamed to say I horrifiedly read that entire thing without getting it,
although that did grant me the opportunity to read it again from a whole new
perspective. Funny stuff. That was awesome.

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gerbilly
Yeah it seems the nacirema had a 'font' of dihydrogen monoxide which they used
in their ablution rituals.

Can you imagine rubbing that stuff all over your skin?

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gcb0
nacirema should be mandatory school reading

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Wowfunhappy
Interestingly, I recall reading this article in high school as a class
assignment. It was part of a required course for all Freshmen too, with a
standardized curriculum.

I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that 13-year-old me was wondering why he’d
never heard of the Nacirema before. Until we discussed in class the next day,
I didn't realize it was "American" spelled backwards.

Edit: Actually, I think the particular article we read in school was "The
Mysterious Fall of the Nacirema". Thank you to UncleSlacky for posting it
elsewhere in this thread, I didn't realize there was more than one.

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somehope
My Sociology teacher had us read this in class. When I told her it was about
Americans, she told me I was wrong and that she had been using this as a
teaching aid for over a decade.

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SamBam
This sounds hard to believe. As a teaching aid for what?

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La-ang
ENG 101 :D

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dang
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

