Good Neighbours by Richard Gordon

Author:Richard Gordon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-11-04T07:56:26+00:00

5 Totems and Taboos

Totem worship is practised universally in suburbia. A totem may be defined as Some animal or object containing the spirit of the tribal god, worshipped with conventional religious rites and symbolic of the group itself Freud (1856–1939) goes further, believing the totem to represent the father, slain to obtain possession of his women by the sons, who are afterwards overcome with guilt. The totem is thus a father figure, and helps to keep down incest.

All these functions of the totem are exercised in my own suburban village.

As Sir James Frazer (1854–1941) indicated in his Totemism of 1887, tribal totems are of two sorts, clan totems and sex totems. Frazer’s observation is amply confirmed by my own research. The natives of our village worship both totems, the clan totem during their asexual phase from Monday to Friday, the other in their sexual phase from Friday night to Monday morning.

The clan totem may be found in all abodes, without exception. It occupies the best room, and the best position in the room. It is kept clean and carefully polished by the female, and protected from all possible damage. The totem takes precedence over so all other objects and beings in the room, and subjugates both the conversation and the attention of anyone entering it. Totemism occurs in the evening, about six o’clock, and is linked with the feeding habits.

Evening feeding itself provides an interesting study in the complex behaviour-patterns of the suburbanite. Each family implies to all others in the tribe that the male feeds in the later evening, consuming an elaborate 27

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meal of which the preparation has occupied the female during the entire latter half of the day. They suggest that it is offered and partaken with some ceremony, and accompanied by the sacrament from St Augustine Barnett. It is invariably referred to as ‘dinner’.

This is a pretence-display activity. The meal is in reality chops shifted from the deep-freeze in the garage to the eye-level grill as the male is entering the abode, served with reconstituted mash and a bottled sauce, accompanied by Mackeson’s stout and called ‘supper’ within the family.

Kippers, a packet of Wall’s sausages or baked beans on toast may be substituted. The Good Shepherd makes a frequent appearance. But tea is never drunk. The meal would then become ‘high tea’, which if known to the neighbours would excite contempt of a viciousness demanding instant emigration to another district.

Totemism often begins while the meal is still in progress. The family continue to eat automatically and unseeingly, as they enter the trancelike state of devotion.

The clan totem is analagous to the sam prapoom, the dovecote-like ‘spirit house’ which is found outside all buildings in Thailand. Its function is to conjure up a series of images, some of real persons, others of persons representing non-existent persons. Both these visions – whether the genuine beings or the imitators – may be of persons living or dead.

Reverence of the totem would seem to be a form of ancestor worship,

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