The Carnival Body Vs The Puritan Body

The Mardi Gras celebration is a time for people to release themselves, to release their carnival bodies. The carnival body is the free and natural human at its dirtiest. It is the acceptance of the human body: the genitals, mouth, anus, etc. The carnival body finds humor in sexuality, defecation, and crude behaviour. Of course, this idea derives from the early celebrations of carnival (the festive season) celebrated in different cultures (popularly in the Italian theatre form Commedia dell'arte). This is the body that wears plastic breasts and loves to catch fake dog poo.

The Puritans, however, do their best to conceal the carnival body. Puritans believe that these acts of the carnival (sex, feces, and foolery) are acts of the devil. The Puritan body is clean, disciplined, and covered. It would be difficult to find an early Puritan running about his colony declaring that he got "Plymouth faced at shit rock."
"Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." - H. L. Mencken (can be found on http://www.jmac.net/images/NOLA/ a very carnival website).

Needless to say, the Puritan and Carnival body do not seem to mesh. The Puritans would believe that the city of New Orleans is headed straight to hell (if we weren't there already). We can see this disapproval today by the "save your soul" sign holders who yell at you on Bourbon street. As we witnessed during Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," dancing was considered a sin of disobedience. God help the early Second Line parades in 17th century Massachusetts.