Category Archives: Customary Lore

“Supalonely”

Supalonely

Title: Supalonely

General Information about Item:

  • Customary Lore, dance routine
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: S.M.
  • Date Collected: 11-15-20

Informant Data:

  • S.M. was born in Virginia on March 15, 1999. She was raised by a single mother who works as a high school arts teacher and administrator in Windsor, Virginia. Her family origins are Puerto-Rican and Western European, primarily Irish and Scottish. She is a senior at Dartmouth College studying Theater, English, and Russian.

Contextual Data:

  • S.M. downloaded TikTok in January of 2020 and uses the app for at least twenty minutes everyday. It is a way for her to pass the time.

Item:

  • This dance is to the song “Supalonely” by BENEE. It involves a lot of hip movements, all to the beat of the song. It is quick but not as involved as “Renegade” or “Savage.”

Dance Example:RPReplay_Final1606788970

Informant’s Comments:

  • This song was so popular at one point, it was really annoying to open up the app. It was inescapable.

Collector’s Comments:

  • This dance rose to prominence in the spring of 2020. The song is still charting on American radios.

Collector’s Name: Savannah Miller

Tags/Keywords:

  • Customary Lore
  • Dance
  • Internet Folklore

“Renegade”

Renegade

Title: Renegade

General Information about Item:

  • Customary Lore, dance routine
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: HH
  • Date Collected: 10-10-2020

Informant Data:

  • HH is a senior at Dartmouth College majoring in Biology with a concentration in genetics. She was born in Cologne, Germany in October of 1998, but now resides in Lawrence Township, New Jersey.

Contextual Data:

  • HH has a TikTok account with several videos of her dancing with friends, sorority sisters, and family members. She knows several dances, roughly five, that she learned as a fun way to bond with friends or out of boredom. While she doesn’t follow TikTok influencers that perform dances, she discovered dances through their popularity, through Twitter, or through seeing parodies. She considered performing “Laxed Siren Beat” to highlight her German heritage, since the dance was commonly used to spotlight different cultures. HH has a video dancing to “Say So” with her sorority sisters. She often picked dances to learn based on their popularity, relative simplicity, or if she liked the song and would learn the songs from watching tutorials or viewing the TikTok enough times to pick it up. Her ‘for you page’ has a greater focus on educational content, food recipes, comedy, and skincare.

Item:

  • This dance is extremely involved, utilizing a lot fo hip movements and frantic hand work.

Dance Example:

Informant’s Comments:

  • Really difficult. Knows of, might even know parts of. Never actually tried to learn.

Collector’s Comments:

  • This dance seemed to be one of the more difficult ones for respondents to learn.

Collector’s Name: MA

Tags/Keywords:

  • Customary Lore
  • Dance
  • Internet Folklore

SM

Internet Folklore

“TikTok Dances”

SM

Truro, Massachusetts, United States of America

October 2020

Informant Data:

SM was born in Virginia on March 15, 1999. She was raised by a single mother who works as a high school arts teacher and administrator in Windsor, Virginia. Her family origins are Puerto-Rican and Western European, primarily Irish and Scottish. She is a senior at Dartmouth College studying Theater, English, and Russian.

 

Contextual Data:

SM downloaded TikTok in January of 2020 and uses the app for at least twenty minutes everyday. It is a way for her to pass the time.

Savannah Miller

Dartmouth College

HY

Internet Folklore

“TikTok Dances”

HY

Truro, Massachusetts, United States of America

October 2020

Informant Data:

HY was born in August 1998 in Suffolk, Virginia. She is a sales associate at Best Buy and current senior at Old Dominion University.

 

Contextual Data:

HY uses TikTok everyday and enjoys sending videos to her friends. She has never taken the time to learn a dance, but she has inadvertently picked two up from seeing them frequently on the app.

 

Savannah Miller

Dartmouth College

KG

Internet Folklore

“TikTok Dances”

KG

Truro, Massachusetts, United States of America

October 2020

Informant Data:

KG was born in July of 1998 in Baltimore, Maryland, but he has lived in Suffolk, Virginia since he was seven years old. He currently works as a manager at a local bank chain.

 

Contextual Data:

KG loves TikTok and spends about thirty minutes on the app every day. His sister and best friends also have the app, and they frequently send videos to each other. 

 

Savannah Miller

Dartmouth College

MH

Internet Folklore

“TikTok Dances”

MH

Truro, Massachusetts, United States of America

October 2020

Informant Data:

MH was born in June of 1999 and has lived just outside of Chicago, Illinois her entire life. She is a current senior at Dartmouth College studying Philosophy on the pre-law track. 

 

Contextual Data:

MH has a younger sister who is an avid TikToker. Her sister has taught MH a couple different TikTok dances in the process of creating videos together. 

Savannah Miller

Dartmouth College

SG

Internet Folklore

“TikTok Dances”

SG

Truro, Massachusetts, United States of America

October 2020

Informant Data:

SG was born in October of 1998 and has lived in Andover, Massachusetts her whole life. She is a current senior at Dartmouth College studying Engineering and Environmental Studies. 

 

Contextual Data:

SG has never downloaded the TikTok app, but she is in several group chats where her friends will send TikToks that feel relevant or interesting to the rest of the group. She does not consider herself super in tune to Internet trends, but she knows of three different TikTok dances because of how frequently they get sent to her or come across her various social medias. 

 

Savannah Miller

Dartmouth College

SK

Internet Folklore

“TikTok Dances”

SK

Truro, Massachusetts, United States of America

October 2020

Informant Data:

SK was born in December of 1998 and has lived in Rockville, Maryland her whole life. She is a current senior at Dartmouth College studying Biology and Anthropology. 

 

Contextual Data:

SK downloaded TikTok in the summer of 2020 following the coronavirus quarantine. She considers herself barely a user of the app, spending less than fifteen minutes on the app a day. However, she still enjoys watching TikTok dances and has even learned some of them from repeatedly seeing them on her For You Page.

 

Savannah Miller

Dartmouth College

Entrée: Surf Clams

General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Material Lore – Christmas dish; Customary Lore – celebration, family tradition
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: H.J.
  • Date Collected: November 10, 2020

Informant Data:

  • H.J. is a 22-year-old male living in San Diego, California. He has lived in New York, San Francisco, and Boston. He lives with his parents, grandparents, and a sister. His parents were originally from China but lived in Montreal, Canada before giving birth to H.J.

Contextual Data:

Social Context

  • H.J. first had this dish in elementary school. He invented this Christmas dish for his family because of the Surf Clams’ distinct red and white color. He had recently learned about the Christmas symbolism in those colors and wanted to eat something in those colors for Christmas. Over time, he also grew to associate Surf Clams with cold weather because the clams are served chilled, similar to the weather during Christmas in the areas where he lived before. Now, eating Surf Clams is an important tradition within his family.

Cultural Context

  • In America, the traditional colors of Christmas are red, green, and white; the red and white color of the Surf Clams ties the dish to Christmas
  • Since Christmas is celebrated in the cold winter season, Surf Clams are also served chilled to mimic the environment.

Item:

  • Surf Clams are a type of fresh clams bought at a local grocery store. The clams are deshelled and placed in a ring on a plate while still cold. The dish is served with a dipping sauce mixture combining soy sauce and a bit of Japanese wasabi. It is usually eaten with rice. This dish doesn’t originate from a specific culture. Rather, it was put together by H.J. and his family.

Transcript of Interview Clip:

Y.H. (collector): What is a special Christmas dish to you?

H.J. (informant): I eat Surf Clams every year.

Y.H.: When did you first start eating this dish and why?

H.J.: We first started eating these Surf Clams because they were red and white. I remember I was really young, probably in elementary school and we learned that red, white and green were the colors of Christmas, so I really wanted to eat something red and white for Christmas. Looking back, there were definitely other foods that are red and white, such as some fish probably, or even crab and lobster, but I didn’t like those at the time so we decided to get the Surf Clam.

Y.H.: Why have you continued eating it throughout the years?

H.J.: Mm. I think that over time, it still carried with it the tie with Christmas colors, for me at least. And so I have already wanted to eat it every year. My sister and parents don’t really have that connection but we still eat it every year. Also it’s really tasty so there was no reason to stop. Oh and since it’s served chilled, it gives me Christmas vibes even when I just think about it so, in my mind, I already associate it with Christmas since, you know, Christmas is in the winter.

Y.H.: That makes sense. Do you think there is a cultural background needed to understand your appreciation?

H.J.: Ya I think with two things. The first one I think is like the person needs to associate Christmas with winter and the cold. I know like around the world, some places celebrate Christmas in the summer because their seasons are flipped, so they may not think of Christmas as a cold time of the year. The other thing is that they need to associate the colors red, green and white with Christmas. I don’t know if there are different cultures that associate different colors with Christmas but ya.

Y.H.: Thank you.

Collector’s Comments:

  • Among the dishes I collected, this was definitely the most interesting because it had nothing to do with family history. The origin of the dish isn’t tied to the Christian religion, nor H.J.’s Chinese ethnicity. Instead, it is a ritual and tradition invented by him for his family based on his personal interpretation of Christmas.

Collector’s Name:

Yilin Huo

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Entrée: Rotisserie Chicken

General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Material Lore – Christmas dish; Customary Lore – celebration, family tradition
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: J.H.
  • Date Collected: November 10, 2020

Informant Data:

  • J.H. is a current junior in high school residing in Southern California. He was born in Singapore and moved here in 2008, when he was 5 years old. His parents are from China. His favorite restaurant is KFC. J.H. is also non-religious. J.H. first ate Rotisserie Chicken the first Christmas after he moved to the US in 2008. He ate it with his parents, brother, and cousins. Originally, they just bought a rotisserie chicken from Costco, but then they started making their own rotisserie chicken at home.

Contextual Data:

Social Context

  • For J.H., Rotisserie Chicken symbolizes family, as Christmas is one of the few times where the whole family can sit down at the dinner table together and eat without being in a rush. Additionally, the chicken does not carry any religious symbolism, as J.H. and his family are non-religious. Generally, people who enjoy cooking at home tend to make their own rotisserie chicken at home, but people who like to eat out will buy a prepared one from stores like Costco.

Cultural Context

  • There isn’t a lot of cultural context required to understand this dish. However, the one thing to note is that people who are non-religious and also celebrate Christmas may understand this dish better because Rotisserie Chicken wasn’t chosen for any specific religious reason. Even though the rotisserie chicken cooking method historically comes from Christian countries like France, Germany and Mexico, the dish itself is secular and is now thought of as an American staple.

Item:

Rotisserie Chicken can be bought already cooked from stores like Costco. Alternatively, it can also be cooked at home. The first step is to buy a whole raw chicken and soak it in a brine. It is then seasoned and cooked in a rotisserie oven until the skin is crispy. In the rotisserie oven, the chicken is positioned using three skewers, and an in-built mechanism rotates the chicken as it roasts. Many homes do not have the specialized rotisserie oven, so people often opt for store-bought Rotisserie Chicken or cook Roast Chicken instead.

Transcript of Interview Clip:

Y.H. (collector): Thank you. So for this project, I’m collecting information on dishes that people eat during Christmas that is symbolic to them in some way. Do you have a dish like that?

J.H. (informant): Ya so one thing that we always eat during Christmas is Rotisserie Chicken. We used to get the chicken from Costco, cause they’re super cheap there. But I think two Black Fridays ago, there was a deal on a rotisserie oven so my family bought the rotisserie oven and we have been making the chicken at home ever since.

Y.H.: Can you describe the chicken a bit more?

J.H.: Ya so we get like a raw whole chicken from Costco, put it in a brine, season it and then stick it in the rotisserie oven. Usually we also serve other food like mashed potatoes or seafood or something like that.

Y.H.: And when did you first eat this chicken?

J.H.: Ya so I think I first had it the first Christmas we celebrated in the US in 2006. It was with my parents and my brother. We also have cousins in San Diego, so they came over.

Y.H.: Great and do you think there’s any symbolism to eating rotisserie chicken?

J.H.: I mean, my family is non-religious so there’s no religious symbolism to eating chicken. I think the reason we kept on eating it was because that was our first Christmas in the US, and I remember when the second Christmas rolled around, my brother also really wanted to eat rotisserie chicken, and we’ve been eating it ever since. But to me personally, I think it represents family? Like how it’s the one meal where everyone’s at the table because my dad works late a lot of the time and my brother is away at college.

Y.H.: Do you think someone needs a certain cultural background to understand rotisserie chicken the way you do?

J.H.: Like I said before, we are non-religious so probably someone also non-religious would understand? I know a lot of people who aren’t religious who still celebrate Christmas and they don’t always eat foods that carry religious symbolism just like how our roast chicken isn’t religious. But other than that, not really anything else.

Y.H.: Great, thanks.

Collector’s Comments:

  • My family is also non-religious, so we don’t attach any religious symbolism, whether Chinese or American, to the foods we eat during Christmas. I wonder if there is a cultural difference between those that usually eat out as opposed to those that eat at home. Although the informant didn’t mention this, it is worth investigating.

Collector’s Name:

Yilin Huo

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