Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Standing on ceremony
EXTRAORDINARY RITUALS
BBC2, 9pm EXTRAORDINARY is putting it mildly. Some of the rituals in this fascinating documentary are shocking, unbelievable, and even grotesque – at least to us.
Across the world, different cultures mark important moments with rituals and ceremonies. While we all recognise births, marriages and death, we perform these life events in very different ways.
As this eye-opening film begins, we are in Indonesia, where a woman is cooking dinner for her husband of 50 years. She asks her son to take him his food, and the grandchildren are playing happily next to their grandpa.
But the old chap, Tadung, died 18 months ago and his family are still bringing him meals and tending to him. “It feels to me like he’s still alive,” says his wife.
And that’s not even the most astonishing part. The death culture of these Torajan people includes a ceremony in which families remove their dead relatives from their tombs and send selfies to relatives living far away.
Meanwhile, in Japan, we learn about a 400-year-old ceremony to protect children at birth. The ritual sees mothers hand over their babies to professional sumo wrestlers, who then compete to make them cry – all in the belief that crying babies grow strong.
In China, young girls wear headdresses made from the hair of their ancestors in order to find love as part of an ancient matchmaking tradition.
And in a rite of passage for young men in Papua New Guinea, their skin is cut with the patterns of crocodile scales to represent the strength of an ancient croc spirit.
Suddenly the thought of a prom night doesn’t seem so bad!