Theories
Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin's doctoral thesis, later published as Rabelais and His World, argued that Carnival is a social institution and developed a theory about the role of humor and popular ritual in Carnival to produce a festive perception of the world constituting a second life of the people beyond and outside of the seriousness of officialdom. He also developed a theory of the carnival grotesque in which the lower bodily strata (eating, sex, defecation) serve as a medium through which to challenge the powerful. He argued that the feast is a primary human cultural form, rejecting as superficial its reduction to the need for rest from work.[10]
A once popular view held that Carnival served as a safety valve, for people to release antisocial impulses that threaten the social order. Therefore Carnival serves to reinforce status quo social norms.[11] Applying Arnold Van Gennep's model of the rites of passage[12] to Carnival, anthropologist Victor Turner initially held this view[13] but later came to see Carnival as producing social transformation[14] Folklorist Roger Abrahams moved beyond generalization about the function of Carnival to show that rather than producing one kind of effect, different social sectors used Carnival to focus attention on conflicts and incongruities by embodying them in "senseless" acts.[15]