The clips are unique in that they
capture two incidences of non-African American girls participating in the
African American tradition of rope jumping.
capture two incidences of non-African American girls participating in the
African American tradition of rope jumping.
Childens - Folklore
handle.
net/2027/usu.
39060010034923 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives / http://www.
hathitrust.
org/access_use#cc-by-nc-nd-3.
0
? ? within the same play area. (Eifermann 1971, 1979). In this manner
Eifermann was able to amass a wealth of detail in survey form and to com-
pare children of different social classes, locales, and ethnicities. Although the
published versions of her study do not illuminate the important details of
the folk games within its survey, it stands as a marker in the careful exami-
nation of the meaning of children's games in the larger culture.
THE USE OF FILM AND VIDEO
Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead pioneered the use of film in Learning
to Dance in Bali, as they captured the nonverbal stylistics of a cross-cultural
dance lesson. Reels of unedited film recorded the instruction of cultural
forms. Film documentary, which by definition is an edited process of graphic
storytelling, has its own fascinating history, but what is relevant here is not
the use of film and video as storyteller, but rather as presenter of art forms.
Helen Schwartzman's encyclopedic text Transformations: The Anthro-
pology of Children's Play includes in its final pages a listing of ethnographic
films, ranging from Bateson's own 1954 film of river otters at play to Bess
Lomax Hawes and Robert Eberlein's Pizza Pizza Daddyo in 1969, a film
about a special performance of favorite African American singing games. It
is in these films that the details and nuances of the games emerge, and the
texts can be placed in perspective, as verbal expressions of bodily forms.
What is being proposed in this paper is the use of film or video as
witnessing or documentation, so that when a game is described in transcrip-
tion or in actual videographic presentation we can see the phenonemon
being discussed. Unfortunately, this chapter is itself limited to the paper
medium, but with careful description of a few minutes of actual footage,
it is hoped that the reader will begin to see and hear details of the game.
As microethnographers Adam Kendon and Frederick Erickson advocate,
through the use of such documentation we can begin to be more consistent
about our study of social phenomenon, in this case the cultural transmis-
sion of folkgames, and build upon a collection of real cases involving real
human beings (Kendon 1979; Erickson and Wilson 1982). We have the
possibility of checking them, and rechecking them, long after the fieldwork
is over, in slow motion and in fast forward, with sound on and sound
off, to see things not possible in the quick blur of the moment. And we have
the possibility of the local experts sharing their specific insights on their
own folk process, well after the moment of concentration is past. The very
field of children's folklore expands before us, and it has the potential to
become the study of children's cultures and folklife, in all its richness and
complexity.
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? ? DOUBLE CAMERAS
When this author set out to study the games and rituals of one multiethnic
working-class school yard in 1991, it became clear that one pair of eyes
would not be sufficient to capture the details or the larger boundaries of
school-yard interaction. In the summer months, the principal of the Mill
School was approached for general permission to spend time at the daily fif-
teen-minute recess periods, and eventually to use audio and video record-
ers. Permission was granted, as no individuals were being targeted in the
study, and student anonymity was assured. General information letters were
sent in the fall to one class in each of the third, fourth, and fifth grades on
which the fieldwork was based. In mid-fall, a stationary videocamera was
placed in a second-floor window facing the school yard, and set on a wide
angle. This was done to capture the basic traffic zones and play spaces, and
as an aid in the locating of field observations within the larger picture. The
principal was supportive and accepted such a plan, as the individual faces
were obscured, and he, too, was curious to learn what kinds of interaction
were occurring. Recess had been canceled by his predecessor out of fear of
school-yard violence, and the status of recess time was uncertain. Such docu-
mentation, to be shared with him and his staff at the end of the year in re-
port form, was of interest and had policy implications.
On the first day of school, daily nonparticipant observation fieldnotes
were written, and it was not until rapport was firmly established with the chil-
dren and staff that audiotaping commenced. From January to May, daily
audiotapes were made, overtly, with many texts collected, rules explained,
interactions noted, and nonverbal information described. It was not until May
that the researcher felt ready to ask the children if a mobile video camera could
be set up on the school yard to record their games directly. A deep rapport had
developed by that time, and their response was universally positive. They were
quite excited, as it had been our agreement that they could see themselves on
video later in the month. At that time, they were to tell me what they thought
about the games they played. Small group interviews with the three classes
under study had been conducted since the beginning of the year, so this would
be another round of interviewing, also considered a pleasant task.
In sum, the methodology included ongoing small group interviews,
daily fieldwork, gradual inclusion of audio recording, seasonal wide-angled
videotaping from the second-floor window, eventual close-up or micro-video
footage, and then the presentation of samples of the footage to the partici-
pants. A total of thirty-three videotapes were recorded, covering twenty-seven
days of recess. Nineteen tapes of wide-angled footage were made, and four-
teen tapes of close-up micro footage were made. Fifty-one days of live au-
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? ? diotape were also recorded.
One hundred and four third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade boys and girls
were observed, audiotaped, and videotaped during recess. Forty-seven chil-
dren served as native experts and provided their own commentary as they
watched themselves at play on videotape. Occasionally younger and older
children were included in the taping process, if they were part of a game being
studied and played by the core participants.
Although not the first study to utilize videotaped games of children
in this manner, this study is among few to share the footage with its partici-
pants in this age group (see also Sutton-Smith and Magee's "Reversible Child-
hood" [1989a], on the use of reflexive video ethnography with young chil-
dren). Although this is not the first study to examine school-yard games and
the transmission of culture in one place (See Parrott 1972; Sluckin 1981; Hart
1993), it is unique in its deliberate emphasis on a public, multiethnic school.
Studies of urban play, such as Dargan's and Zeitlin's extensive photo essay
City Play (1990), capture bits of the cultural crossover visible in urban street
games, but in the following transcriptions we can see it emerge in the school-
yard games themselves. Such cultural crossover is significant in the light of
the emphasis on school desegregation so important to the American public-
school system, and in the light of the potential elimination of recess as school
policy (Sutton-Smith 1990b).
Several games were studied in this larger exploration of the folklore
of the 1991-92 Mill School yard, including the games of the third- through
fifth-grade boys. This paper, however, will serve as a window to the specific
game worlds of the double dutch players. (For a complete view of the larger
study, which includes handball, folk basketball, hopscotch, step dancing, and
play fighting, see Beresin 1993. ) Double dutch was perhaps the chief peer-led
activity for African American girls at the Mill School, and provided a perfor-
mance focus for a mobile audience of both girls and boys in the school yard.
DOUBLE DUTCH
A fast-paced, polyrhythmic jump-rope style, double dutch utilizes two ropes,
typically turned inwards, egg beater fashion, by two girls who have "the
ends," while a single jumper executes specific steps to a specific song or
chant. It is almost exclusively an African American girls' tradition in urban
Pennsylvania, and has been virtually ignored in the jump-rope literature.
There has been so little written on double dutch in the folklore literature,
and in the collections of African American folklore, that it could even have
been said to be skipped over.
Singing game and street game collections like those of the Opies have
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? ? described larger game traditions but excluded rope singing. American
children's folklore, as in the works of Bronner and Knapp and Knapp, have
homogenized the ethnicity of their young experts and have given us only
single rope traditions; the African American collections of general folklore
have rarely even mentioned the lore of young girls (Kochman 1972; Jack-
son 1967; Whitten and Szwed 1982). With the exception of Jones's and
Hawes's Step It Down (1972) and Black Girls at Play (1975) by Bauman,
Eckhardt, and Brady, the games of African American girls have been ren-
dered practically invisible, and these collections have examined only the step-
ping and clapping forms. Abrahams's Jump-Rope Rhymes: A Dictionary
(1969), a text called "the most thorough recent compilation of these (jump
rope) rhymes for English-speaking children" (Schwartzman 1978, 36), lists
a handful of articles relevant to double dutch, but, with the exception of his
own useful 1963 article, all deal with it only in passing.
Even when only a single rope was available-it was typically one
brought by a child from home-it was utilized in the style and steps of double
dutch. Two girls hold the ends and turn for the girl who is jumping, and
often it is expected that one must turn for someone before getting the chance
to jump. Occasionally the "double Irish" or "double orange" style of rope
turning was observed; that is the term for the turning of the ropes outward,
egg beater style. This method was considered more difficult and sometimes
occurred by accident when the turners changed direction. More typically,
there would be two turners rapidly turning the rope inward, left, right, left,
right, swaying rhythmically to the slapping beat as the rope brushed the
ground. The jumper would dance the steps associated with the song or
rhyme, and a group of singers, ranging from the turners to nonparticipants
to would-be participants, would dance a minimal version of the game in
place. This was considered both a fun thing to do while you await your turn,
as well as a chance to practice the sequence.
The game was competitive, with jumpers vying to be the one who
could not only stay in the ropes the longest but could progress the furthest
in the particular rhyme. Someone would shout "She got foot" or "She got
turn. " And one would often hear the cry of "Saved! " or "Saved by one! "
meaning that the person shouting had progressed farther than the jumper
who had just tripped on the turning rope. Steps were parodied, styles imi-
tated, and occasionally corrected in order to ensure that the jumper did the
job right. Turners could be accused of turning too rapidly, or of intention-
ally "flicking" the rope to make it more difficult, and high-status
jumpers,usually the more skilled fifth and sixth graders, claimed first jumps,
while the younger, less experienced players would be the turners. The chance
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? ? to jump first, and if one was skilled, stay in the spotlight, was often called
long before the game started, in the hallway, in the classroom, or at the end
of one round for the round the next recess.
Double Dutch Style
Count 2 turns
left hand
clockwise
Count 1 turn
right hand
clockwise
ouble Dutch Style Count 2 turns
right hand
clockwise
Count 1 turn
left hand
clockwise
Immigrant Chinese and Haitian girls, representing a small minority
of this officially racially desegregated school, also occasionally did individual,
single jump rope. Two Chinese girls sometimes jumped in two parallel ropes
and, in their own ropes, looped circles around each other, sort of a couple
dance while jumping. The Haitian girls sometimes jumped with a second girl
in the same small rope, either face to face or back to front. Regardless of
form or ethnicity, jump rope was almost always competitive, either by en-
durance, elaborateness of steps, or frequency of turns.
The European American girls would often be observers of the double
dutch games, and on only rare occasions do individual ropes themselves.
When they did so they would compete to see which of them could jump the
most times. They would not sing or chant, just count the number of con-
tinuous jumping steps. One girl was up to 230 and still jumping. Unlike the
African American girls, who stayed in one place or rotated their positions
slightly to be out of the bright sun, or the immigrant girls, who stayed in
one place with their individual ropes, the European American girls did a
running jump rope step and would, one at a time, run around the entire yard
counting. Like their hand-clap games, which were also done to numbers or
counting, the European American girls had clearly distilled their games and
no longer had an active jump-rope singing tradition at this school. The sing-
ing jump rope game, and for that matter the singing hand-clapping game,
had become predominantly an African American tradition.
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? ? Many double dutch songs included the same sequence of steps or
commands: foot, bounce, hop, turn, criss (crossing), clap, with "foot" or
"footin" being the basic right, left, right, left running step over the quickly
turning ropes. "Bounce" involved a lighter touch of the foot while doing the
running step; "hop" a one-footed airborne step. "Turning" and "crissing"
involved the most skill and only the most advanced jumpers were able to
do those steps. Taisha, a particularly graceful fifth grader, was known to add
turns to all of her steps, in every sequence, just for the challenge of it.
THEMES OF THE JUMP-ROPE TEXTS
Much like the world of themes found in the children's riddling studied by
John McDowell (1979), the recorded texts of the rope games were spheres
of the African American girls' culture. There were "1,2,3 Halleluya" and
"Hey, D. J. , let's sing that song," and "Boom Boom Tangle"-a rhyme about
rap artists. Plus there were "All in Together," "Hey Consolation, Where Have
You Been," "Girlscout, Girlscout, Do Your Duty," "Juice Juice, Let's Knock
Some Boots," "D-I-S-H Choice, Do Your Footsies," "Challenge, Challenge
1,2,3," and "Kitty Cat Come, Gonna Be on Time, Cause the School Bell
Rings at A Quarter to Nine. " But these themes, the ones of religion, region,
pop music, of group entry and exit, schooling, and even of plain step dis-
play in menu form, were out-shouted by "Big Mac," a commercial for the
McDonald's Corporation.
As Cheyna, a fourth-grade African American girl had said, "Want to
hear my favorite? " (Snap fingers on down beat. Accented syllables are capi-
talized)
Big MAC, Fillet FISH, Quarter POUNDer, French FRIES, Ice COKE,
Milk SHAKE, Foot
Fillet FISH, Quarter POUNDer, French FRIES, Ice COKE, Milk
SHAKE,
BOUNCE
Fillet FISH, Quarter POUNDer, French FRIES, Ice COKE, Milk
Shake,
HOP
Fillet FISH, Quarter POUNDer, French FRIES, Ice COKE, Milk
Shake,
TURN
Fillet FISH, Quarter POUNDer, French FRIES, Ice COKE, Milk
Shake,
CRISS
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? ? Big Mac appeared in twenty-three out of fifty-six live unrequested
recordings of double dutch chants, closely followed by a follow-the-leader
game, "Challenge Challenge, One, Two, Three. " This contrasted with the
rest of the active repetoire, of which two or three versions were recorded of
each. First observed in mid-October, "Big Mac," and its occasional partner
"Challenge Challenge," were the only chants jumped at recess until Febru-
ary. Most of the other rhymes did not appear at all until April. "Big Mac"
represented forty percent of all the songs sung for double dutch, with "Chal-
lenge Challenge" representing thirty percent. The remainder totaled three to
six percent, tallying another thirty percent. "Big Mac" was therefore not only
the first jump-rope rhyme to appear in the school yard and not only the most
frequently jumped, but, as we will see, also the one used for learning how
to play the game of double dutch itself.
Collectors of jump-rope games have typically emphasized the antiq-
uity of the games and rhymes, in part because of the archive methodology
available, as discussed, and in part because of the inherent romance in find-
ing things old. Paradoxically, the most significant rhyme for the players of
this game was the newest one, invented by the McDonald's Corporation as
a menu chant. Again and again the local jump-rope experts-the third-,
fourth-, and fifth-grade girls-claimed that the "Big Mac" rhyme was com-
mercial and approximately ten years old, but that the game was learned from
their mothers and sisters. The dating of this particular chant was confirmed
by the national public-relations office of the McDonald's Corporation, which
indicated that the menu chants are periodically placed in local papers as part
of a contest. It is significant that McDonald's has been a national sponsor
of double dutch competitions since the late 1970s and that the only other
long commercial text that emerged was in an interview setting: This was
"R-E-E-B-O-K do your footsies the Reebok way. " Reebok is also a national
sponsor of double dutch competitions.
All of the new attempts at double dutch recorded in the school yard
were done to the "Big Mac" rhyme. When Isha, a fifth-grade expert jumper,
was asked what was the easiest rhyme, she answered, "Challenge Challenge,"
because "you just had to imitate what was done before you. " When asked
why the younger girls and the ones new to double dutch started with "Big
Mac," she answered, "Because they don't have nothing else. " Commercial
culture is, for the kids of the school yard, the most basic of common culture.
The commercial is easily learned: It's short, it's quick, and it's "fun
in the mouth. " Children who are bused in from all sections of the city know
it, and children from all economic levels have access to it. It may have been
introduced by the corporate-sponsored leagues and ad campaigns and may
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? ? be a future classic example of the "invention of tradition" (Hobsbawm and
Ranger 1983), but it would not have continued if it did not serve some func-
tion. Adam Kendon, in his book Conducting Interaction (1990), talks about
"movement coordination in social interaction" and the use of ritual to fa-
cilitate synchrony. The sound bytes of "Big Mac" may well serve to speed
up the ritualization of entry into the game in a recess period that allows only
fifteen minutes for play in this city.
In an environment where raw materials are inaccessible and consis-
tently removed from the play time, it appears that the African American
children from poorer neighborhoods, rich with an oral tradition, are teach-
ing non-African Americans what can be done, as Isha says, "when you don't
have nothing else. " This is especially true of the play of girls, which is par-
ticularly repressed in the school yard by the institution of school itself. Here
it is commercial culture that is the common denominator, both within an
ethnic tradition and across ethnic traditions.
One of the most relevant texts on this topic is Newell's 1883 book
Games and Songs of American Children. His essays "The Inventiveness of
Children" and "The Conservatism of Children" address the dynamics in-
herent in play study, the idea of play as being both traditional and transi-
tional, and the idea that children reconstruct and reinvent performances rel-
evant to their complex lives. The key word is relevant. Valuable things are
reused and recycled and retold. And as we will see, the repetition of the com-
mercial rhyme may be fixed, but the variation and creativity in the game can
be found in the foot work. In a sense, the folklorist begins with the text, but
cannot stop there.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPTIONS OF DOUBLE DUTCH
The following are transcriptions of actual footage of the "Big Mac" game,
filmed on two days in the spring of 1992.
The clips are unique in that they
capture two incidences of non-African American girls participating in the
African American tradition of rope jumping. The first example is the first
time R. , a European American third grader, actually got a chance to jump,
although she had been a turner of single rope African American games pre-
viously. The second example is an overt lesson in the art of double dutch
itself, as given by African American girls to an immigrant girl from Hong
Kong, and also to a Polish American girl.
The transcriptions show a basic diagram of the rope, and list a run-
ning time imprinted on the videotape in hours, minutes, and seconds. In this
manner the transcript reflects specific frames of videotape and can be cross-
referenced by time. The cross referencing of tapes by time turned out to be
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? ? rather significant and is a topic to which the concluding pages will be devoted.
The action is described in the middle column, and the audible con-
versation and game text is listed in the right-hand column. Following the
principle, but not the style, of Ray Birdwhistell's kinesics, and Adam
Kendon's studies of nonverbal communication, it was considered important
to at least describe the basic body motion as a line of communication sepa-
rate from the speech (Birdwhistell 1970; Kendon 1981). Actual kinesic tran-
scriptions, from Birdwhistell to Laban, have proved too complex for most
readers and, in a sense, give us more detail than is necessary for this level of
analysis. (For an example of Laban's system of movement notation, see
Hutchinson 1977). The advantage of video ethnography is that the footage
is there to be reanalyzed over time, as more and more detailed levels of analy-
sis become of interest. (For more on the recent attention given to the body
in folklore studies, see Young 1993. )
Example A: The Single Rope Version of "Big Mac"
In the following transcription there is a demonstration of non-double dutch
and double double dutch styles utilizing a single rope. Third- and second-
grade girls Q. , V. , and S. , all African American, and European American girl,
R. , took turns jumping. One to two singers sang as they jumped without
doing any particular steps. A more experienced jumper joined in and the two
jumped at once, facing each other, laughing. The last jumper performed the
"Big Mac" steps and sang all the way from foot to criss, with a stop in the
middle. She was angry when another girl tried to do joint jumping with her.
They jumped past the honking bell, and this episode ended angrily when she
was interrupted by another attempt at joint jumping.
Diagram Time (Action) Voices
10:40:15 (Q. jumps single rope, (no singing)
both feet, not double
dutch style)
10:40:27 (R. gets a turn, jumps,
same way)
10:40:29 (A second African
American girl, V. , jumps
in; they stop)
10:40:30 (R. again jumps)
10:40:36 (Joint jumping of
R. and V. ) and V.
"No, no,no"
Laughter of R.
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? ? 10:40:38
10:40:43
10:40:51
(R. tries again)
(S. begins turn)
(S. sings to herself)
(jumps non-d-d style)
10:41:02 [school bell rings]
10:41:04 (V. jumps in to joint
jump)
(A. , a turner, yells)
(S. gets angry,
starts again. )
(S. does required
motions)
"Hey come on! "
"Quarter pound-
er, french fries,
ice coke, milk
shake, foot"
(Sound of bell,
screams)
"No, don't
jump in. "
"Quarter pound-
er, french fries
ice coke, milk
shake, turn
quarter
pounder,
french fries
ice coke, milk
shake, criss"
10:41:17 (V. jumps in;
they miss.
S. gets angry.
R. tries to
collect the rope)
There were several variations from the typical game here, reminding
us that no game really is typical. The text itself was varied and began with
"Quarter pounder, french fries," creating an even syncopation of the usual
rhyme, making it slightly easier for this younger player. The format itself was
different as a single rope, not a double rope, was being used. The style was
different, as both before and after the double dutch style was being jumped
a second player attempted to do joint jumping. And the intensity of the game
itself was shaped by the honking of the bell.
Example B: The Double Rope Version of "Big Mac"
Here we have a distinct double dutch lesson, utilizing two ropes. Second-
through sixth-grade girls, all African American, were instructing a Polish
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? ? American and immigrant girl from Hong Kong in the art of double dutch.
Neither got very far, and the sixth grader instructing them had the others
learn by standing in the middle of the ropes while trying to turn in a way
that made it easy for them. The rope itself was flimsy and the wind was
strong. As each got stuck, a young girl in the front jumped up and down
shouting "Saved! Saved! " indicating that she had gone farther than these
older girls in the overall competition. When the bell rang, there was much
shrieking and shaking, and the young immigrant from Hong Kong was
knocked over and began to cry.
Diagram
Time
(Action)
Voices
10:46:50
10:47:01
10:47:05
10:47:12
10:47:15
(K. , a second-grade
Chinese immigrant
is trying to learn
double dutch) "Big Mac
fillet fish"
(she misses)
(Second-grade African
American girl, who
has ends, dances, turns
to her audience, and
points out) "Saved! Saved! "
(Three second graders
dance in place)
(Polish American sixth
grader, enters)
(She is told, nonverbally,
to stand in the middle
and lift her feet in place.
She does. The other turn-
er, her instructor, also a
sixth grader, is checking
to see which rope should
be raised first)
[Off camera] "One, two,
three. "
(Girl steps in place, Sixth grader says,
in the middle of the "Do it again. "
rope; fourth grader
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? ? on side nods that the
right side should be
turned first)
10:47:20 (She jumps high,
both feet together, "Big Mac"
and misses)
Instructor says "I
told you not to
come down! "
10:47: 27 [School bell rings] (honk)
(Girls jump up and
down. A nearby boy
jumps in front of the
camera and shakes his
whole body. The Chinese
girl gets knocked over. )
Of interest in this clip is the capturing of cultural transmission from
ethnicity to ethnicity, something undiscussed in the literature of the school
yard, and also of the banging of one culture-school yard culture-into that
of school instructional time (Pellegrini 1987; Hart 1993). The video cam-
era captured not only the teaching of the game, and the competitive reac-
tion of many of the players as they gauged their relative status, but the con-
text of the school yard and how it affected the players themselves. The vis-
ible time stress at the ringing of the bell, which caused one observer to shake
while another player was knocked over, thus emphasizes the utility of using
a popular culture rhyme, such as Big Mac, for the sake of quick negotia-
tion. At the same time, this also indicates the need to examine the reasons
for the bell as a significant part of the game itself.
Both video clips captured variation in game text, language specific
to the game, and examples of direct and indirect instruction. Both indicate
that there is something about the timing of the ringing of the bell that shapes
the game and the interaction around it and that can be said to be unique to
the culture of the school yard.
BEYOND THE GAME: THE SECOND CAMERA
In order to make sense of patterns across these games, we can compare simi-
lar transcripts, as we did above, and then also comb through the footage of
the wide-angle camera. With this survey of the macro footage, an interest-
ing larger pattern emerged.
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? ? Consistently, at the end of the recess period, violent interactions were
visible on the wide-angle screen. In glimpses from the micro footage, one
can clearly see a definite rippling of anger, kicking, punching, and fighting
during the transition back to the classroom. Typically within two minutes
of the ringing of the bell, an almost palpable tension is trackable. In the
macro footage alone, eight out of nine sample tapes showed distinctly vio-
lent conflict in the lining up transition, with six out of the eight violent in-
teractions occurring less than one minute before the bell, and the other two
occurring within two minutes of the bell. In more than half of the micro foot-
age, taken of a variety of games, there are incidences, indirectly captured,
of real fighting or direct violence. And, in all of these images, with only one
exception, the tension occurs within a minute and a half of the ringing of
the bell.
Victor Turner, symbolic anthropologist, has spent much of his career
analyzing the liminal, in-between moments in rites of passage in tribal cul-
tures (Turner 1974a). Although some attention has been paid to transitions
in the sociology of face-to-face communication as studied by Goffman, the
attention of folklorists to transitional times has been minimal. Some atten-
tion has been paid in the folk game literature to opening rituals like count-
ing out rhymes (Goldstein 1971; Opie and Opie 1969; Sluckin 1981; Sutton-
Smith 1981a), but these are usually viewed as pregame ceremonies, rituals
designed for the facilitation of games' beginnings. The phenomenon under
discussion presently is the lack of ritual in the school yard and its associ-
ated lack of transition at game's end.
The second camera allows us to see how the context shapes the game,
beyond the interaction around the text. The study of the one genre, then,
leads to the understanding of the ecology of the larger context. The advan-
tage of extended ethnographic fieldwork in one place is that it allows us to
see the significance of the place on the game, and the patterning over time.
Superficial folk-game surveys that are panoramic mask larger contextual is-
sues and indeed the crossing of ethnic boundaries, which are perhaps only
visible over time. It was apparent that the children needed the entire school
year to reach a point of intimacy with each other, as well as the researcher's
needing that much time to observe the big picture in that place.
BEYOND THE CAMERA
The camera is seductive, as it seems to provide a form of documentation with
less debate and more data. Yet, even when the editing is kept to a minimum
and the shots are taken at the widest angle possible, no camera is objective.
It too is the manifestation of decisions made by the photographer, ranging
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? ? from angle to height to light to the very decision as to when the tape begins
and ends. The goal is not to present a new objectivity in folk game presen-
tation, but rather to present the performances on the film or video back to
as many participants as possible in order to collect yet more stories about
the folk games as cultural markers.
When the adults at the Mill School viewed the above clips, several
of the staff responded that the tapes were "too happy" and performance
oriented, and many shared that they had never observed anything but "mis-
behavior" during recess. Many of the staff did become nostalgic about the
games they had played during their childhoods; they noticed that although
some were the same, many were different with new and different rules. The
comment about misbehavior is significant, given that the staff generally had
the opportunity to come to the school yard only in the last few minutes of
recess, which I have documented as the time of most conflict. They indeed
missed all the constructive cultural expressiveness and sharing that occurs
in the earlier parts of the play period.
When the third- through fifth-grade girls, both African American and
European American, viewed the clips, their reaction was delight, pride, and
outright laughter. For several it was an opportunity to reflect upon their own
process of learning how to "do double dutch. " For Tanya, a fifth grader, it
was a chance to comment on the misdirection of the above double dutch
lesson. She had been taught to enter the ropes and begin by jumping in near
the ends. In the above clip, the immigrant child from Hong Kong and, later,
the Polish American girl, were being instructed in the middle of the rope,
with the rope being turned from a stationary position around the jumper.
This was considered to be much more difficult, indicating that there is an
acknowledged art to instruction as well as performance.
Tanya, like many of her expert double dutch friends, started learn-
ing "how to jump" when she was six or seven years old. Her training, like
theirs, was intensely visual and often meant observation without direct par-
ticipation. "I started in like, first, or second grade, got to be first or second,
because my, I never knew how to jump, but my cousin was in, my cousin
was in the eighth grade and my cous used to always play rope, and I used
to always jump in they (sic) rope, and they used to get mad at me, and kick
me back to my line. " For Rica, an African American fourth grader, the pro-
cess also involved the observation of older girls, and had to do with her
"catching on" to the new songs. "This is how I learn because when people,
like older people start jumping, yeah, like I catched on to the song, like
Tamisha's sister, she'd be singing all these bunch of songs I don't know. And
the next (day) they'd have two of them. "
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? ? If we are going to be able to understand the process of the transmis-
sion of culture within the boundaries of one place, such as the school yard,
as well as across the boundaries of that place, and across time, such reflec-
tions can be most insightful. The study of children as tradition bearers within
an ethnic tradition and in a multiethnic setting sheds light on children's folk-
lore as an area of cultural study, and not just cultural collection. Their pro-
cess is more than aural, it is kinesthetic and intensely visual, and our pro-
cess as fieldworkers can parallel it.
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? ?
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? ? within the same play area. (Eifermann 1971, 1979). In this manner
Eifermann was able to amass a wealth of detail in survey form and to com-
pare children of different social classes, locales, and ethnicities. Although the
published versions of her study do not illuminate the important details of
the folk games within its survey, it stands as a marker in the careful exami-
nation of the meaning of children's games in the larger culture.
THE USE OF FILM AND VIDEO
Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead pioneered the use of film in Learning
to Dance in Bali, as they captured the nonverbal stylistics of a cross-cultural
dance lesson. Reels of unedited film recorded the instruction of cultural
forms. Film documentary, which by definition is an edited process of graphic
storytelling, has its own fascinating history, but what is relevant here is not
the use of film and video as storyteller, but rather as presenter of art forms.
Helen Schwartzman's encyclopedic text Transformations: The Anthro-
pology of Children's Play includes in its final pages a listing of ethnographic
films, ranging from Bateson's own 1954 film of river otters at play to Bess
Lomax Hawes and Robert Eberlein's Pizza Pizza Daddyo in 1969, a film
about a special performance of favorite African American singing games. It
is in these films that the details and nuances of the games emerge, and the
texts can be placed in perspective, as verbal expressions of bodily forms.
What is being proposed in this paper is the use of film or video as
witnessing or documentation, so that when a game is described in transcrip-
tion or in actual videographic presentation we can see the phenonemon
being discussed. Unfortunately, this chapter is itself limited to the paper
medium, but with careful description of a few minutes of actual footage,
it is hoped that the reader will begin to see and hear details of the game.
As microethnographers Adam Kendon and Frederick Erickson advocate,
through the use of such documentation we can begin to be more consistent
about our study of social phenomenon, in this case the cultural transmis-
sion of folkgames, and build upon a collection of real cases involving real
human beings (Kendon 1979; Erickson and Wilson 1982). We have the
possibility of checking them, and rechecking them, long after the fieldwork
is over, in slow motion and in fast forward, with sound on and sound
off, to see things not possible in the quick blur of the moment. And we have
the possibility of the local experts sharing their specific insights on their
own folk process, well after the moment of concentration is past. The very
field of children's folklore expands before us, and it has the potential to
become the study of children's cultures and folklife, in all its richness and
complexity.
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? ? DOUBLE CAMERAS
When this author set out to study the games and rituals of one multiethnic
working-class school yard in 1991, it became clear that one pair of eyes
would not be sufficient to capture the details or the larger boundaries of
school-yard interaction. In the summer months, the principal of the Mill
School was approached for general permission to spend time at the daily fif-
teen-minute recess periods, and eventually to use audio and video record-
ers. Permission was granted, as no individuals were being targeted in the
study, and student anonymity was assured. General information letters were
sent in the fall to one class in each of the third, fourth, and fifth grades on
which the fieldwork was based. In mid-fall, a stationary videocamera was
placed in a second-floor window facing the school yard, and set on a wide
angle. This was done to capture the basic traffic zones and play spaces, and
as an aid in the locating of field observations within the larger picture. The
principal was supportive and accepted such a plan, as the individual faces
were obscured, and he, too, was curious to learn what kinds of interaction
were occurring. Recess had been canceled by his predecessor out of fear of
school-yard violence, and the status of recess time was uncertain. Such docu-
mentation, to be shared with him and his staff at the end of the year in re-
port form, was of interest and had policy implications.
On the first day of school, daily nonparticipant observation fieldnotes
were written, and it was not until rapport was firmly established with the chil-
dren and staff that audiotaping commenced. From January to May, daily
audiotapes were made, overtly, with many texts collected, rules explained,
interactions noted, and nonverbal information described. It was not until May
that the researcher felt ready to ask the children if a mobile video camera could
be set up on the school yard to record their games directly. A deep rapport had
developed by that time, and their response was universally positive. They were
quite excited, as it had been our agreement that they could see themselves on
video later in the month. At that time, they were to tell me what they thought
about the games they played. Small group interviews with the three classes
under study had been conducted since the beginning of the year, so this would
be another round of interviewing, also considered a pleasant task.
In sum, the methodology included ongoing small group interviews,
daily fieldwork, gradual inclusion of audio recording, seasonal wide-angled
videotaping from the second-floor window, eventual close-up or micro-video
footage, and then the presentation of samples of the footage to the partici-
pants. A total of thirty-three videotapes were recorded, covering twenty-seven
days of recess. Nineteen tapes of wide-angled footage were made, and four-
teen tapes of close-up micro footage were made. Fifty-one days of live au-
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? ? diotape were also recorded.
One hundred and four third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade boys and girls
were observed, audiotaped, and videotaped during recess. Forty-seven chil-
dren served as native experts and provided their own commentary as they
watched themselves at play on videotape. Occasionally younger and older
children were included in the taping process, if they were part of a game being
studied and played by the core participants.
Although not the first study to utilize videotaped games of children
in this manner, this study is among few to share the footage with its partici-
pants in this age group (see also Sutton-Smith and Magee's "Reversible Child-
hood" [1989a], on the use of reflexive video ethnography with young chil-
dren). Although this is not the first study to examine school-yard games and
the transmission of culture in one place (See Parrott 1972; Sluckin 1981; Hart
1993), it is unique in its deliberate emphasis on a public, multiethnic school.
Studies of urban play, such as Dargan's and Zeitlin's extensive photo essay
City Play (1990), capture bits of the cultural crossover visible in urban street
games, but in the following transcriptions we can see it emerge in the school-
yard games themselves. Such cultural crossover is significant in the light of
the emphasis on school desegregation so important to the American public-
school system, and in the light of the potential elimination of recess as school
policy (Sutton-Smith 1990b).
Several games were studied in this larger exploration of the folklore
of the 1991-92 Mill School yard, including the games of the third- through
fifth-grade boys. This paper, however, will serve as a window to the specific
game worlds of the double dutch players. (For a complete view of the larger
study, which includes handball, folk basketball, hopscotch, step dancing, and
play fighting, see Beresin 1993. ) Double dutch was perhaps the chief peer-led
activity for African American girls at the Mill School, and provided a perfor-
mance focus for a mobile audience of both girls and boys in the school yard.
DOUBLE DUTCH
A fast-paced, polyrhythmic jump-rope style, double dutch utilizes two ropes,
typically turned inwards, egg beater fashion, by two girls who have "the
ends," while a single jumper executes specific steps to a specific song or
chant. It is almost exclusively an African American girls' tradition in urban
Pennsylvania, and has been virtually ignored in the jump-rope literature.
There has been so little written on double dutch in the folklore literature,
and in the collections of African American folklore, that it could even have
been said to be skipped over.
Singing game and street game collections like those of the Opies have
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? ? described larger game traditions but excluded rope singing. American
children's folklore, as in the works of Bronner and Knapp and Knapp, have
homogenized the ethnicity of their young experts and have given us only
single rope traditions; the African American collections of general folklore
have rarely even mentioned the lore of young girls (Kochman 1972; Jack-
son 1967; Whitten and Szwed 1982). With the exception of Jones's and
Hawes's Step It Down (1972) and Black Girls at Play (1975) by Bauman,
Eckhardt, and Brady, the games of African American girls have been ren-
dered practically invisible, and these collections have examined only the step-
ping and clapping forms. Abrahams's Jump-Rope Rhymes: A Dictionary
(1969), a text called "the most thorough recent compilation of these (jump
rope) rhymes for English-speaking children" (Schwartzman 1978, 36), lists
a handful of articles relevant to double dutch, but, with the exception of his
own useful 1963 article, all deal with it only in passing.
Even when only a single rope was available-it was typically one
brought by a child from home-it was utilized in the style and steps of double
dutch. Two girls hold the ends and turn for the girl who is jumping, and
often it is expected that one must turn for someone before getting the chance
to jump. Occasionally the "double Irish" or "double orange" style of rope
turning was observed; that is the term for the turning of the ropes outward,
egg beater style. This method was considered more difficult and sometimes
occurred by accident when the turners changed direction. More typically,
there would be two turners rapidly turning the rope inward, left, right, left,
right, swaying rhythmically to the slapping beat as the rope brushed the
ground. The jumper would dance the steps associated with the song or
rhyme, and a group of singers, ranging from the turners to nonparticipants
to would-be participants, would dance a minimal version of the game in
place. This was considered both a fun thing to do while you await your turn,
as well as a chance to practice the sequence.
The game was competitive, with jumpers vying to be the one who
could not only stay in the ropes the longest but could progress the furthest
in the particular rhyme. Someone would shout "She got foot" or "She got
turn. " And one would often hear the cry of "Saved! " or "Saved by one! "
meaning that the person shouting had progressed farther than the jumper
who had just tripped on the turning rope. Steps were parodied, styles imi-
tated, and occasionally corrected in order to ensure that the jumper did the
job right. Turners could be accused of turning too rapidly, or of intention-
ally "flicking" the rope to make it more difficult, and high-status
jumpers,usually the more skilled fifth and sixth graders, claimed first jumps,
while the younger, less experienced players would be the turners. The chance
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? ? to jump first, and if one was skilled, stay in the spotlight, was often called
long before the game started, in the hallway, in the classroom, or at the end
of one round for the round the next recess.
Double Dutch Style
Count 2 turns
left hand
clockwise
Count 1 turn
right hand
clockwise
ouble Dutch Style Count 2 turns
right hand
clockwise
Count 1 turn
left hand
clockwise
Immigrant Chinese and Haitian girls, representing a small minority
of this officially racially desegregated school, also occasionally did individual,
single jump rope. Two Chinese girls sometimes jumped in two parallel ropes
and, in their own ropes, looped circles around each other, sort of a couple
dance while jumping. The Haitian girls sometimes jumped with a second girl
in the same small rope, either face to face or back to front. Regardless of
form or ethnicity, jump rope was almost always competitive, either by en-
durance, elaborateness of steps, or frequency of turns.
The European American girls would often be observers of the double
dutch games, and on only rare occasions do individual ropes themselves.
When they did so they would compete to see which of them could jump the
most times. They would not sing or chant, just count the number of con-
tinuous jumping steps. One girl was up to 230 and still jumping. Unlike the
African American girls, who stayed in one place or rotated their positions
slightly to be out of the bright sun, or the immigrant girls, who stayed in
one place with their individual ropes, the European American girls did a
running jump rope step and would, one at a time, run around the entire yard
counting. Like their hand-clap games, which were also done to numbers or
counting, the European American girls had clearly distilled their games and
no longer had an active jump-rope singing tradition at this school. The sing-
ing jump rope game, and for that matter the singing hand-clapping game,
had become predominantly an African American tradition.
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? ? Many double dutch songs included the same sequence of steps or
commands: foot, bounce, hop, turn, criss (crossing), clap, with "foot" or
"footin" being the basic right, left, right, left running step over the quickly
turning ropes. "Bounce" involved a lighter touch of the foot while doing the
running step; "hop" a one-footed airborne step. "Turning" and "crissing"
involved the most skill and only the most advanced jumpers were able to
do those steps. Taisha, a particularly graceful fifth grader, was known to add
turns to all of her steps, in every sequence, just for the challenge of it.
THEMES OF THE JUMP-ROPE TEXTS
Much like the world of themes found in the children's riddling studied by
John McDowell (1979), the recorded texts of the rope games were spheres
of the African American girls' culture. There were "1,2,3 Halleluya" and
"Hey, D. J. , let's sing that song," and "Boom Boom Tangle"-a rhyme about
rap artists. Plus there were "All in Together," "Hey Consolation, Where Have
You Been," "Girlscout, Girlscout, Do Your Duty," "Juice Juice, Let's Knock
Some Boots," "D-I-S-H Choice, Do Your Footsies," "Challenge, Challenge
1,2,3," and "Kitty Cat Come, Gonna Be on Time, Cause the School Bell
Rings at A Quarter to Nine. " But these themes, the ones of religion, region,
pop music, of group entry and exit, schooling, and even of plain step dis-
play in menu form, were out-shouted by "Big Mac," a commercial for the
McDonald's Corporation.
As Cheyna, a fourth-grade African American girl had said, "Want to
hear my favorite? " (Snap fingers on down beat. Accented syllables are capi-
talized)
Big MAC, Fillet FISH, Quarter POUNDer, French FRIES, Ice COKE,
Milk SHAKE, Foot
Fillet FISH, Quarter POUNDer, French FRIES, Ice COKE, Milk
SHAKE,
BOUNCE
Fillet FISH, Quarter POUNDer, French FRIES, Ice COKE, Milk
Shake,
HOP
Fillet FISH, Quarter POUNDer, French FRIES, Ice COKE, Milk
Shake,
TURN
Fillet FISH, Quarter POUNDer, French FRIES, Ice COKE, Milk
Shake,
CRISS
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? ? Big Mac appeared in twenty-three out of fifty-six live unrequested
recordings of double dutch chants, closely followed by a follow-the-leader
game, "Challenge Challenge, One, Two, Three. " This contrasted with the
rest of the active repetoire, of which two or three versions were recorded of
each. First observed in mid-October, "Big Mac," and its occasional partner
"Challenge Challenge," were the only chants jumped at recess until Febru-
ary. Most of the other rhymes did not appear at all until April. "Big Mac"
represented forty percent of all the songs sung for double dutch, with "Chal-
lenge Challenge" representing thirty percent. The remainder totaled three to
six percent, tallying another thirty percent. "Big Mac" was therefore not only
the first jump-rope rhyme to appear in the school yard and not only the most
frequently jumped, but, as we will see, also the one used for learning how
to play the game of double dutch itself.
Collectors of jump-rope games have typically emphasized the antiq-
uity of the games and rhymes, in part because of the archive methodology
available, as discussed, and in part because of the inherent romance in find-
ing things old. Paradoxically, the most significant rhyme for the players of
this game was the newest one, invented by the McDonald's Corporation as
a menu chant. Again and again the local jump-rope experts-the third-,
fourth-, and fifth-grade girls-claimed that the "Big Mac" rhyme was com-
mercial and approximately ten years old, but that the game was learned from
their mothers and sisters. The dating of this particular chant was confirmed
by the national public-relations office of the McDonald's Corporation, which
indicated that the menu chants are periodically placed in local papers as part
of a contest. It is significant that McDonald's has been a national sponsor
of double dutch competitions since the late 1970s and that the only other
long commercial text that emerged was in an interview setting: This was
"R-E-E-B-O-K do your footsies the Reebok way. " Reebok is also a national
sponsor of double dutch competitions.
All of the new attempts at double dutch recorded in the school yard
were done to the "Big Mac" rhyme. When Isha, a fifth-grade expert jumper,
was asked what was the easiest rhyme, she answered, "Challenge Challenge,"
because "you just had to imitate what was done before you. " When asked
why the younger girls and the ones new to double dutch started with "Big
Mac," she answered, "Because they don't have nothing else. " Commercial
culture is, for the kids of the school yard, the most basic of common culture.
The commercial is easily learned: It's short, it's quick, and it's "fun
in the mouth. " Children who are bused in from all sections of the city know
it, and children from all economic levels have access to it. It may have been
introduced by the corporate-sponsored leagues and ad campaigns and may
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? ? be a future classic example of the "invention of tradition" (Hobsbawm and
Ranger 1983), but it would not have continued if it did not serve some func-
tion. Adam Kendon, in his book Conducting Interaction (1990), talks about
"movement coordination in social interaction" and the use of ritual to fa-
cilitate synchrony. The sound bytes of "Big Mac" may well serve to speed
up the ritualization of entry into the game in a recess period that allows only
fifteen minutes for play in this city.
In an environment where raw materials are inaccessible and consis-
tently removed from the play time, it appears that the African American
children from poorer neighborhoods, rich with an oral tradition, are teach-
ing non-African Americans what can be done, as Isha says, "when you don't
have nothing else. " This is especially true of the play of girls, which is par-
ticularly repressed in the school yard by the institution of school itself. Here
it is commercial culture that is the common denominator, both within an
ethnic tradition and across ethnic traditions.
One of the most relevant texts on this topic is Newell's 1883 book
Games and Songs of American Children. His essays "The Inventiveness of
Children" and "The Conservatism of Children" address the dynamics in-
herent in play study, the idea of play as being both traditional and transi-
tional, and the idea that children reconstruct and reinvent performances rel-
evant to their complex lives. The key word is relevant. Valuable things are
reused and recycled and retold. And as we will see, the repetition of the com-
mercial rhyme may be fixed, but the variation and creativity in the game can
be found in the foot work. In a sense, the folklorist begins with the text, but
cannot stop there.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPTIONS OF DOUBLE DUTCH
The following are transcriptions of actual footage of the "Big Mac" game,
filmed on two days in the spring of 1992.
The clips are unique in that they
capture two incidences of non-African American girls participating in the
African American tradition of rope jumping. The first example is the first
time R. , a European American third grader, actually got a chance to jump,
although she had been a turner of single rope African American games pre-
viously. The second example is an overt lesson in the art of double dutch
itself, as given by African American girls to an immigrant girl from Hong
Kong, and also to a Polish American girl.
The transcriptions show a basic diagram of the rope, and list a run-
ning time imprinted on the videotape in hours, minutes, and seconds. In this
manner the transcript reflects specific frames of videotape and can be cross-
referenced by time. The cross referencing of tapes by time turned out to be
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? ? rather significant and is a topic to which the concluding pages will be devoted.
The action is described in the middle column, and the audible con-
versation and game text is listed in the right-hand column. Following the
principle, but not the style, of Ray Birdwhistell's kinesics, and Adam
Kendon's studies of nonverbal communication, it was considered important
to at least describe the basic body motion as a line of communication sepa-
rate from the speech (Birdwhistell 1970; Kendon 1981). Actual kinesic tran-
scriptions, from Birdwhistell to Laban, have proved too complex for most
readers and, in a sense, give us more detail than is necessary for this level of
analysis. (For an example of Laban's system of movement notation, see
Hutchinson 1977). The advantage of video ethnography is that the footage
is there to be reanalyzed over time, as more and more detailed levels of analy-
sis become of interest. (For more on the recent attention given to the body
in folklore studies, see Young 1993. )
Example A: The Single Rope Version of "Big Mac"
In the following transcription there is a demonstration of non-double dutch
and double double dutch styles utilizing a single rope. Third- and second-
grade girls Q. , V. , and S. , all African American, and European American girl,
R. , took turns jumping. One to two singers sang as they jumped without
doing any particular steps. A more experienced jumper joined in and the two
jumped at once, facing each other, laughing. The last jumper performed the
"Big Mac" steps and sang all the way from foot to criss, with a stop in the
middle. She was angry when another girl tried to do joint jumping with her.
They jumped past the honking bell, and this episode ended angrily when she
was interrupted by another attempt at joint jumping.
Diagram Time (Action) Voices
10:40:15 (Q. jumps single rope, (no singing)
both feet, not double
dutch style)
10:40:27 (R. gets a turn, jumps,
same way)
10:40:29 (A second African
American girl, V. , jumps
in; they stop)
10:40:30 (R. again jumps)
10:40:36 (Joint jumping of
R. and V. ) and V.
"No, no,no"
Laughter of R.
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? ? 10:40:38
10:40:43
10:40:51
(R. tries again)
(S. begins turn)
(S. sings to herself)
(jumps non-d-d style)
10:41:02 [school bell rings]
10:41:04 (V. jumps in to joint
jump)
(A. , a turner, yells)
(S. gets angry,
starts again. )
(S. does required
motions)
"Hey come on! "
"Quarter pound-
er, french fries,
ice coke, milk
shake, foot"
(Sound of bell,
screams)
"No, don't
jump in. "
"Quarter pound-
er, french fries
ice coke, milk
shake, turn
quarter
pounder,
french fries
ice coke, milk
shake, criss"
10:41:17 (V. jumps in;
they miss.
S. gets angry.
R. tries to
collect the rope)
There were several variations from the typical game here, reminding
us that no game really is typical. The text itself was varied and began with
"Quarter pounder, french fries," creating an even syncopation of the usual
rhyme, making it slightly easier for this younger player. The format itself was
different as a single rope, not a double rope, was being used. The style was
different, as both before and after the double dutch style was being jumped
a second player attempted to do joint jumping. And the intensity of the game
itself was shaped by the honking of the bell.
Example B: The Double Rope Version of "Big Mac"
Here we have a distinct double dutch lesson, utilizing two ropes. Second-
through sixth-grade girls, all African American, were instructing a Polish
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? ? American and immigrant girl from Hong Kong in the art of double dutch.
Neither got very far, and the sixth grader instructing them had the others
learn by standing in the middle of the ropes while trying to turn in a way
that made it easy for them. The rope itself was flimsy and the wind was
strong. As each got stuck, a young girl in the front jumped up and down
shouting "Saved! Saved! " indicating that she had gone farther than these
older girls in the overall competition. When the bell rang, there was much
shrieking and shaking, and the young immigrant from Hong Kong was
knocked over and began to cry.
Diagram
Time
(Action)
Voices
10:46:50
10:47:01
10:47:05
10:47:12
10:47:15
(K. , a second-grade
Chinese immigrant
is trying to learn
double dutch) "Big Mac
fillet fish"
(she misses)
(Second-grade African
American girl, who
has ends, dances, turns
to her audience, and
points out) "Saved! Saved! "
(Three second graders
dance in place)
(Polish American sixth
grader, enters)
(She is told, nonverbally,
to stand in the middle
and lift her feet in place.
She does. The other turn-
er, her instructor, also a
sixth grader, is checking
to see which rope should
be raised first)
[Off camera] "One, two,
three. "
(Girl steps in place, Sixth grader says,
in the middle of the "Do it again. "
rope; fourth grader
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? ? on side nods that the
right side should be
turned first)
10:47:20 (She jumps high,
both feet together, "Big Mac"
and misses)
Instructor says "I
told you not to
come down! "
10:47: 27 [School bell rings] (honk)
(Girls jump up and
down. A nearby boy
jumps in front of the
camera and shakes his
whole body. The Chinese
girl gets knocked over. )
Of interest in this clip is the capturing of cultural transmission from
ethnicity to ethnicity, something undiscussed in the literature of the school
yard, and also of the banging of one culture-school yard culture-into that
of school instructional time (Pellegrini 1987; Hart 1993). The video cam-
era captured not only the teaching of the game, and the competitive reac-
tion of many of the players as they gauged their relative status, but the con-
text of the school yard and how it affected the players themselves. The vis-
ible time stress at the ringing of the bell, which caused one observer to shake
while another player was knocked over, thus emphasizes the utility of using
a popular culture rhyme, such as Big Mac, for the sake of quick negotia-
tion. At the same time, this also indicates the need to examine the reasons
for the bell as a significant part of the game itself.
Both video clips captured variation in game text, language specific
to the game, and examples of direct and indirect instruction. Both indicate
that there is something about the timing of the ringing of the bell that shapes
the game and the interaction around it and that can be said to be unique to
the culture of the school yard.
BEYOND THE GAME: THE SECOND CAMERA
In order to make sense of patterns across these games, we can compare simi-
lar transcripts, as we did above, and then also comb through the footage of
the wide-angle camera. With this survey of the macro footage, an interest-
ing larger pattern emerged.
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? ? Consistently, at the end of the recess period, violent interactions were
visible on the wide-angle screen. In glimpses from the micro footage, one
can clearly see a definite rippling of anger, kicking, punching, and fighting
during the transition back to the classroom. Typically within two minutes
of the ringing of the bell, an almost palpable tension is trackable. In the
macro footage alone, eight out of nine sample tapes showed distinctly vio-
lent conflict in the lining up transition, with six out of the eight violent in-
teractions occurring less than one minute before the bell, and the other two
occurring within two minutes of the bell. In more than half of the micro foot-
age, taken of a variety of games, there are incidences, indirectly captured,
of real fighting or direct violence. And, in all of these images, with only one
exception, the tension occurs within a minute and a half of the ringing of
the bell.
Victor Turner, symbolic anthropologist, has spent much of his career
analyzing the liminal, in-between moments in rites of passage in tribal cul-
tures (Turner 1974a). Although some attention has been paid to transitions
in the sociology of face-to-face communication as studied by Goffman, the
attention of folklorists to transitional times has been minimal. Some atten-
tion has been paid in the folk game literature to opening rituals like count-
ing out rhymes (Goldstein 1971; Opie and Opie 1969; Sluckin 1981; Sutton-
Smith 1981a), but these are usually viewed as pregame ceremonies, rituals
designed for the facilitation of games' beginnings. The phenomenon under
discussion presently is the lack of ritual in the school yard and its associ-
ated lack of transition at game's end.
The second camera allows us to see how the context shapes the game,
beyond the interaction around the text. The study of the one genre, then,
leads to the understanding of the ecology of the larger context. The advan-
tage of extended ethnographic fieldwork in one place is that it allows us to
see the significance of the place on the game, and the patterning over time.
Superficial folk-game surveys that are panoramic mask larger contextual is-
sues and indeed the crossing of ethnic boundaries, which are perhaps only
visible over time. It was apparent that the children needed the entire school
year to reach a point of intimacy with each other, as well as the researcher's
needing that much time to observe the big picture in that place.
BEYOND THE CAMERA
The camera is seductive, as it seems to provide a form of documentation with
less debate and more data. Yet, even when the editing is kept to a minimum
and the shots are taken at the widest angle possible, no camera is objective.
It too is the manifestation of decisions made by the photographer, ranging
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? ? from angle to height to light to the very decision as to when the tape begins
and ends. The goal is not to present a new objectivity in folk game presen-
tation, but rather to present the performances on the film or video back to
as many participants as possible in order to collect yet more stories about
the folk games as cultural markers.
When the adults at the Mill School viewed the above clips, several
of the staff responded that the tapes were "too happy" and performance
oriented, and many shared that they had never observed anything but "mis-
behavior" during recess. Many of the staff did become nostalgic about the
games they had played during their childhoods; they noticed that although
some were the same, many were different with new and different rules. The
comment about misbehavior is significant, given that the staff generally had
the opportunity to come to the school yard only in the last few minutes of
recess, which I have documented as the time of most conflict. They indeed
missed all the constructive cultural expressiveness and sharing that occurs
in the earlier parts of the play period.
When the third- through fifth-grade girls, both African American and
European American, viewed the clips, their reaction was delight, pride, and
outright laughter. For several it was an opportunity to reflect upon their own
process of learning how to "do double dutch. " For Tanya, a fifth grader, it
was a chance to comment on the misdirection of the above double dutch
lesson. She had been taught to enter the ropes and begin by jumping in near
the ends. In the above clip, the immigrant child from Hong Kong and, later,
the Polish American girl, were being instructed in the middle of the rope,
with the rope being turned from a stationary position around the jumper.
This was considered to be much more difficult, indicating that there is an
acknowledged art to instruction as well as performance.
Tanya, like many of her expert double dutch friends, started learn-
ing "how to jump" when she was six or seven years old. Her training, like
theirs, was intensely visual and often meant observation without direct par-
ticipation. "I started in like, first, or second grade, got to be first or second,
because my, I never knew how to jump, but my cousin was in, my cousin
was in the eighth grade and my cous used to always play rope, and I used
to always jump in they (sic) rope, and they used to get mad at me, and kick
me back to my line. " For Rica, an African American fourth grader, the pro-
cess also involved the observation of older girls, and had to do with her
"catching on" to the new songs. "This is how I learn because when people,
like older people start jumping, yeah, like I catched on to the song, like
Tamisha's sister, she'd be singing all these bunch of songs I don't know. And
the next (day) they'd have two of them. "
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? ? If we are going to be able to understand the process of the transmis-
sion of culture within the boundaries of one place, such as the school yard,
as well as across the boundaries of that place, and across time, such reflec-
tions can be most insightful. The study of children as tradition bearers within
an ethnic tradition and in a multiethnic setting sheds light on children's folk-
lore as an area of cultural study, and not just cultural collection. Their pro-
cess is more than aural, it is kinesthetic and intensely visual, and our pro-
cess as fieldworkers can parallel it.
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? ?
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