The popular playing joke la ursa (the bear), visualities and adventures

Abstract

This research aims to study the visualities and transgressive adventures of the popular playing joke “la ursa” (the bear) held at Rangel district, João Pessoa - PB. This is an ethnographic qualitative case study, which included data collection, interviews, image records and direct observation of the performance of two groups of this popular playing joke: one spontaneous and the other professional. This is a research based on theoretical frameworks of Visual Culture and Anthropology of everyday life, which analyzes the processes of hybridization of ”la ursa”, their multicultural formation and the influence of contemporary media image carried out in that entertainment. The study concluded that this cultural practice reproduces and operate in this historical and social process, reframing non-formal and informal knowledge, mediated by human relationships and their symbolic interrelationships from the act of playing.