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January 15, 2004
In the previous entry I briefly mentioned the rituals of the endless summer at the beach and wondered whether the rovers on Mars would have rituals. Or is it only a human thing?
Rituals are usually associated with religion--eg., a high mass for Catholics, or a baptism, or death. Religion can be seen as a way of expressing social realities: they are ceremonies that awaken certain ideas and feelings, attach the past to the present and the individual to society or a moral community. Rituals are far more than as set of fictions. They seek to strengthen the bonds between people.
We can broaden this expressive aspect of rituals as rites to everyday activities of birthing, birthdays, Xmas, flirting, romance and marriage, shopping and death. These activities--those around love or shopping--- involve an element of interpretation, that are than elaborated and transformed until they become unrecognizable. So we have a partly imaginary world--eg., romance and love or consumer culture around handbags and shoe--- that gives cultural form to our intense and deep feelings of everyday life.
Machines are excluded.
There is a surplus of expression that is not contained by these cultural forms and they develop a life of their own that goes beyond the ends of rituals to become something that has no purpose. They become games--eg., those of dating and relationships that go beyond the single girls hunt for a good man, as expressed on the tv show Sex in the City. See Gianna's discussion of this show at She Sells Sanctuary.
Associated with the search for love by the single urban women is the ritual game of dating and sexuality. This goes beyond devising hunting strategies for a mate (Mr Right).
 (Getty Images) with its intersection of commerce and romance.
Here the hunting urban woman turns herself into a product with her own unique brand and then devises market strategies to sell herself as her own unique selling proposition.
In this market language of romantic investment single women research and develop their personal brand that has a broad appeal.
How do we move beyond this marketplace of love talk in which bodies, romance and love are commodities?
Reflecting on Sex and the City show Gianna at She Sells Sanctuary says:
'Naomi Wolf... argues the girls are feminists because they do not settle. They move on [rather than stay with the wrong guy], because the sexual revolution means that women have the right to select. I think shes closest to the mark. The girls are single for the most part because they choose not to stay with men just for the sake of being in a relationshipand many of us know someone in real life who has done exactly that. For example, the fear of being alone can drive some people to stay with abusive partners or in stale relationships. So the girls actually demonstrate a self-confidence that makes them good role models for female viewerseven if ultimately, they all do crave love more than anything else.'
It is through female friendship that social bonds are affirmed in Sex in the City. As Gianna says:
"One thing I used to like about the show....was the realistic portrayal of female friendships. It was probably alarming to some people to find out that girls really do talk about sex that much, and that they so openly and ruthlessly dissect each others relationships. But there is a real intimacy, honesty, nurturing and, yes, love between the characters that many modern girls will recognise. Single girls do have a lot of their emotional needs filled by their girlfriendsand thats valuable and worth reflecting on the small screen.. "
Thus rituals have a social function: they are both a system of communication of ideas and emotions and a way of specify and regulate social relationships.
You can see this in fetishism and S&M.
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