We discussed sport consumption as a ritualized practice today in Rituals and Traditions.
It is a focus on entertainment value, collective group influence, and self-enhancement, but we overlook the ritual aspects, which potentially offer individuals a chance to maintain and to celebrate cultural meanings embedded in the consumption. There is a formalism to all of this, and also symbolic performance. For example, what do you do at tailgates? We also talked about the social interactions.
Ritual, I reminded them, is a means through which individuals embody the power, authority, and value of society. And we talked about research that shows that consumers cherish ritual experiences because securing cultural sense from mass-marketed consumer goods is not straightforward. Ritual makes it real for us, basically.
We talked about “ritual specialists” which is a concept I love. These are the elders, cheerleaders, band, media, supporter groups that have socially recognized authority to judge the importance of ritual and the performance’s correctness. These are the people who can legitimize the social importance of the ritual and give us the correct way of performing it. Then I got to use one of my favorite lines. “Because this is a communication studies class I have to occasionally sneak a theory in on you.” And I talked about disposition theory — basically our enjoyment is driven by our evaluations of the characters involved. This is part of why you think the traditions you like are good and important and the stuff that other people do is dumb. (You’ve evaluated them and found them wanting.)
In Criticism we watched It’s Time. For my money, it’s one of the best bits of storytelling you can get in a sport documentary. It’s also quite intense.
The only problem with it is that the runtime takes the whole class and we’ll have to wait until next Tuesday to discuss it. That’s a long time to wait, even for such a gripping and emotional story.
We won’t talk just about the emotion, though, but also the media aesthetics, like the music and some of the shot selections, and a few of the quotes from the people that were there.
I’m still living in the happy memories of our wonderful Irish vacation. So, I’m sharing extra videos that we didn’t get to at the time. It was a great vacation. I have a lot of footage. This will go on for some time. Enjoy it with me, won’t you?
I miss the roadside sheep already.
