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By Root 1238 0

as especially low by the stealer. Because it feels safer, it is safer. Viewing a wedding with an anthropological eye, with historical perspective, cannot pull you out of the event if, prior to taking this view, you were held back from participating at all. People who sit out our tribal wedding rituals do so in part because they have no sense of these acts as tribal rituals. If you were in some remote land and the people invited you to drink some wine and do their dances in order to effectuate the social magic of turning two young people into a single adult couple, you would go, and join in, and feel elated. Nothing stops us from a similar elation right here at home.

In the section on money, we saw that music culture, sports media, and television shows provide, for many of us, a replacement for the missing middle of society: they give us shared experience and something to talk about. In this chapter we are interested in festival euphoria rather than daily public life, so here shopping is less significant. Our quarry here is the rarer, more emotive occasion. My criteria for a festival experience is that it be a large gathering with most of the following: costumes, ritual gestures, music, reference to sexuality, expressions of loss, expressions of victory, at least some hollering, and unusual touching. It is good if the participants come from the same place, such that they might see their neighbors, doctor, clients, and friends. It is best if it is a public event, cost free and open to all. It is also best if it refers to a very visible, acted-out myth or drama (as does a wedding), or if it draws on current events. It must also be safe for girls, which, given all the dramatic debauchery, requires that the festival itself be respected, as if sacred. Nothing, sadly, entirely fits the bill, though many things come close, but I have chosen a few gatherings to analyze for their aspects of festival euphoria.

Attendance at a sporting event is an occasion close to festival. You get to show up someplace with a lot of other people and emote. There are underdogs and heroes, jinxes to be overcome, personal feuds, and bad boys. The meetings are always the same, but different. Spectator sports work even better than religion in some ways, because they have the dopamine perks of gambling. Your team may win. You can go alone, or with your family, or friends. If you have season tickets, you get to know the people in the seats around you. If it is football, there are tailgate parties. Many people have rituals that they do to make their team win, so they feel actively involved. Every game is interactive theater, with special clothes to wear, and, for some, colors to paint your face. The “wave” is a remarkable social gesture where the arena sections take turns standing and lifting their arms, so that it looks like a current of energy flows around the stadium. The wave happens several times at almost all games, randomly, when a few fans get an urge to start one. We saw that being a fan creates the sensation of belonging to a vast brotherhood. The sports experience is a moment for drinking alcohol in the company of this brotherhood; suffering with others when your team loses and, when things go amazingly well, celebrating with hand slaps, and even hugs and chest butting. You get to punch the air and scream. There is the seventh-inning stretch, and the sing-along of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Of course, showing up is fatiguing, there is traffic to consider, not to mention loud fans, over-priced food, and a fixed view of the game. But there are good reasons to show up anyway. It is not for everyone, of course, but it is useful to note what these events mean—how they work in the same ways as historic festivals, occasioning expressions of sorrow and triumph.

Music shows have festival characteristics. In the same years that the American nightly news was developing an ideal of intense seriousness and masculine objectivity, The Ed Sullivan Show gave us the Beatles surrounded by American girls screaming their heads