The Happiness Myth_ An Expose - Jennifer Hecht [164]
Cast a quick glance at the older costumed tradition that was Rocky Horror. At first in Greenwich Village, and later all over the world, people would repeatedly go see the film The Rocky Horror Picture Show week after week, usually at midnight on Saturday night. There were scenes based on cannibalism, sex of several varieties, and general cinematic darkness. The reason this was compelling week after week was that many audience members dressed in the outrageous underworld outfits of the film’s characters, and a few acted out scenes, up front below the screen. Many brought bags of props, so that throughout the song “There’s a Light,” the audience twirled flashlight beams on the ceiling. For the wedding scene, they tossed rice. Since the audience knew the lines of the film, they inserted dialog so that the characters seemed to be conversing with the audience. This dialog was always developing: you shouted out your idea, and maybe it got a laugh and maybe it would be repeated, by someone else, next week. A proud moment, silly but satisfying.
For a bigger party that fits our criteria, consider New York City’s Greenwich Village Halloween parade. What is always great about New York—the random brilliant jokes that its citizens tell each other in the form of art, gesture, and dress—is in top form here. The parade is a reckoning, because people dress as components of the major events of the foregoing year. (You can see thousands of pictures of the parade on the Internet.) When our son was five months old we dressed my tall husband as the Empire State Building, me as Fay Wray, and the baby as King Kong. Wray had died that year. We were a big hit. My husband carried the boy monkey on his shoulders, and would raise the baby’s little arm in mock anger, and I would mime movie-poster fright. Decades ago, when I marched in the Village Halloween parade for the first time, my friend Mary and I just painted our faces to look ghoulish and wore black. If you want to, you can stand out and blend in at the same time, as there are amazing bands playing and marching, and if you march with them, you dance with their crowd. It is nice to be in disguise, among other people in disguise, with everyone dancing, invisible in plain sight, making the revel with your enthusiasm. Think also of Lou Reed’s song “Halloween Parade” of 1990, in which the parade has become a time to notice which friends and beloved local characters had been lost to AIDS. An annual parade can be a yearly weighing up, showing who we are and who we are missing. Overall, though, the holiday is not somber; it is joyous, full of absurdity, inversion, topical commentary, and topsy-turvy nonsense.
Those who attend such an event, blocked off by temporary railings and lots of cops, are not in the parade, but they are not just spectators, either. This is no stage: the audience is half the experience. They are piled high on the sidewalks; they are sitting on mailboxes; they are in every window, on every balcony, and on every rooftop. They are everywhere, and their cameras are flashing, and they laugh when you act out your character, and you laugh, too. Most secrets to happiness take ongoing dedication. But public celebration need not be done very often to get the benefits. Find a festival for which you have some affinity, and go. Don’t drink so much that you numb yourself to the emotional experience of being in the crowd. If you can, try also to attend a festival as part of the show rather than as a spectator: wear a costume, sing along, dance. Go to any crowd where you agree with the reason for crowding—be it politics, music, sports, or holiday—and become your own experimental animal. Consider your emotions at such gatherings, in terms of both moral feeling and mood. Think about the things that the Eleusinian mysteries gave