The Happiness Myth_ An Expose - Jennifer Hecht [167]
So here is this ferocious animalism, and willingness to be seen out of control, to be seen barking, as it were; but this wildness is tightly contained in the romantic couple. Yet we make films about this wild intimacy and we all go see the films together, in perfect decorum. Any movie theater anywhere has a culture for you to negotiate—about where to sit in relation to other people, about what to eat and how, about silence or inflated laughter, and on top of that sense of shared space bonding, the whole group is told an emotional story in the dark. That is different from seeing the film at home. You may prefer either, but note the festival qualities of the former. All that said, no matter how good the movies are, you have a better chance of happiness if you do not let actors do all the dressing up in your life while you do all the watching. Even within films, characters dress up often; in between the second and third wolf scene, Loretta got a makeover at the Cinderella Salon.
Do not underestimate the power of costume. When authority is clearly invested in a role, be it king or pediatrician, half the job of ruling or doctoring is done; and for subject or patient, half the work of submitting is done, too. Switching outfits gives you the feeling of the other side. There is pleasure in a false beard or woman’s makeup, a peasant’s rags or a cleric’s robes. Wear a beard or makeup every day and it may lose some of its thrill, but that can be rejuvenated by seeing someone else fetishize it, overdo it, and lavish their psychic attention on its strange human pleasure. Once we were all children, and none of us had beards or breasts. Our adult lives are lived in the costume that biology bloomed out of us, a costuming from within, and we do whatever we may do with these strange and, at first, astonishing and burdensome costumes. Perhaps it is also a cathectic act as people dressed as one another’s gender or type knit the group together.
Throughout history people have talked about creating community ritual. Though many holidays seem to have arisen in the fog of time, some were planned out in the hope of satisfying some need in the population. Hanukkah is a good example, as is Memorial Day. In the nineteenth century, many people proposed secular cults to replace the community ritual that religion once provided. The Freemasons were all about this: consider your dollar bill. In the French Revolution, the Committee of Public Safety cooked up all sorts of festivals, borrowing imagery from democratic ancient Athens and the Roman republic. The best new holiday is Gay Pride. Its parade is political, but also has carnival and costume, and its festivities are celebrated as a weekend, while most celebrations try for only one day. What becomes clear is that it is not enough to come out of the closet; you have to also leave the house. Today it would feel silly to call for a new holiday, like Seinfeld’s Frank Costanza, who invented Festivus: “a holiday for the rest of us.” It is a nice rhyme, but it is comedy—precisely because new holidays are not necessary. More seriously, we need to think about how community celebration works in our lives and how we might make use of the gatherings we already have. It seems worth considering how we spend our time, with some new criteria.
Look at a calendar. See what celebration is coming up. Ask yourself these nine questions:
Is it going to give you a chance to act in an unusually free way in public, perhaps because of costume, darkness, or ritual?
Might you dance with abandon?
Does it recite and enact a dramatic story?
Is there an element of topsy-turvy, of power and gender inversion?
Is there absurdity?
Is there special food abundance?
Is there a crowd?
Is there nakedness?
Does the celebration have anything to do with you?
With even three yes answers, you should go. Maybe it sounds like these questions are describing a bacchanal, but even Thanksgiving invites you to five, with its special food abundance; its weird morality tale about sharing with people you eventually