Transcript Elements of ritual

Elements of Ritualization in Audience Experience
Eric W. Rothenbuhler
Scripps College of Communication
Ohio University
Notes for a presentation
What do we mean by ritual?
What does it have to do with media and communication?
Formal and traditional activities, like:
Religious services, weddings, funerals, or affairs of state
Processes and performances with ritualistic form, like:
Giving a speech, hosting a dinner party, turn-taking among friends
Mediated ritual and ceremony, like:
Presidential inaugurals, royal weddings, Olympic games
Two primary roles for ritual in communication and media studies
As a special topic for research
As an alternative perspective for theory
Both roles constrain ritual to the category of the special
Ritual as a heuristic, a model of the organization of communication
The study of ritualization
For example
Coman (2005) on journalists covering crisis
Couldry (2003) on sites of media production
Shifts focus from
thing to process
category to continuum
Raises new questions about
assembly of ritual
historical dynamics: invention, diffusion, rise, fall
And our question here: If the elements of ritual can be assembled,
where else could they be observed?
Elements of ritual
Grimes (1990):
Rothenbuhler (1998):
Performed
Formalized
Repetitive
Collective
Patterned
Traditional
Valued highly or ultimately
Condensed
Symbolic
Perfected
Dramatic
Paradigmatic
Mystical
Adaptive
Conscious
Action
Performance
Conscious, voluntary
Noninstrumental or irrational
Not recreational
Collective, social
Expressive of social relations
Subjunctive, not indicative
Effective symbols
Condensed symbols
Expressive or aesthetic behavior, aesthetic excess
Customary behavior
Regularly recurring behavior
Communication without information
Regarding the sacred, an element of the serious life
Elements of a media event (Dayan & Katz, 1992)
Interruptions of routine
Monopolistic, dominating channels of communication
Live broadcasts
Organized outside the media
Preplanned
Reverent
Ceremonial
Emphasizing reconciliation
Celebrating voluntary actions
Historic
Hegemonic
Attracting large audiences
Viewing is normative
Celebratory
Integrative
And renews loyalties
Example ritual: Weekly service of Abrahamic religions
Elements:
Set time
Set place
Special accoutrements
Assemblage of people
Defined, distinguished roles
Prescribed acts, performance
Required “audiencing”
Multi-layered formality
Audience experiences:
Acceptance
Orientation
Attention
Comportment of self
Performance
Responsibility
Importance
Truth
Contrary example: Habits and routines are not rituals
What does habit lack?
Import
Seriousness
Consequentiality
Ritual works through attention, habit and routine by inattention
Ritual works by its formal logic, habit and routine by convenience
Examples of media use with more or fewer elements of ritual
Live TV vs. recorded and scheduled for later broadcast
Scheduled TV vs. on-demand and home recorded
Our TV time vs. routine TV time
News vs. drama; non-fiction vs. fiction
Media events vs. everyday television
Ceremonial television vs. breaking news
Theatrical projection vs. DVD or television at home
Concert hall performance vs. recorded music at home
LP vs. MP3
Daily print edition of the paper vs. news website
Collection of books vs. e-reader experience
Listening to radio in the 1930s vs. today
Top-40 radio at its peak vs. radio today
Elements of ritual present in many of the examples
Objects, events, &
contingencies
ask for
Recognition, orientation,
via
comportment, & acceptance
situation, position, yielding
place, boundedness
world,
community
Performance
asks for
Competence, responsibility, via
evaluation
identity & relation
yielding
the good &
the beautiful
Reality
asks for
Seriousness
necessity
yielding
the true
yielding
the sacred,
the good,
the beautiful,
the true,
a world,
a community,
and position,
within it.
via
Though everyday media use often lacks prominent place for:
Tradition, authority, sacred values, ultimate beliefs, fundamental symbols, cosmology, and such
The experience of the three elements here
In ritual form
asks for
Faithfulness
via
importance
Social products and consequences of ritual
Strategic ritualizing
Playful ritualizing
Unconscious ritualizing
New questions raised by this analysis
Are we tending to a world with less ritualization, less ritualized lives?
Does that also entail a world where fewer things are considered
important? A more undifferentiated world? A world with “less
reality?”
Were the 20th century mass media great engines of ritual, and thus
value and reality?
Or was the seed of disaggregation already present in their diffusion
of public life across time and space? Are the newer media fulfilling
the logic that the mass media initiated?
LP vs. MP3 again
Playing LPs has more of the elements of ritual
It is more inviting to focused attention
More likely to create a sense of value
Enables an experience of approach to an ideal
In the same years the mass market shifted from LP to CD to MP3
Sales declined and the industry shrunk back to mid-1970s levels
Reduced fidelity but more convenient media took over
Singles took over from albums
Concert sales declined as well
The public spends less time listening and reports less value for recorded
music
But LP production and sales have continued and recently grown
Conclusions
Yes, elements of ritual can be observed in otherwise ordinary audience
activities.
Yes, focusing on those elements of ritual can be a useful way to contrast
pairs of otherwise similar audience activities.
And yes, some of the consequences typical of ritual could accompany
those elements in otherwise ordinary audience activities.
When aggregated to the level of national markets and cultures, there
could be significant results of such small tendencies.
At the disciplinary level of concern, ritual may be a better fruit fly than
we usually suppose.