Sanction deviance is how society allows groups and individuals break away from that strict routine of life in society. This feeling they acquire from breaking away from society’s norms is a sense of personal identity and also a sense of power against the dominant. One way this can be seen pretty clearly throughout society is through some religious festivals. Just seeing how religious sects are, they all have a set of rules and more or less “laws” that must be abided in such a manner or it would be a disgrace against them. But with these festivals it is a period that allows people to break away and go against these rules without being punished for it.
Introduction
One of the most well-known festivals is “Carnival”. Carnival takes place between three to ten days before Lent. It is a time where people can party and let themselves go before lent. During “carnival” there are often parades, street shows, grand balls, and pageants, and during this time people often wear masks and costumes which comes to its other name people are used to “Mardi Gras”. People in countries like Europe, Latin America, Brazil and many others preform this to get away from the social norms they go through every day. During these three to ten days before Lent, from sexual activities to nudity on the streets and thousands of people drunk throughout the city it all became as if these acts were normal. Towards the end of the festival, when everything has ended, everyone cleans up the mess and they all return back to their normal daily lives, seeing those past few days as a vacation from society.
Mardi Gras
Another name for Mardi Gras is “Fat Tuesday” because of its popularity where people go all out and indulge themselves with a great feast. The roots all go back to the Christians, it is known to take place before lent which is on Ash Wednesday. Therefore, the festivities all end at midnight on Tuesday in preparation for Ash Wednesday. David Redmon of Emerson College argued that Mardi Gras’s behavior fits into sociologist Erving Goffman’s 1963 theory of “backspaces”; where people could escape how others view them judging them and bring out hidden sides of their personalities. He referred to this behavior as “playful deviance,” stating that this usually occurs “when small groups of tourists travel to symbolic spaces of leisure to participate in temporary forms of transgressions (Redmon).” Redmon himself spent over five hundred hours at seven different Mardi Gras events in New Orleans from 1994 until 2000. In his study he interviewed about one hundred and fifty people who were participating in any form of behavior outside the social norm that people are not usually exposed to. Majority of it he noticed it involved women flashing their breasts or their behinds, and some others went as far as preforming sexual acts with strangers out in public.
These situational exhibitionists felt liberated by having the opportunity to defy social norms anonymously. In a conversation with a woman she told him that “I get to leave many parts of me back home, like the part where you have to be the wife, the mother, the good girl, the Christian Lady who goes to church every Sunday.” (Redmon). This just shows clearly how a woman being preforming the typical expectations society has on her, and to leave all that behind explains how people fell when knowing they are not bound to these societal norms. Further that he noticed that woman loved stripping in public which made him come to conclude that “revelers do not commit playful deviance in public; rather, they preform it as a fun game to attract the gaze of sightseers.”
In today’s modern society with the media being the popular culture, many of these festivals and performances during the festivals are now viewable anywhere in the world and at any time. Going back to Goffman’s theory, there is still the possibility of being shamed on by peers and other people back at home for preforming such activities. But in a sense for the “vacationing” away from social norms as Redmon studied, results in the thrill of being self-indulged for the camera. Even though Goffman’s theory of “backspaces” explains aspects of Mardi Gras in some ways, his perspective of it gives a deeper view at what these festivals are composed of.
One organization that hosts Mardi Gras’s grand balls and use impression management techniques for the celebration is known as Krewes. Their role during this time is to focus on the performance teams in creating the impression of a dramaturgical technique. Krewes is one of the many examples of performance teams because they work together to stage everything during the celebrations. Members within the organization are kept anonymous from everyone through costumes and masks to hide their identity during the parades. These acts promote allegiance to the group and encourage dissociation with audience members to create dramaturgical loyalty allegiance to the secret-society group. (Ritzer 359). This separation from the audience and people in the organization are quite evident because they ride on floats which is high in elevation having the physical barrier disassociating themselves with the audience.
Image of Mardi Gras
During Mardi Gras, where it takes place and the props used by the people to create it’s image is probably one of the most important things. From the side of the streets; bars, balconies and restaurants, they are lined up for front stage views on the performances as it is presented to the audience. There is no visible evidence of any dirty work involved in the process of preparing for the final performance of the parade. Most of the dirty work is included in the performance rehearsals, and the hard labor of constructing the floats, props, and other pieces using during the performance which is hidden from the audience. What they see at the final performance is the finished product where technically there is no visible sign of any dirty messed up work. In the backstage it includes krewe members houses, float storage space and everything else that is a setting for the preparation and rehearsal for the performance. Looking at this is another way in which performance teams show the idealized portrait of Mardi Gras in cases evidence of technical difficulties involve engine failures in the floats, failed plans, or any other difficulty that could hinder the performance. The performers always try to make sure that the audience only views the front stage and with the magnificent floats and masqueraded performers it is a way of telling the audience that Mardi Gras is a festival in and of itself.
How the actors preform also relies on their personal presentation or “those items of expressive equipment that identifies with the performers and expects them to carry with them into the setting” (Ritzer 359). Members within Krewe try to make their status known through their appearance. Their use of disguises; costumes in the colors of gold, green and purple, as well as coins and beads are all part of altering their appearances making them distinct from others. But through their disguises and how they look all contribute to how energized the audience helping them interpret what type of performance is being performed. Although members of Krewe and locals are involved in defining what Mardi Gras is, Mardi Gras is more defined through its audience. The audience decides the performer’s behavior by showing their reactions to whether they accept how it is or reject what’s being presented. If the audience does not have faith in their performers or come to a mutual definition of the event then the festival’s performance will not go well.
John Kilburn and Wesley Shrum analyzes the ritual disrobement at Mardi Gras in their article Ritual disrobement at Mardi Gras: Ceremonial Exchange and Moral Order. They recognized that the symbolic significance of the beads used during Mardi Gras through studying the interactions that the “role performances geared toward” accumulation of wealth and noticed that during Mardi Gras that idea is transferred to collecting plastic beads which are only valuable during Mardi Gras. It symbolizes the “successful participation in the ceremonial context” (Kilburn 429). The market ritual involves bargaining and trading these beads for disrobement and in a sense these beads are used as a type of currency during Mardi Gras. Because of how big the festival is, it limits the vocal bargaining on the street and the exchange of beads for disrobement is accomplished through the impressions by the performers. Kilburn and Shrum found that the status of those performers who will participate in disrobement are often decided by the audience’s impressions of other dress, gestures and most importantly by how many beads someone has on them. Beads in this way act as symbolic objects and props that work as a currency but also indicate to others that they will participate in this ritual disrobement.
Conclusion
Sanctioned deviance is a way for people to break away from their daily bound in society’s social norms of everyday life. They are able to feel free and break away from these norms without any negative punishment or judgment for a short period of time. In a deeper sense, deviant behavior, backspaces, dramaturgy and ritual disrobement displays that Mardi Gras festivities are not for everyone but in its ritualistic sense, it is for some groups of people that participate to escape their societal norms.
Works Cited
-
‘Documentary Criminology: Expanding the Criminological Imagination with.’ MDPI. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.
-
Redmon, David. Beads, Bodies, and Trash: Public Sex, Global Labor, and the Disposability of Mardi Gras. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
-
Ritzer, George. 2000. Sociological Theory. Fifth Edition. McGraw-Hill Company.
-
Thevenot, Brian. “Their Mardi Gras? Our Mardi Gras.” Times-Picayune 19 Feb., 2006: pp. 1.
-
Shrum, Wesley. ‘Social Forces.’ Ritual Disrobement at Mardi Gras: Ceremonial Exchange and Moral Order. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 May 2016.
