OPINION ARTICLES
Festivals or rituals?
Festival politics, religiosity and sociability,
or
The importance of the court jester.
Part III – Political and socio-cultural meanings and discourses. Social change.
The future behavior of event tourism will depend on the integrated experience of the meanings attributed to planned events and event tourism experiences. To the extent that they change beliefs, values or attitudes, experiences are transformative; however, multiple experiences or communitas may be necessary for this to occur.
The social form of festivals as a unique meeting place, autochthonous, rich in content, based on local consumption, and around localized geographical connections, is eroding, with an increase in standardization and rationalization originating in the restructuring of urban spectacles. Globalized forms of cultural production and consumption, by limiting freedom of choice and creativity, are the seeds of immanent criticism that contributes to opposition and reflexive action. Less positive aspects of urban spectacles strengthen political and economic control over populations, supported by hegemonic ideologies and dominant images, through the promotion of rhetoric, corporate propaganda and spectacular displays, in an attempt to transform the built and social environment of the city into an aesthetic product that is symbolized in consumption, leisure and entertainment.
New expressions of local autonomy and resistance against marginalization and social exclusion are possible, despite the fact that the intention of most spectacles is to pacify people, ferment political indifference and stimulate consumption. Shows have the potential to promote creative encounters and enable social practices that can produce a series of unforeseen and irrational consequences, including periodic manifestations of social revolt. There is a utopian expression in urban spirits, and the possibility of greater domination by political and economic forces. It becomes inevitable to recognize that the political nature of festivals is inseparable from the awareness of the social and material construction of human populations that makes access to power a source of constant struggle.
Lines of resistance against homogenization and corporate control are exemplified by the activism against the ‘Las Vegaslization’, ‘Disneyfication’ and ‘McDonaldization’ of urban space, as well as the protests against public funding of big shows, among other social movements (anti-racism, anarchists, slowfood, anti-globalization, creation of local currency systems). These activists protest against the lack of control over the conditions of communities in the face of market-based global agendas and as a local effort to initiate an enabling and empowering process of reurbanization as a response to corporate efforts to turn cities into a “staged archaeological theme park”.
To avoid reductionism and determinism, and as an enlightenment about the possibilities of democratic inclusion and social justice, greater awareness is needed about the dialectic of corporate control and local resistance. At festivals, the global experience contributes to cultural formation and contestation, which, in addition to the dissent and debauchery that is expressed there, includes a discourse directed at the dominant culture and ideology that manifests itself in the form of criticism of what is seen, heard and experienced at a festival, creating a heterotopia, a physical realization of a utopian space, a “counter-site” within culture where it is simultaneously represented, contested and inverted. These spaces mirror culture, where the refraction is a discourse that alters or distorts it, providing a new discourse regarding the perception of the culture of privilege.
Music festivals themselves include the physical manifestation of an aura of audiotopia, an aura of a musical utopian space for developing new understandings of the social world, and the countercultural reflective qualities of Foucault’s heterotopia, in an audio-heterotopia, where people meet, learn, stand apart, represent and contest, changing the way they see themselves and the world, in a reflexive way, and in whose production of knowledge and discourse are reflected in the form of reaction and commentary on the festivals, resulting in the alteration of policies and behaviors, the shaping of identities, intercultural understanding and the ability to invert and mirror culture, setting the stage for the proliferation of objects and particular forms of cultural criticism.
Carnival’s political significance stems from the ambiguity of its cultural form, which has the potential to perform a socially integrative function, while also being a vehicle for the expression of protest, opposition and resistance. Carnival’s essential function is cathartic, ritualizing potentially destructive social conflicts. Carnival knows no spatial boundaries. During Carnival it is possible to live only according to its laws, that is, the laws of Carnival freedom. What this doesn’t explain is the fact that resistance, by taking on its precise form, triggers an obvious response from the authorities, who take these “symbolic” protests seriously.
The social geography of Carnival is a specific form of cultural resistance and has a distinct spatial constitution. The political significance of Carnival is increased by the residential proximity of rich and poor, enabling the distance associated with the constant confrontation of the lower classes with the display of social standards of higher social classes, but also, and paradoxically, the proximity between classes.
Its parodic element and characteristic inversions of social convention depend on the mutual knowledge of different classes. Carnival is a case study for exploring the intersection between culture and politics in the creation of a specific geography of protest and resistance, illustrating the potential of cultural forms to display, mock, contest and transform social relations of power, with a potential for subversiveness and distortion between participant and spectator, as it is not a spectacle that is seen by the public, but one in which everyone participates and lives in it, as its very idea involves everyone, which is indicative of its socio-cultural aspect and the political contradiction explored therein.
While Carnival lasts, there is no life outside Carnival.
Other aspects include the very time in which Carnival takes place (taking place in a world apart, in the market or on the streets, not in the bourgeois space), the languages themselves, the forms of social relations (organized in the people’s way and contrary to existing forms of political and socio-economic organization, suspended during the festival), and the symbolic form of the festival (where the freedom and mobility of the streets are central, as well as the symbolic reversals and relative anonymity of the masked man), in an event considered to be intensely spatial (as an exercise of social control and as a form of symbolic protest).
Carnival is, like riot and war, the continuation of politics by other means.
Festivals are starting points for culture because of their involvement in innovation and their distance from fashion, seeking to bring artists and audiences closer together by providing an informal atmosphere and a concentration on space/time. Donors gain prestige and power, wanting to “set the tone”. Elitist festivals can lead to political discomfort (which, as far as it is concerned, can lead to pressure for the festival to reach a wider audience) and to a consequent local opposition due to that same “openness”. Festivals are manipulated by arts promoters to increase revenue and audiences, but the most desirable events are for a select group. Audiences “make” festivals in the way they react to performances and spend money. Regardless of the artistic intentions of the organization, festivals have to finance themselves, unless they have sponsorships or their own funds. Increased competition for private funds increases competition for audiences to the detriment of the event’s ethos, and a reduction in these funds requires a greater demand for everlasting funding, with the festival then becoming a means for less adventurous, less expensive programming and the creation of corporate images. Funding agencies are mainly made up of cultural elites, so the festival can be used to understand elitist political strategies. Another argument that can undermine elitist festivals is the benefits for businesses, the arts and local communities, so not everyone may be interested in government partnerships.
Perhaps the “real Carnivals for elites” are those held in non-urban locations that require artists and audiences to travel. Consumers, when absorbing culture, demand more of the same or something different, which forces artists to provide what they demand, so that “consumers” become active “producers” and vice versa. Although there may be a preference in the art world for semi-private encounters, the responsibility of artists also extends to their public side. Artist residencies are becoming less and less common, due to the corporate side of festivals and the fact that artists do the festival circuit, which reduces the opportunities for artistic exchanges.
This analysis can be included in one of two basic perspectives of festival studies: “arts and urban development”, or “liveable cities”. In the first, festivals catalyze urban renewal, attract tourists and capital investments, improve a city’s image and create new jobs, which is associated with a growing competitiveness of the urban environment that orientates festivals towards the market, in a vision in which cities and their festivals become advertised commodities, marketed and sold by tourism agencies like any other commodity, although the appropriation of such events by tourism and city marketing can achieve economic goals, even if it does not achieve social and cultural goals, with the potential for social exclusion due to the desire to project an “acceptable” image of the festivals, and the appropriation of the events by a certain group.
The second perspective, more focused on the community and less on the literature, with more evidence of resistance in local events, and less dispute over time and space, allows the local community to use market events as a basis for positive self-identification, and can help build local sense, although they also show signs of resistance to the spectacularization of festivals.
The spatial and temporal contours of cultural events will be determined by the outcome of the struggle between participation and spectacle.
Festivals are also linked to more organized movements for social change, such as the building of networks, the celebration of solidarity and the role of socialist and counter-cultural festivals in the 20th century, particularly in the 1960s, when generations rebelled against the dominant culture of their parents. While municipal authorities “invent” festivals in an effort to expand off-season tourism and local economic development, this transformation can be linked to a philosophy of market liberalism that has extended commodity culture into the sphere of leisure, including spaces previously considered beyond the bounds of commodification, which weakens the potential of leisure events to serve as a space to express dissent and resistance, particularly to global capitalism and commodity culture, suggesting that any effort to express dissent to consumer culture within corporate-dominated channels results in a product with ambiguous meanings that will be more a symbol of the machine’s authority than an agent of resistance.
Although festivals can be avenues for social change, any effort to promote social change will probably require an active and intentional effort. The idea of festivals as contested fields of meaning, in which different groups or stakeholders try to use the symbolic capital of the event for their own ends, is underlined in debates about identity, commodification and authenticity.
Temporary architecture at music festivals also contributes to social change, an opportunity for the alternative production of space.
Bibliography:
CONNELL, Ruth (s.d.) The Special Effects Machine: Temporary Architecture at Music Festivals, Morgan State University.
CRESPI-VALLBONA, Montserrat e RICHARDS, Greg (2007) “The Meaning of Cultural Festivals”, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 13:1, pp.103-122.
GETZ, Donald (2008) “Event tourism: Definition, evolution, and research”, Tourism Management, 29:3, pp.403-428.
GOTHAM, Kevin Fox (2005) “Theorizing urban spectacles. Festivals, tourism and the transformation of urban space”, City, 9:2, pp.225-246.
HOWARD, Brandon (2014) “Crossfading from Hierarchy to Heterotopia: The Political Power of Subversive Discourses within American Music Festivals”, Columbia College Chicago.
JACKSON, P. (1988) “Street life: the politics of Carnival”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 6:2, pp. 213-227.
QUINN, Bernadette (2003) “Symbols, practices and myth-making: cultural perspectives on the Wexford Festival Opera”, Tourism Geographies, 5(3), pp.329–349.
SHARPE, Erin (2008) “Festivals and Social Change: Intersections of Pleasure and Politics at a Community Music Festival”, Leisure Sciences: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 30:3, pp.217-234.
WATERMAN, Stanley (1998) “Carnivals for élites? The cultural politics of arts festivals”, Progress in Human Geography, 22:1, pp.54-74.
Authorship: João Carvalho [1], Victor Afonso [2], Nuno Gustavo [3].
Based on the project work “Business plan. Cosmic Festival. Transformational Festival”, authored by João Carvalho, under the supervision of Specialist Professor Victor Afonso and co-supervision of PhD Professor Nuno Gustavo, for completion of the Master’s Degree in Tourism, with a specialisation in Strategic Event Management, at the Estoril Higher Institute for Hospitality and Tourism Studies. Presented and defended on December 27th, 2019.
May, 2020.
[1] Master’s Degree in Tourism, with specialisation in Strategic Event Management, by Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies; Beach Break®.
[2] Specialist Professor (Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies; Center for Advanced Studies in Management and Economics at the University of Évora – CEFAGE).
[3] PhD Professor (Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies; Centre for Research, Development and Innovation in Tourism – CITUR).