{"id":177,"date":"2011-04-06T16:22:19","date_gmt":"2011-04-06T20:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.vassar.edu\/semiotics\/?p=177"},"modified":"2011-04-07T10:39:36","modified_gmt":"2011-04-07T14:39:36","slug":"dinner-time-formality-in-rituals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/semiotics\/2011\/04\/06\/dinner-time-formality-in-rituals\/","title":{"rendered":"Dinner Time: Formality in Rituals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Katrina Newman (kanewman@vassar.edu)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Mental hygiene&#8221; films were shown to kids in schools all across America in the &#8217;40s and &#8217;50s with the intention of instructing them in sanctioned behavior and the proper roles of the nuclear family. I&#8217;ve always found these kinds of videos to be quite entertaining and kind of funny, and was reminded of the one about eating with your family when I read about feasting in <em>Signs of Recognition<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Among the Anakalangese nobility\u00a0 generosity (boraku) as well as wealth is required of them, and feasting is one of the ways that males use to display their rank, power and wealth (5-7, 58).\u00a0 A failure to live up to traditional standards is something causes Anakalangese to lament about the good old days (58). In &#8217;50s America, formality of eating was reintroduced to thousands, maybe millions of people,\u00a0modeled by a &#8220;typical&#8221; nuclear white middle class family, by this video:<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"A Date With Your Family (1950)\" width=\"584\" height=\"438\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GtVKo1mdrjE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p>Formality, defined as the representation of roles and\/or hierarchy, is embodied in speech events and rites\/rituals (8) and social exchanges are facilitated by working within\u00a0this &#8220;ritual frame&#8221; (Keane 5).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can be yourself. Just be sure it\u2019s your best self.\u201d And what constitutes their best selves? Pleasantness and relaxation are the key qualities emphasized in this propaganda video. Ritualized, traditional order is also facilitated through ritual speech, and what the family can talk about is restricted to &#8220;pleasant, unemotional conversation.&#8221; One is not to monopolize the conversation or discuss unpleasant topics! No arguing, don&#8217;t insult your brothers and remember to compliment mom on the cooking. The people don&#8217;t have personal names but are addressed as mother, father, sister, brother and junior, emphasising\u00a0the &#8220;stereotypical performance roles&#8221; in the formality. By engaging in formality, participants are able to interactively define themselves and each other (7) thus creating self-awareness of their roles and their family hierarchy. The\u00a0 seating arrangements, who serves and the order of serving and saying grace are all\u00a0embodied parts of the\u00a0representation. Whether they are really happy or not is irrelevant; all that matters is acting as though they are happy by performing pleasantness.\u00a0&#8220;Even the simple norms of everyday propriety, among the least dramatic elements of any cultural account, may serve&#8221; the interests of domination, (6) and in &#8217;50&#8217;s America that certainly included dinner time.<\/p>\n<p>I couldn&#8217;t find any equivalent modern videos;\u00a0any videos on family eating were on how to eat healthy and make meals more quickly.\u00a0I would conjecture that it means the importance of enforcing family hierarchies through eating rituals has largely disappeared in popular culture. To bring authority, sources of power and legitimate agency together requires persistent effort (9) and most people seem to have difficulty &#8220;finding the time&#8221; to eat together as a family. Do you think that more people would manage to find time for formalized family dinners if they thought their family dynamic and personal happiness were dependent on it? Why do you think the importance of performativity of roles has decreased since the post-War era? Even though it is less visible now in media, what kinds of formalities in the video do you think are still performed in American households?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Katrina Newman (kanewman@vassar.edu) &#8220;Mental hygiene&#8221; films were shown to kids in schools all across America in the &#8217;40s and &#8217;50s with the intention of instructing them in sanctioned behavior and the proper roles of the nuclear family. I&#8217;ve always &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/semiotics\/2011\/04\/06\/dinner-time-formality-in-rituals\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/semiotics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/semiotics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/semiotics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/semiotics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/semiotics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/semiotics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/semiotics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions\/200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/semiotics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/semiotics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/semiotics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}