RITUALS: Final Part

The ritual value in the marketplace

Some large-scale public rituals like the Super Bowl, Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving parade involve thousands of actor-participants and much ceremony. Other ritual behaviors require a smaller cast of characters, and more or less ceremony that range from a religious confession to obsessive hand washing. Participants' ritual roles may be severely defined, as in graduation and initiation ceremonies, or more diffusely assigned, as in the numerous marketplace rituals, consumers experience as "fans," "guests," etc. As a form of social symbolic behavior, ritual practices are performed for some target audience. Even the solitary rituals of religious prayer, or personal grooming, are commonly performed with significant others in mind. Ritual behaviors are symbolic expressions through which individuals articulate their social and metaphysical affiliations. Douglas, B Holt (1995)

Rituals and the sacred

Looking back at my soccer fanatic days, every other Sunday I would put on my Wydad AC Jersey and any other red colored garment to go with, running shoes well tied, 25 Dirhams (the equivalent of no more than $3) tucked in my right sock just enough for the cheapest section of the stadium, yet the most exciting. Carefully placed between the laces and the lip of my left shoe a razor blade, it is rumored that soccer games can easily turn to a civil war; therefore a razor blade is almost not too careful from my part. I would meet in company of my neighbors with other classmates who support the same team at the gate of my former high school. An important detail about soccer culture in my city is, we have two teams in the city of Casablanca with as many supporters and both teams are known as representatives of Moroccan soccer as a whole which results in a consistent national and international following; and to an extreme degree an efficient element in the separation within the Moroccan society. Wearing all red clothes and scarves to hide our identities, we marched and chanted our way to the stadium of honor as everyone called it. We were searched at the gates of the field, yet many firecrackers, blades, drugs and all sorts of illegal tools made their way to the bleachers. Several minutes into the game…the stadium is full, yet supporters are still admitted. My section of the bleachers doesn’t sit down, the Ultra culture doesn’t believe in sitting down, people chanted, smoked hash, drank, ate and celebrated.

Conclusion

This composite description exemplifies the collective, repetitive, dramatic and emotional qualities that characterize the spectator’s experience of attending a sports game and other consumption activities such as the Movie Theater, concerts, festivals and parades. These attributes are remarkably similar to those associated with the religious or sacred rituals of primitive societies. Thus, The sacred component of the ritual is as important as the beating of the heart and the air that he breaths, making the sacred an external basis of human life. Being an external basis, it is vulnerable to a person’s environment, thus it can be affected positively or negatively and is in itself an unconscious and emotional channel to create a conviction in the support of a belief, ideology or a product; for good or bad… as humans and consumers we must learn to research our consumption, question our societies, protect our identities and take responsibility for our impulses.