parties to the conversational situation.
A nice contrast of successful and unsuccessful interaction rituals may be seen in the variety of New Year celebrations: some have a peak moment of genuine enthusiasm at the stroke of midnight (in this respect these celebrations are a mixture of traditional forms and natural, unscripted interactions) – while others consist in flat and prefunctory greetings for the new year. What makes the difference? My observation is that New Year celebrations that work are ones in which, in the hour or two before midnight, people in an assembled crowd start making noise – with the usual whistles, rattles, perhaps firecrackers – but above all making noises at each other, in their direction, better yet, in their face. This leads to entrainment; people start making noises and throwing streamers at each other, often breaking down barriers of acquaintanceship by drawing strangers into interaction. Notice that this interaction has no cognitive content; it is very much like small children running around and making noises at each other. In the context of the New Year celebration, this intruding noisily into someone else’s personal space, sometimes even bodily in the mild and playful form of throwing streamers or confetti at them, is taken as friendly and not hostile or deviant. This mutual entrainment in noise-making builds up to a crescendo of noise as everyone is focused on counting down the seconds to midnight; when the anticipated focal point is reached, there is a burst of solidarity gestures, people hugging and kissing each other, even strangers. Compare the more staid New Year party: Individuals continue in normal conversations, saying intelligible things. This keeps them in distinctive little pockets of shared mentality, cutting them off from a larger intersubjectivity that might encompass the whole group. Interactions have not been reduced to the lowest common denominator, as in the mutual noise-making ties; shared emotion does not build up; and the climax of the stroke of midnight is given only perfunctory acknowledgment, immediately after which many participants say they are tired and want to go home. Successful rituals are exhilarating failed rituals are energy draining.
Is bodily presence necessary?
Ritual is essentially a bodily process. Human bodies moving into the same place starts off the ritual process. There is a buzz, an excitement, or at least a wariness when human bodies are near each other. Goffman (1981, 103) noted that even “when nothing eventful is occurring, sons in each other’s presence are still nonetheless tracking one another and acting so as to make themselves trackable.” From the point of view of evolutionary theory, humans as animals have evolved with nervous systems that pay attention to each other: there is always the possibility of fighting, or spreading an alarm; or, on the positive side, possible sexual contact and more generally sociable gestures. On the whole, the latter kind of evolved orientation toward positive interactions appears more central, since it helps explain why human bodies are so sensitive to each other, and so readily caught up in the shared attention and emotional entrainment that generates interaction rituals.
Yet isn’t it possible to carry out a ritual without bodily presence? In modern times we have long-distance communications: by telephone, by video representations such as television, by computer screen. Is it not possible to generate mutual focus and emotional entraiment through these media of communication? In principle, these are empirical matters that can be studied experimentally: we could compare the amount of shared attention and emotion generated by these various interactional media, and their outcomes in level of solidarity, respect for symbolism, and individual EE. In lieu of systematic evidence, I suggest the following patterns.
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Two further observations confirm the preference for bodily participation within an assembled group. After a particularly exciting or uplifting moment of vicarious participation, one wants to seek out someone else to tell about it. Thus, if one had been alone watching a game, a political election, or other engrossing public event, one wants to find someone else to share one’s excitement with. If the excitement is strong enough, it isn’t sufficient merely to tell the news, even in a loud, enthusiastic, repetitive voice. At peak moments of victory, or suspense followed by dramatic success, the excited viewer reaches out to touch, hug, or kiss someone. IR theory suggests testable details: the IR payoff should be highest in talking excitedly with someone who is also excited by the event; whereas viewers’ own enthusiasm for their experienced drama ebbs away proportionately if the person they try to convey it to is less enthusiastic, passive, or remains uninvolved.
The same pattern is visible in sports celebrations and in other victory celebrations, as depicted in the famous photos of kissing and hugging on the street at the announcement of victory in World War II. Sports victory celebrations are events of predictable intensity, since there is a regular schedule leading up to championship games. At peak moments, built up emotionally in proportion to the amount of tension through the series of previous contests, there takes place an informal ritual in which the players touch each other repeatedly while repeating a few simple words or cries of victory. The bigger the victory and the more the suspense, the more body contact, and the more prolonged contact: the range goes from slapping hands, to body hugs, to piling onto a heap of bodies at the playing field. This is a stratified ritual, since the fans would also like to participate not only with their voices but by getting bodily as near to the players as possible. They are usually prevented from approaching them, thus leaving the high degree of bodily contact as a solidarity ritual reserved for the elite in the center of the ceremony; the fans can only watch, vocally participate, and engage in some bodily contact with each other.
Another observation supporting the preference for bodily present rituals is that attendance at sports events and other mass audience occasions has not declined with the availability of television. This is so even though, for many sports, television provides a better view of the action and the details of the athletes’ performance. But people nevertheless prefer to go to the game, especially if it is a “big game” – that is a game in which the consequences are considered important and hence one can confidently expect to be part of an excited crowd. Watching on television is a second best if one cannot get tickets; and in that case, the preferred spectator experience – again, related to how much emotional intensity the game is expected to generate among its spectators – is to assemble a group of fans, a mini-crowd that provides its own resonance for building up shared excitement. Even for games that are routine – without important implications in the league standings, or other such significance – a large part of the pleasures of attending consists in just the moments when the crowd collectively builds up a sense of anticipation and its shared enthusiasm over the flow of events.
Games are rituals, contrived to produce situations of dramatic tension and victory; the rules of scoring and moving into position to score have been tinkered with over the years in order to make it “a better game” – which is to say, to provide moments of collective emotion. It is perfectly in keeping with such developments that sports emblems become sacred objects, venerated and treated with respect. Sports celebrities are themselves sacred objects, in just the same manner that Durkheim (1912/1965, 243-44) describes a political leader becoming an emblem for the crowd of which he is a center of attention […]. The overt intent of the game – to win victories by following certain rules of competition, or to display athletic skill – is merely the surface content. What motivates people to witness games is primarily the experience of being at a highly successful ritual: successful because it has been contrived so that the ritual ingredients will all be present to a very high degree, especially the occurrence of strong emotion in a setting where it can be amplified by bodily interaction within the crowd focusing attention on the action of the game. The leisure time of modern societies – since the mid-nineteenth century when a sufficiently large group of spectators became available, free from the constraints of household and work – has become dominated by this species of deliberately invented ritual, designed to provide moments of ritual solidarity that previously would have been provided by religion, warfare, or political ceremony.
Sports events do not have the same recognized status as other formal rituals, but are generally regarded as a form of play, of the non-serious part of the world. Nevertheless, they are eminently successful in providing high points of
