The Festivalization of Culture

Jodie Taylor, Andy Bennett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317031864
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The Festivalization of Culture explores the links between various local and global cultures, communities, identities and lifestyle narratives as they are both constructed and experienced in the festival context. Drawing on a wide range of case studies from Australia and Europe, festivals are examined as sites for the performance and critique of lifestyle, identity and cultural politics; as vehicles for the mobilization and cementation of local and global communities; and as spatio-temporal events that inspire and determine meaning in people's lives. Investigating the manner in which festivals are no longer merely periodic, cultural, religious or historical events within communities, but rather a popular means through which citizens consume and experience culture, this book also sheds light on the increasing diversity of contemporary societies and the role played by festivals as sites of cohesion, cultural critique and social mobility. As such, this book will be of interest to those working in areas such as the sociology, consumption and commodification of culture, social and cultural geography, anthropology, cultural studies and popular music studies.

PART I
Lifestyle, Identity and Cultural Politics

Chapter 1
Festival Spaces, Identity, Experience and Belonging

Andy Bennett and Ian Woodward

In the current literature on festivals, significant emphasis is placed on the importance of the festival setting as a space for the articulation, performance and rediscovery of identity (Aitchison and Pritchard, 2007). According to some festival researchers, a pivotal quality of festivals in this respect is their liminality. As liminal spaces are removed from the more mundane process of everyday life, it is argued that festivals offer opportunities for experimentation with identity and the articulation of identity politics that may often be less feasible and acceptable – and in some cases socially circumscribed – in everyday settings. Thus, as Dowd, Liddle and Nelson (2004: 149) observe, ‘Drawn together from geographically dispersed locations and away from the expectations of everyday life, fans and performers can immerse themselves in a particular culture and experiment with different identities’.

Although this facet of the festival has arguably become more prominent in recent times due to the increasing diversity of festival events on a global scale, the importance of the festival as a space within which to experiment with identity is by no means limited to the late modern experience. Indeed, according to Bakhtin (1984), types of public gatherings that predate the contemporary festival have long served as spaces for the negotiation of more regulated aspects of everyday life. Focusing on fairs, carnivals and similar events that took place during medieval times, Bakhtin argues that a key attraction was the particular types of experience that they afforded participants to engage in revelry, hedonism and other forms of anti-hegemonic behaviour not generally regarded as legitimate forms of social conduct in everyday life. An associated attraction, suggests Bakhtin, was the significance of such public gatherings as spaces for the articulation of alternative, liminal forms of identity; he maintains that such unbridled sociality was what gave these public gatherings their distinctive quality as spaces of celebration and escape from the mundane, orderly nature of everyday living. The temporal opportunities given to individuals to step outside of their more routinized identities and engage in unregulated forms of behaviour – for example, excessive drinking, loud singing, lewd behaviour and so on – was as important for the well-being of citizens as it was for ensuring the maintenance of social order through providing opportunities for ordinary individuals to ‘let off steam’. Similar qualities can be identified in the contemporary festival. In addition to the relatively unregulated forms of individual and collective experience that are afforded by the liminal characteristics of the festival, it is also the case that festivals offer opportunities for encountering other types of social and cultural difference, through various forms of sensual and embodied experience based on engagements with different tastes, sounds, forms of dress and behaviour, and cultural norms.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, and as demonstrated by several of the chapters in this book, researchers of contemporary festivals often see connections between Bakhtin’s interpretation of medieval carnivals and the contemporary festival setting. At the same time, though, it is important to note that there are a number of critical differences between the kinds of events now categorized as festivals and the types of public gatherings focused on in Bakhtin’s work. Indeed, as the chapters in this book illustrate, the concept of the festival is increasingly complex and bespeaks a highly diverse range of themes, issues and tastes in a global context. By their very definition, festivals today are highly organized and commodified events targeted at particular – and in some cases quite niche – audiences. They are a perfect opportunity to achieve both economic and cultural economies of scale; economically, the mega-festival is able to collect and present a range of performers within a space or a site over a limited time period, offering economies of scale in terms of cultural production. Moreover, the possibilities for cultural aggregation are great within festivals, and this is part of their attraction for both producers and consumers: the opportunity to coalesce, play together, find synergies and enrol different consumers, experiences and cultural tastes. This is potentially good business for festival organizers. Similarly, the settings for festivals can be quite diverse, spanning dense areas of urban population (see Fredline, Deery and Jago 2005) through to greenfield sites (McKay 2000) and, in cases such as Nevada’s Burning Man Festival, remote desert areas (Bowditch 2010). Thus the contemporary festivalscape is, in many respects, quite removed from the more spontaneous forms of public gathering that took place during pre-modern times. At the same time, however, many of the same qualities seem to connect the gatherings of historical festivals and those taking place in the present day. This is particularly evident in the way that festivals allow for the playing out – including the representation, performance and celebration – of particular expressions of socio-cultural identity.

The forms of identity politics at play in the contemporary festival scene are as diverse as the scene itself. In each case, however, a critical function of the festival is to allow a collective representation, a collective celebration and, in many cases, a collective outpouring of a commonly articulated form of socio-cultural identity. Music festivals are a clear case in point in this respect. Thus, in the context of an Indie rock festival, the physical space of the festival is predisposed to the collective articulation of an indie aesthetic (Cummings 2006). The soundscape of the festival is constructed through the live performance of well-known and upcoming indie rock bands, whose presence and the music they create are embodied by the audience through dancing and singing along to the music and through collective shows of appreciation for the bands’ performances. As Cummings (2008) argues, it is through such collective involvement in and contribution towards the production of the indie festival experience that fans acquire cultural competencies instrumental to the construction of a legitimate indie identity.

In addition to taste-based and stylistic competencies, music festivals are also spaces that lend themselves to the exploration of political sensibilities – particularly when these are bound up with alternative ideological standpoints. McKay (1996) observes that there is a strong historical link between music festivals in this respect, running back at least as far as the mid-twentieth century when the free jazz festivals of the 1950s meshed musical taste with participation in social movements such as CND (see also McKay 2004). By the mid-1960s, this relationship between music, politics and anti-hegemonic identity had consolidated itself through the rise of the hippie movement (Bennett 2001, 2013a). The music festival became a nodal point for the articulation of the hippies’ alternative ideology with the 1969 Woodstock Music and Arts Fair being a signature event in this respect (see Bennett 2004) – one that has since become highly mythologized and deeply romanticized, through its representation as the swansong of the hippie counter-culture (Street 2004). Held during a time of growing racial and political tension in the United States – the latter being tied largely to the US government’s foreign policy, including the ongoing deployment of soldiers in Vietnam – Woodstock was advertised as three days of peace, love and music. In addition to heavy rock bands, the festival also featured a number of acoustic folk balladeers of the time, notably Joan Baez and Arlo Guthrie. This combination of the rich variety of music featured at Woodstock, the greenfield site chosen for the event (in Bethal, upper New York State) and its relatively peaceful nature (even as the audience swelled to an unprecedented 460,000 people) chimed well with the aesthetic of the hippie era. Laing (2004) accurately suggests that Woodstock became the template for the commodification of the music festival. Equally, however, the event became a critical template for the aestheticization of the music festival; much of the aesthetic understanding of the relationship between music, politics and identity that manifested itself at Woodstock has flowed through to similar music festivals – large and small – that have emerged in the ensuing years, notably the annual Glastonbury festival in Somerset in the United Kingdom.

Festivals and Lifestyle

In addition to their significance as spaces for the acquisition and articulation of identity, festivals are also linked increasingly to various forms of lifestyle. As societies in developed regions of the world become more diverse in terms of lifestyle orientation, taste and political outlook (Chaney 2004), this has been mirrored by the global festival scene. Indeed, such is the diversity of the contemporary global festival landscape that an ever-expanding range of lifestyle tastes and preferences are now accommodated into a variety of different festival settings. The concept of lifestyle has its origins in the work of Weber (1978), which challenged Marx’s model of economic determinism through positing emergent practices of consumption and leisure during the early twentieth century as new modes for the demonstration of wealth and status. Weber’s ideas were further developed in the work of Veblen (1994) and Simmel (cited in Frisby and Featherstone 1997). In more recent times, sociologists such as Giddens (1991) and Chaney (1996) have drawn on and significantly developed the concept of lifestyle as a means of theoretically conceptualizing the ways by which individuals reflexively appropriate and reinscribe objects, images and texts from the cultural and media industries as everyday resources. Chaney, in particular, has posited an elaborate theory of lifestyle sites and strategies as a means of mapping the way in which forms of consumption underpin the aestheticization of everyday life. Thus, according to Chaney, lifestyle sites and strategies refer to the ways in which individuals creatively rework the cultural resources at hand into their everyday lives as physical and symbolic markers of identity and taste.

As the festival genre continues to expand, many of the themes featured and focused on in festival settings draw in increasingly specific ways on patterns of lifestyle and taste that have long since become embedded in everyday culture. Obvious examples here include festivals based around music, art, literature and food. Although each of these festival types typically draws a different kind of audience, what links them is the fact that each effectively accentuates – and indeed celebrates – a particular form of lifestyle project through using a collectively shared assemblage of images, objects and texts as an occasion for sociality. The liminality of the festival space thus takes on another level of significance: as a site for the convergence of individuals whose shared lifestyle preferences generally are articulated at an individual and perhaps quite subtle, if not subliminal, level. Festivals therefore produce a temporal, yet highly visible and in some cases inherently spectacular, display of commonly shared lifestyle preferences.

An interesting example of this is seen in a rapidly expanding sub-genre commonly referred to as the nostalgia festival. Transcending the conventional blend of music, food and merchandise, the repertoire of such festivals typically extends to a range of other generationally marked icons, such as classic cars, period fashion and various retro or reproduction consumer accessories associated with the era celebrated by the festival. A pertinent instance of this is the annual Wintersun festival, held every June in New South Wales, Australia.¹ In the case of Wintersun, the focus for the collective celebration of nostalgia is the rock’n’roll era of the 1950s and early 1960s – and in particular, the music, dance and cars associated with this era. A three-day festival, Wintersun showcases an elaborate mix of live rock’n’roll music (including a highly popular Elvis impersonators competition), dancing, memorabilia stands and a vintage car procession. The festival began in the 1970s, adopting its 1950s/60s theme in 1988. Wintersun has since become an important meeting point for a trans-local scene (Peterson and Bennett 2004) of rock’n’roll fans – old and young – who share a deep investment in this musical genre. Travelling interstate from various regions of Australia, and to a lesser extent overseas, fans converge at the Wintersun festival to collectively revive the spirit of the rock’n’roll era in a space dedicated to this effort. Their attachment to rock’n’roll music and its broader cultural milieu is manifested through a variety of media, most notably the carefully reproduced fashion of the era worn by people of all ages who attend the festival. In providing a space for this collective celebration of the rock’n’roll lifestyle, Wintersun takes full advantage of its temporary appropriation of an urban space. Streets and parkland areas become settings for live music performances, dancing, street stalls and vintage car exhibitions. Local venue spaces and bars provide additional space for the festival and also allow it to carry on into the evening when noise restrictions and cooler temperatures constrain the outdoor activities enjoyed during the day. Examples of similar festivals can be seen elsewhere, both in Australia (for example, the Kurri Kurri Festival) and elsewhere in the world (for example, the UK festival Shake, Rattle and Roll).

As noted earlier, in common everyday parlance, festivals such as Wintersun are often referred to as ‘nostalgia’ events – a seemingly accurate descriptor, given the way in which they function to draw together distinct, generationally bonded audiences to collectively engage in taste and consumer practices acquired during their youth. Arguably, however, the term ‘nostalgia festival’ fails to capture in any wholly meaningful sense the nature of the festival experience for those participating. Thus, rather than merely celebrating a collective representation of the past, ‘nostalgia’ festivals may also play an important role in helping festival-goers to define their individual and collective identities in the present. Indeed, for many of those who attend such festivals, the critical draw would appear to revolve not around the rehearsal of a lifestyle generally confined to memory – or a chance to relive one’s youth – but rather the opportunity to participate in a gathering of like-minded individuals whose collective investment in the cultural texts and artefacts on display at the festival are part of their ongoing lifestyle project.

The merging of lifestyle choice and festival destination also takes on a range of other dimensions, settings and contexts. St John’s (2013) highly instructive work on eclipse festivals, for example, examines the global cult of the eclipse chaser, who seeks out opportunities to experience total solar eclipses as they occur in different parts of the world. These individuals are motivated by a range of different lifestyle orientations and ideologies that typically blend elements of green ideology, neo-paganism, astrology and earth mysteries. Taking some of their inspiration from the large greenfield-site rock festivals of the late 1960s and early 1970s, eclipse festivals continue to embody the ‘hippie’ spirit of the latter, updating this for a new, younger audience through the inclusion of electronic dance music and state-of-the-art special effects utilizing digital media. A rather more sedate, yet equally distinctive, set of lifestyle sensibilities and tastes is catered for by food and wine festivals (Hall and Sharples 2008). Providing opportunities to savour and consume a range of different foods and wines from around the world, such festivals are becoming increasingly popular among educated, middle-class audiences, for whom these festivals form part of a cosmopolitan lifestyle.

Again, there has been an interesting convergence between food, drink and music in more recent years, with the increasing popularity of wineries as locations for rock and pop concerts featuring classic rock and pop artists from the 1960s and 1970s, such as Leonard Cohen and Patti Smith. As the baby boomer audiences for such artists have reached middle age and achieved financial independence, their lifestyle preferences and habits have grown in ways that reflect their taste and status. As Bennett (2013b) observes, a new range of lifestyle options and marketing strategies have emerged in response to this. In this context, the winery rock gig seamlessly combines a desire on the part of the boomer generation for a more relaxed and comfortable setting in which to enjoy their favourite music artists, while invoking a memory of the outdoor, greenfield rock festival experiences of their youth.

Festival Spaces of Exchange and Encounter

Aligned with, but also extending beyond, literatures on lifestyle and the cultural turn, recent bodies of research have focused on the diversification of portfolios of cultural consumption, whereby people’s preferences are becoming less bound to hierarchical and narrowly channelled consumption tracts, instead opening up to possibilities for different consumption experiences. Over the last decade or so, literatures on cosmopolitanism have proven themselves a promising tool for rethinking the transformative implications of such social engagements across cultural, geographic and social borders, and within and across scales of social interaction from the local to the global. Cosmopolitanism is defined partly by the diversity of its meanings, and in our reading there are three main skeins in the literature on cosmopolitanism, emphasizing institutional, political or cultural dimensions. At its most macro level, cosmopolitanism refers to an ambition or project of building regimes of global governance, and legal-institutional frameworks for regulating events and processes that have impacts beyond any one nation. At a political level, cosmopolitan is a democratic principle referring to a position or principle, emphasiz...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I Lifestyle, Identity and Cultural Politics
• Part II Local and Global Communities
• Part III Spatial and Temporal Narratives
• Index