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Major Event and Festival
Impacts
Lecture 11: Carnival
Dr David McGillivray
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Carnival as a Mega Event?
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‘Carnival’ itself has the significance of being considered as a ME - even if
individual ‘events’ do not qualify
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Carnival generates significant economic, political, social and cultural capital:
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Mardi Gras New Orleans has over $1billion impact on the city
Significant interest and media exposure and has mass popular appeal
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Millions of people populate Rio and New Orleans for Carnival/Mardi Gras
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Carnival contains elements of the ‘spectacle’ – sometimes opposing it and, more
frequently, reinforcing it as a commodified organising principle
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Carnival is a hotbed of identity display – of local, national and international scope
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Carnival is reflective of local, national and international value codes – it is on the edge
of local/global debates
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Carnival is global – it has a significance to many nations and has a global personality
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Carnival is participatory, for some – yet a passively consumed spectacle for others
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Carnival is the epitome of the non-modern/modern in action
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The Carnival in Context
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The oldest of all Western pagan festivals still observed today (Gilmore,
1998)
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“Carnival is, above all, inversion of the world as it is, a turning upside
down of things, a revolution in systems and order” (Caro Baroja in
Gilmore, 1998).
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Pre-modern, modern and post-modern:
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Local, national, international identities
Control and chaos
Power, privilege and poverty
Inherent quest for meaning: man/woman, child/adult, high/low, good/evil
Politics and problems of desire: libidinal energy vs reason
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Carnival is the outpouring of desire on a massive and collective scale
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Carnivals as ‘space of transgression’ (Fenton, 2007):
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Inverted hierarchies, temporary utopian spaces, opportunity for (relative)
freedom and recuperation
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The Carnival
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Reiterates the initial pagan nature of the Carnival then the placing of
Carnival to the Church and its timing - four days before Lent
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‘Mardi-Gras’ meaning Fat Tuesday
Final celebration before the fast, symbolic ritual of the Catholic Church
“The creative anti-structure of mechanized modernity” (Turner, 1983)
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BUT what ‘function’ does it play: controlled de-control
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Turner suggests that “it takes a great amount of order to produce “a
sweet disorder” (p118)
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Carnivals are subversive, apparently challenge the ‘rules, taboos and
boundaries that define the use of public space’ (Gilmore, 1998: 8) – e.g.
Venetian Carnival 1268
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Thus, the order and structure of play and fun is needed to create the
atmosphere for hedonism, relating to the rules of the game; mirroring
sport rather than political economic order
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Carnival also as experimental zones of sociability
‘Carnival is both revolutionary and reactionary, subversive and conservative at
the same time’ (Gilmore, 1998: 4)
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Carnival in Spain
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The banning of Carnival in Spain during the 1940s,
1950s and early 1960s led to Caro Baroja claiming
“Carnival is dead” in 1965
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It was re-kindled although under a new name of festival
or fiesta during the 1950s in some areas of Spain
(Andalusia):
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Franco era: political aspect of events
More rules, order and regulation were present
Managed pleasure: remember m/c rational rec
Carnival is lower class except in Rio, Venice and New
Orleans where the rich participate (Gilmore, 1998):
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Participation also structured: normalised roles/performances
Carnival is a ‘sense giving’ event, permitting reflection and
contemplation
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Mardi Gras in New Orleans
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Preserving traditions?:
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Krewes – social organisations embedded in ‘neighbourhoods’ and
‘communities’
Rituals and symbols enshrined within event
 Throwing Beads, Doubloons, King Cake, Royalty
Resisting commercial incorporation
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Maintenance of ban on advertising – now under pressure
Local interpretations/campaigns to retain Mardi Gras values
Evidence of religious anchor of festival being observed (e.g. Ash
Wednesday)
Special New Orleans Mardi Gras ‘spirit’ which acts against
commercialism
Acknowledgement from governing agencies that ‘tradition’ is the key
brand message of the event – so to compromise it threatens the
event’s future
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Mardi Gras in New Orleans
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Commoditised heritage
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Influx of the ‘tourist tribes’:
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Decline of social oriented Krewes in favour of ‘celebrity’ endorsed parades and
‘extravaganzas’, reduction in torchlight parades, commercialisation of the
‘rides’
Bourbon St and the French Quarter – the ‘real’ Mardi Gras or an inauthentic
invention?
Evidence of vicarious consumption of Mardi Gras, tourist arriving to watch
tourists participate
Mardi Gras World – the disneyization of Carnival
Regulating parades:
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Routes of parades moved to ensure greater health and safety and law
enforcement
Idea that the event is ‘not run by anyone’ – yet it is organised and exploited for
commercial gain
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Contested Identities in Mardi Gras
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Gendered identities:
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Racial tensions:
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Mardi Gras is a gendered event
Rituals associated with event create in Civil War time by a white male elite
Women now more visible in Mardi Gras but they remain visible in stereotypical
gendered roles
Gill (1997) argues that men behind the masks on the parade floats and at the Mardi
Gras balls have kept the spirit of the Confederacy alive
Artistry and erudition on Carnival displays conceal engrained racist attitudes (only a
few black Krewes) – segregated traditions
"Old-line krewes" and their affiliated luncheon clubs continue to exclude women,
blacks, Jews, people of Italian extraction
Class and social status:
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Krewes were for the elites (businessmen, politicians etc). A party produced by the
rich for the poor
Participation in Krewes (until recently) determined by status (invitation)
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The Carnival and Public Culture
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Roche’s concept of international public culture – megaevents helped play an important role in the dev., of both
national and international politics and culture in the West
from the late nineteenth century (Roche, p21)
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Expos and Olympics, but surely Carnival fits this model too:
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Carnival permits a coming together, a collective dialogue,
communication and expression of a distinct (and common) ‘cultural
identity’ - esp in post-Katrina New Orleans
The carnivalesque (Featherstone, 1999) increasingly
standardised/global: and, thus, undifferentiated
‘Festivalisation’ taking place in the experience/experiential economy
Through expos and Olympics public culture was
institutionalised in the early and mid-twentieth century
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Albeit often imperialistic and exclusionary: class, gender, race
This remains a problem in Carnival
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Development
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Development of the dramatological in producing and consuming the
Carnival
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With reference to expos in the late 19th and early 20th century, Roche
suggests
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“the need for a concept of events movements as forming a ‘performative
complex’ in modernity in which both national and international-level traditions
and ‘public culture’ are produced by elites through the media of dramatic and
large-scale events with the active involvement and participation of mass
publics”. P34
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The use of ‘tradition’ in forming public culture: with the active consent of
the audience – clearly evident in New Orleans
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Roche argues that th
expos, event movements and the cyclical nature of
them in the late 19 and early 20th century helped develop and create a
new level of international public culture (p38).
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The ability of these expos to create national cultural identity. This is also
present in the Carnival in Spain, Brazil and the US, but the cultural
celebration is also regionally represented and promoted