(no subject)
Today: another day of too much Go and not enough writing.
After my last post, I said that I wanted to talk about tradition. Here's where that came from:
The morning after Daniel's bachelor party, I was heading up to campus for a lab meeting and ran into Steve, one of my labmates, on the bus. He and Daniel are acquainted, so I played the "you'll never guess what I did last night" game and told him a bit about the previous night's festivities. Steve's comment was "So what makes that a bachelor party." He did admit however that the "bachelor parties" tended to similarly simply be all-guy festivities that preceded a wedding.
Now for those of you who wisely bailed on the ramble of the previous post, here was the top secret list of activities: target shooting, dinner, bail on improv comedy show, shoot some pool instead. Now even before the event, there was some tongue-in-cheek talk about target shooting being a suitably manly sort of thing to be doing. I didn't catch how the shooting pool plan came about, but especially given that I won 4 out of the 5 games I played - I can infer this much: This is not a crowd that plays much pool. Alternately, maybe I was just the only one remaining vaguely sober. Anyway, I got the impression that the selection of both these activities had a strong element of 'we are supposed to do this' as opposed to 'this is what we want to do'. This was reinforced when I talked to someone who pretty much said 'well, how is that a bachelor party? what's the point?'
I'm not saying people begrudged this, or didn't have fun. And, of course, had that really been the approach to planning it, we would have had a lot more hookers and blow or at least a stripper. But that's kind of the interesting bit - why does someone clearly willing to reject tradition, compromise to it, merely for it's own sake.
A few answers come to mind:
-This sort of tradition can lead you to things you wouldn't otherwise do. And there's the whole wisdom of the ages thing.
-Engaging in unusual activities enhances the distinctiveness and memoribility of the event.
-Others may be upset that the forms and covnentions are not followed. In fact, notice that the person I quoted above seems a bit put off by the failure of this event to be what s/he considered a proper bachelor party - even though she wasn't in any way involved. This is interesting in the way that it puts a face on cultural norms. It's not just violating the wills of abstract "thems" - there's always specific individuals that comprise the faceless mass.
Oh, by the way, my answer to 'what's the point?' was basically that it gave some of the groom's closer friends a chance to spend some time with him - which was going to be difficult to do at the wedding itself. In fact, it occurs to me that there are a couple other things worth touching on here. One is that bachelor(ette) parties are about friends and peers. Whereas the wedding proper tends to be more about family. The other related point is that it gives those friends a chance to celebrate away from the family in what let's call an age appropriate way and not have to worry about what the grandparents think. This might help explain why I think we're seeing an increasing number of couples who have a joint bachelor/ette party. It's not really about purging the things you won't be able to do once you're married - it's just about a party without the parents, nieces and nephews.
After my last post, I said that I wanted to talk about tradition. Here's where that came from:
The morning after Daniel's bachelor party, I was heading up to campus for a lab meeting and ran into Steve, one of my labmates, on the bus. He and Daniel are acquainted, so I played the "you'll never guess what I did last night" game and told him a bit about the previous night's festivities. Steve's comment was "So what makes that a bachelor party." He did admit however that the "bachelor parties" tended to similarly simply be all-guy festivities that preceded a wedding.
Now for those of you who wisely bailed on the ramble of the previous post, here was the top secret list of activities: target shooting, dinner, bail on improv comedy show, shoot some pool instead. Now even before the event, there was some tongue-in-cheek talk about target shooting being a suitably manly sort of thing to be doing. I didn't catch how the shooting pool plan came about, but especially given that I won 4 out of the 5 games I played - I can infer this much: This is not a crowd that plays much pool. Alternately, maybe I was just the only one remaining vaguely sober. Anyway, I got the impression that the selection of both these activities had a strong element of 'we are supposed to do this' as opposed to 'this is what we want to do'. This was reinforced when I talked to someone who pretty much said 'well, how is that a bachelor party? what's the point?'
I'm not saying people begrudged this, or didn't have fun. And, of course, had that really been the approach to planning it, we would have had a lot more hookers and blow or at least a stripper. But that's kind of the interesting bit - why does someone clearly willing to reject tradition, compromise to it, merely for it's own sake.
A few answers come to mind:
-This sort of tradition can lead you to things you wouldn't otherwise do. And there's the whole wisdom of the ages thing.
-Engaging in unusual activities enhances the distinctiveness and memoribility of the event.
-Others may be upset that the forms and covnentions are not followed. In fact, notice that the person I quoted above seems a bit put off by the failure of this event to be what s/he considered a proper bachelor party - even though she wasn't in any way involved. This is interesting in the way that it puts a face on cultural norms. It's not just violating the wills of abstract "thems" - there's always specific individuals that comprise the faceless mass.
Oh, by the way, my answer to 'what's the point?' was basically that it gave some of the groom's closer friends a chance to spend some time with him - which was going to be difficult to do at the wedding itself. In fact, it occurs to me that there are a couple other things worth touching on here. One is that bachelor(ette) parties are about friends and peers. Whereas the wedding proper tends to be more about family. The other related point is that it gives those friends a chance to celebrate away from the family in what let's call an age appropriate way and not have to worry about what the grandparents think. This might help explain why I think we're seeing an increasing number of couples who have a joint bachelor/ette party. It's not really about purging the things you won't be able to do once you're married - it's just about a party without the parents, nieces and nephews.