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FELICITY PAXTON Project title: "America at the Prom: Ritual and Regeneration" The central argument of my current project, "America at the Prom: Ritual and Regeneration," is that proms are mating rituals. Recognizing the extent to which this statement contradicts popular understandings of ritual as "primitive" and America as "civilized," I devote Part One of my study to a detailed examination of the ritual topography of prom night. In doing so, I show how "prom night" can be mapped using the taxonomies developed to categorize the rites of traditional societies--be they nations or minority groups within them. I begin by looking at the ritual space of the prom and demonstrating the remarkable practical and ideological consistency between how proms past and present have been "staged." Most notably, I show how fantasies of the Other have always been central to the manufacture of prom magic, a preoccupation that leads in interesting ways to the whole issue of ritual denial. I then look at ritual time and the paradox whereby the quasi-sacred status of prom-goers renders them free from everyday constraints yet subject to heightened surveillance on the part of group elders. These elder-efforts can and do backfire: where heavy surveillance is perceived as diminishing the ritual magic of prom night, students often redirect their ritual energy into unsupervised, high-risk, post-prom bacchanals. Here again, I argue, we see the strong links between prom night and the life-cycle rituals of so-called primitive cultures. Another key chapter in Part One looks at prom bodies, and how they are constructed and managed both before and during the ritual. Demonstrating one's ability to control one's body and suppress its animalism is, I argue, one of the most vital lessons of prom night. I look at how lessons on bodily decorum are taught by schools, by the media and by the friends and family of prom-goers. I then end Part One with an extended look at the prom as social-glue and I examine, in turn, how prom night helps cement relations within the following four groups: the senior class, the school, the local community, the nation. Part Two takes up the second part of the opening claim and looks in detail at the issue of "mating." I explore why it is that the mating function of prom night is so vexed for the culture, so much so that it is rarely acknowledged in official accounts of prom night. I suggest that the heterosexual imperative of the ritual is most evident in those moments of ritual "crisis." Accordingly, I look closely at the history of prom night "datelessness" as well as at American culture's fascination with demonic prom queens. A final section of my work looks at a relatively new prom phenomenon: the kindergarten prom. Invariably held in low-income, African-American neighborhoods, kiddie proms raise a number of important questions about the changing role of prom night in American communities.
“'Like a Haven:
Not Work, Not Home!' Ballet as Escape Ritual for Middle Class Working
Women"
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