As clear an example of contemporary total art as I can think of (almost akin to religious activity), here are some fantastically non-transcendent, mass culture ideas for children's birthday parties. These are ceremonies often involving music, costume, ritual enactment of persona (popular characters), feast and prop-based transformation of a space. Yet the goal is self-consciously only to fill a couple hours: no invocation of a god or magical transformation is intended. The celebration is, of course, of youth (parties should become less elaborate as one ages): immortality for a culture without an after-life; immortality, that is, until it passes, and one reaches the mortal age of twenty-one and beyond.
The aesthetic borrows from other holidays and the attenuated symbolism of sentimentalism kept in circulation by trending activity of the publishing, toy and entertainment industries. One imagines if an ambitious parent dug up some ingenious theme for a celebration that was uncommon to a toy store's stock (dryads, kill-bots!), children would instantly smell the lie. What is held in common currency by children is what is expected and desired.
Rituals are games often involving prizes: junior gambling. All props are cheap, disposable and easily attainable from malls. Thus we have sound, set design, costume, arts and crafts, ceremonial ritual, consumerism, an occasion for snapshots, eating, gambling and compulsory participation all in one. If the event staged encouraged thought (in those ways art likes to: conceptualism, subversion, reflexivity, etc.), these little naive ceremonies would fail miserably; and moreover, make the host a bad parent.
Kid's Birthday Rental Equipment
Chuck E. Cheese Birthday Parties
Pink Cake Box: Extravagant Cake Creations
List
Chuck E. Cheese Birthday Parties
Pink Cake Box: Extravagant Cake Creations
List
"fantastically non-transcendent"! adore this post.
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