There's a bit of a keffufle in Manchester at the moment about a procession that is being organized by the artist Jeremy Deller. It's part of the Manchester International Festival and Deller wants the procession to reflect the city of Manchester, and so he's wanting to include a float with 'unreprentent smokers' on it smoking and also some boy racers!
The MEN is outraged, and I received a email yesterday from a friend, who is a councillor, canvasing option as to whether Manchester City Councillors should lobby 'against it or is it a legitamate piece of art'.
My take on it is that it is a classc piece of trickster art and is a great example of the roles that carnivals and mardi-gras' play in upholding the social order that is currently in place. Lewis Hyde explores this theme saying that:
'The stock anthropological and literary understanding is that carnival celebrations, despite their bawdiness and filth, are profoundly conservative. Especially in highly ordered and hierarchical societies, carnival reinforces the status quo because, first of all, it provides the exception that proves the rules'.
So, should the councillors lobby against it...no, of course not they should celebrate it as it upholds the social order that they are part of. Perhaps they should even celebrate it and seek to include more taboo things as by include the taboo the status quo is upheld.
