Parade, Celebration and Representation of Identity (Report‪)‬

In the world society, the wide spread of mass mediated spectacles and cultural sign values has created a variety of identities. Specifically, religious or patriotic celebrations provide alterative sites for the articulation of selfhood and migration of subjectivity from the constraining and secular worlds of everyday life. Consumerism plays a crucial role to combine serious politics and high religion to the more gratifying realms of leisure. Such consumption-oriented identities have become more salient to the person and more likely to provide him or her with various satisfactions. In this essay I will argue that political and nationalist subjectivity can be seen in terms of desire articulated through various artistic performances, rituals, parades, artifacts, ethnic ways and cultural displays on occasions of festivity, as they provide us with cultural identities and gratifying emotional experiences. I will argue for the centrality of the Chinese National Day parade and related activities for understanding relationships between identity and ritualistic performance. The celebration of Chinese identity through display and exhibition was rooted in historical legacies, but now is contextualized by globalized cultural observation. I would like to suggest that to understand the relationships between the historical legacies of Chinese culture and contemporary global culture, a useful starting point would be the examination of the organized liminal Chinese rituals and festivals. More specifically, I would like to focus on the 60th Anniversary of the National Day parade and themed evening gala that took place on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Less concern has attended other celebrating rituals and events that center on the National Day emotions elsewhere. Such a discussion of festivals and ritual activities speaks to the question of cultural identities. It is thus interesting to explicate the meanings and expressions of such identities in China. Just as "Hollywoodization" and "Disneyization" are central to American culture and identity, the National Day celebration stands as a central trope of modern Chinese identity. The latter is the most popular celebration with nation-wide celebrants across the country. The 60th anniversary parade is the most watched spectacle of the year, with millions of folks remaining glued to their televisions. The celebration has now been fully integrated into the globalized cultural economy.