Inauguration Day Analysis

January 20th , Inauguration Day for the President of the United States, is full of rituals. Some say that the Inauguration Day rituals are nothing more than pomp and circumstance. The rituals are just things that done, and hold no real weight or meaning. Frits Staal’s theory that ritual is meaningless, supports the opinion of those who see no value in Inauguration Day. Staal states that “performers are totally immersed in the proper execution of their complex tasks (484).” Total immersion means that the people carrying out the ritual, are not concerned with anything other than doing the ritual correctly. The focus is on form, and the ritual is void of any real purpose. If this idea was applied to the inauguration, then the president is only …show more content…
The president should always conduct himself or herself in a dignified manner and should always be respected by the American people. However, sometimes the president does things that are seen as undignified and also the president is never respected by absolutely every single American. This is where rituals, like Inauguration Day come in. “Ritual provides an occasion for reflection and rationalization on the fact that what ought to have been done was not done, what ought to have taken place did not occur (Smith 480).” This reflection also works in the present tense. It facilitates a mediation on the incongruences that exist in society. Inauguration Day creates a space for Americans to think about why the person taking office is not respected in the way that the person should be, and what changes could occur to bring about that idealized level of respect that a person of that social status should be given. Ritual facilitates this space for reflection by creating “a controlled environment” in which the ideal way of doing things may be displayed (Smith 480). During the inauguration, the president is constantly honored and shown a level of respect proper to the office that he or she holds. This is departure from the ordinary. The day before the inauguration the media and individual citizens criticize seating president and president-elect, and the day after the inauguration the criticism resumes. The day in between is filled with relflections on way the incongruity in treatment exist. According to scholar, Jonathan Z. Smith this is how “ritual gains force (480).” Ritual allows people to think about why the social order is out of sync with the way that social order is supposed to

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