Ethnography

DISCLAIMER:
This ethnographer approached her surroundings prepared to perceive the interactions that reveal romantic threads between people, at the expense of all the innocent single humans wandering around that infer these observations do not construct the majority. But I can write with confidence that they do construct the behavior of the majority of romantic couples in a natural foods grocery store on a Sunday evening.

WHOLE FOODS MARKET- VENICE, CALIFORNIA
Romance is In the Air

In my observations I made note of various couples' age, dress, conversation rate, ease of smile, and physical closeness. The first portion of my ethnographic activity was located at the lunch tables near the registers. This allowed me a unique look into the behavior of people with each other during money exchanges. Numerous times there were perfectly typical scenarios in which the couples, almost exclusively heterosexual, middle-class fashion, one-third bi-racial, would breeze through the checkout line with well-paced conversation, pay for their bill - equivalent ratio of men and women - and leave smiling with each other. An equal number of couples waited in line silently, seeming to wait out the social obligation that comes with eating nowadays.

I glimpsed a few notable moments of coupledom in passing. There were at least three heterosexual pairs in which the fashions were indistinguishable from each other, uniformly asexual. For example, one in an upturned Polo collared shirt and jeans, the other in a long-sleeved plaid shirt and jeans. In this case the woman had the confident assurance that is usually associated with masculinity, and the man seemed happy to submit to the direction of the woman.

Other couples, ranging anywhere from the ages of early twenties to late fifties, sat in silence, staring into space past each other as they ate, or looking at their phones. These people would leave the table often walking many feet away from each other. There were two couples where the female took up all the time talking, but the man was mono-syllabic and put in minimal effort to maintain appearances. This struck me as an uncanny similarity to Maggie and Brick's relationship in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." (1955)

Since this particular grocery store has a wine bar, I thought it would be a shame for me to not determine a few behavioral differences between standing in line versus standing in wine. I was not disappointed to find the differences were marked.

There was one duo in particular that caught my attention. They were in their late fifties to early sixties, and they had their arms around each other the whole time they were picking out a bottle of wine. They were dressed for the evening and staring at each other in a way usually reserved for teenagers.

A conversation began with two strangers sitting nearby. The woman almost immediately dropped the information of her divorce, and though the man was not interested, she kept creeping into his personal space. He was not completely disregarding of her, and they had an interesting conversation about how the modern age will no longer produce the stacks of love letters she recently inherited from her grandparents.

I believe that I chose a good place to observe based on Raymond Williams' suggestion that culture be explored in terms of the "identifications and forms of culture" (Barker, p.45). This cultural marker represents the idea that cultural products and their purposes and forms generate and express meaning. The idea that such a high ratio of couples spend their Saturday evening in a high class grocery store tells me the symbology of the object, food, and their sharing of a meal, oftentimes can represent their union over consumption. I believe that food and alcohol are two of the biggest cultural identifiers in American culture, and targeting them led me to rich and interesting observations.

People behave differently depending on the stage that is set for them. In the wine bar area, people were more apt to open up on a personal level and discuss aspects of culture with strangers in a way they wouldn't with each other or cashiers by the registers. perhaps the couples that were eating outside at the tables would have been more intimate had they been eating over a glass of wine. It is impossible to judge romantic success by observation of conversation, but nonetheless the rate of conversation and intimacy was more frequent over wine despite the physical arrangement being identical. So if we are truly determined by our surroundings, then the arguments of Stuart Hall (Barker, p. 219-220) regarding the "postmodern subject" are spot-on. This movment is described as when "the subject assumes different identities at different times...Within us are contradictory identities, pulling in different directions..."(p. 220) By observing the differences between public behavior at casual lunch tables and an intimate wine bar, the idea that we are constructed by culture is certainly demonstrated by this ethnology.

In my specific observation location, a liberal beach town, the demographic reflects one of the most forward thinking areas of the world in regards to race, sex, gender, and feminism. In particular I was able to recognize postmodern feminism as described by Weedon (Barker, p.224). He argues that "sex and gender are social and cultural constructions that are not reducible to biology". This is known as an "anti-essentialist" stance, a position that defines masculinity and feminity as inessential "universal and eternal categories" (Barker p. 224). When considering these modern ideas against Simone de Beauvoir's radical, critical, attacks against society and women, particularly the "master/slave relationship" (Beauvoir, "The Second Sex": Intro) her ideas can appear harsh and outdated. I observed in these romantic contexts that women's opinions and ideas could be openly expressed and considered. This was not at the expense of the men's voice-I observed them also being perfectly capable of letting go of the stigmas that come with masculinity.

As a superficial example, in the case of the couples that I referred to as having "androgynous fashion", neither bore any negative consequences to the arrangement. In fact, it felt refreshingly healthy in their contexts. Perhaps this is attributed more to their cultural acceptance in their context as opposed to a strong self-identity, but their relationship is nonetheless constructive. As the women didn't feel pressure to go through the pain rituals of beauty, the men weren't concerned with posturing to feather their stamina or virility. They seemed comfortable and loving without posing to conform to a rigid ideal.

But even in couples that honored the traditional formulas of sex and gender were sweet and intimate with each other. The classic chivalry of yesteryear was prevalent in many couples, and a fifty-fifty ratio of these couples were biracial. Considering that biracial or androgynous romance today in other parts of the country would never be openly celebrated for fear of violent ridicule makes this particular observed community remarkable.

I'd like to use these observations to respond to a remark in the text 'Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre' by Tamar Jeffers McDonald- "[Romantic] films do not just reflect reality, they help to create it too...a closer look at what the underlying ideology of the romantic comedy wants to foster in its audiences indicates why film studios go on and on providing fairytales for adults." (p. 17) This ties in with one of the tenants of Althusser's philosophy of social formation via ideology, arguing that a subject does not create its own agency, but is an 'effect' of structures (Barker p.63). I agree that fiction helps shape reality, but I disagree directly with McDonald and indirectly with Althusser that it is the film studio providing the fairytale to the reality. If the fantasy didn't resonate with a genuine part of a person's reality it wouldn't be successful. I believe that it is the audience that hopes, yearns, begs to have their fantasies justified and reinforced by the media they consume.

There was enough observational evidence to suggest that although two people would spend time together, they were not necessarily interested in each other the way a romantic comedy would lead us to believe. Have these couples subscribed to an alternative ideal- perhaps the ideal that love does not exist? In their own realities, I am certain they prove the rule. But what of the couples that exude happiness, intimacy, dare I say, romance? A less happy couple might predict that their love is fleeting, temporary, that soon enough they will tire of each other and find someone else. But this is not what the loving couple wants to believe, and it is not what a romantic film portrays. It is in attempting to live up to the ideal that is created, and it is the ideal that we replicate in our fantasies. Just as we dream our filmic war heroes are noble and well-intentioned, just as the virgin female victims of horror films are the ones to triumphantly survive, and just as the fictional underdogs get that winning punch at the last moment, there is a repeat frequency of recreating idealism in cinema. Ideologies are not created as direct models of reality, but as concentrations of the best aspects of our reality to display as attainable goals. Who's to say the odds of attaining the ideal is common, or easy? For most of us, it's about the journey of attempting.

Supermarket Wedding

WORKS CITED

1. Barker, Chris. "Questions of Culture and Ideology." Cultural Studies Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2008. Print.

2. Williams, Tennessee. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. New York: New Directions, 1955. Print.

3. McDonald, Tamar Jeffers. "Romantic Comedy and Genre." Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre. London: Wallflower, 2007. Print.

4. Beauvoir, Simone De. "Intro to Feminism." Introduction. The Second Sex;. New York: Knopf, 1953. Print.