Introduction: Consumerism, Romance and the Wedding Experience

Boden, Sharon

doi:10.1057/9780230005648_1

Cited by 27 publications

(72 citation statements)

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“…Working with industry, the recent invented status of modern-day wedding practices, while operating from the assumption of natural differences between marriage rituals, is fairly adept at servicing an exhaustive range of marriage rituals. Through the invocation of 'tradition', such rituals are transformed into a consumer rite (see Boden 2003;Freeman 2002;Howard 2006;Ingraham 2006;Otnes and Pleck 2003). Yet in South Africa, while many people do not marry formally or are more likely to live in numerous alternative arrangements, the white wedding is still pervasive within visual and popular culture.…”

Section: The Promise Of Happinessmentioning

confidence: 99%

The promise of happiness: desire, attachment and freedom in post/apartheid South Africa

Mupotsa

2015

Critical Arts

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This article examines wedding photographs. The wedding day is read as a staging of the achievement of desire and love, articulated through the use of space, objects and artefacts to project a vision of the self. The wedding ritual is not only framed by the presence of the camera, the gaze of the camera actually makes sure that the script is followed. This staging of romance is read through the notion of the 'bridal gaze', which places the figure of the bride at the centre of the achievement of fairytale romance and the promise of a future 'happily ever after'. The images and affects of happiness in these 'love plots' are implicated in processes of identification and subjectivation that rely on relations of the gaze and 'the look', logics of self-image and self-possession, and the ritualised performance of romantic love as a site of freedom. I argue that nostalgia is invoked as a narrative strategy in wedding photographs in ways that place wedding rituals and the photographs produced out of them in and out of time with the present. The promise of happiness shared by the individuals 'in love', and the audiences that share in the ritualised performance of it, reflect the desire for inclusion within the progressive narrative of freedom in post/apartheid South Africa and the recognition of its flimsy presence, absence, promises and failures.

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Section: The Promise Of Happinessmentioning

confidence: 99%

The promise of happiness: desire, attachment and freedom in post/apartheid South Africa

Mupotsa

2015

Critical Arts

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“…Moreover, Ehrman's observation that 'The fashion for white wedding dresses was encouraged […] by descriptions and illustrations of bridal dress which […] start to appear regularly in fashion periodicals from 1810-19' (2011: 45), around the time Brontë was born, enriches a reading of Jane Eyre's imagery of bridal wear, highlighting its cultural relevance at its period of publication. In Consumerism, Romance, and the Wedding Experience, Boden (2003) details the ways in which twentieth-and twenty-first-century bridal magazines similarly construct an ideal 'bridal role'. Indeed, it is because of the dress that Carrie receives after she participates in a bridal photo shoot for a magazine that her wedding fails.…”

Section: The Popular Tv Showmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Labels or love’: The problem of the white wedding in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Sex and the City: The Movie

Varadi

2015

Film, Fashion &Amp; Consumption

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This article looks at the failure of the white ‘fairy-tale’ wedding in both a protofeminist and a post-feminist text (Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Sex and the City: The Movie, respectively). It suggests that the pressure put on brides by the wedding and fashion industries – to have a lavish ceremony and an expensive designer dress – threatens the independence and identity of both Jane Eyre and Carrie Bradshaw. This threat is exacerbated since both women are marrying men who have been married before. The failure of their lavish wedding ceremonies is due to problems that arise from consumerist bridal ideals; the threat to female identity can only be eliminated by a second, ‘quiet’ ceremony that allows Jane and Carrie to enter into marriage outside of the consumerist ideology behind traditional weddings. The article concludes that the representation of ‘fairy-tale’ weddings and bridal fashion in the popular print media constitutes an ongoing feminist problem since the eighteenth century until today: there appears to be a continued consumerist push towards ‘spectacular’ ceremonies, which forces brides to choose between ‘labels or love’, and threatens the authenticity of marriage.

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“…Cherlin (, p. 857) argues that marriage is now less influential in shaping people's lives, yet wedding ceremonies are not becoming smaller and less significant to couples. Instead, “[couples] generally want a ritual‐filled wedding.” Boden (, p. 89) studied consumption in British weddings and found that couples used consumption to make their weddings romantic and to represent the importance they place on their relationship. Purchases to create a fairy tale fantasy, including carriages, flowers, and the dress, are defined as romantic, rather than purely the quality of the couple's relationship or the actual moments of getting married.…”

Section: Marriagementioning

confidence: 99%

All Our Stuff: Families and Consumption

2015

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In this article, we provide a different lens through which to understand how we evaluate family relationships. There is general consensus that family relationships, whether between adults or between parents and children, should be rooted in love and caring. But how do we evaluate love and care? We review of literature that shows that consumption and commodities are key criteria through which we determine the quantity and quality of the love and care in family relationships.

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Introduction: Consumerism, Romance and the Wedding Experience

Cited by 27 publications

References 0 publications

The promise of happiness: desire, attachment and freedom in post/apartheid South Africa

The promise of happiness: desire, attachment and freedom in post/apartheid South Africa

‘Labels or love’: The problem of the white wedding in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Sex and the City: The Movie

All Our Stuff: Families and Consumption

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