By Elihu Katz and Daniel Dayan
“By orchestrating the passage from a qualitative, selective participation in the ceremony to a quantitative, global one, television has created a remarkable historical or cultural artefact: the notion that one can attend the “whole of an event”. The experience of anybody who tries to attend a public event or ceremony constantly proves that “attending” means attending part of the event. One cannot view a procession from all vantage points unless one moves along with the procession (and therefore one loses one’s place), or unless one is part of the procession (and therefore totally unable to focus on it as a spectacle). You see an event from a given place, from a given distance and this place and distance tell you (and tell the others) who you are. In the case of the royal wedding, either you are in the church (that is, a guest of the royal family), or you are outside the church, and the conquest of a place with good visibility has to be paid for, in terms of waking up before dawn or sleeping on the pavement. As in the theatre, your distance from stage, your placement in regard to the centre of the event, is a very clear reminder of your place in society. (To use Benjamin’s notion, your distance from the event constitutes its “aura”.)
What happens with the introduction of television is that, in accordance with narrative structures and the exigency of continuity they introduce, everybody attends the whole of the event. Everybody attends, at least, something which is called “the whole of the event”. What seems new to us is this very notion of a totality of the event, a notion which seems inherited from the domain of a spectacle.
An event such as the royal wedding indeed presents itself as a string of smaller ceremonial units, featuring the same actors (the royal family, the newlyweds) but different audiences, and the dramaturgy of each of these units is an answer to the nature of the audience. What happens with television is that the distinctive self-presentations of the royalty to the different constituents of the British public are no longer conceptualized on the mode of “either/or”, but become available on the mode of “and/and”. The different groups now form one audience. The different sub-events now form one narrative (and one of the tasks of the broadcasters is to organize the rhythmic continuity, the unity of the performance). By turning the event into one spectacle, TV acts as a class equalizer: only the attendant audiences maintain the privilege of seeing only part of the event, thus experiencing their deprivation as its aura. However, the equi-distance introduced between the various segments of the public is compensated by a television-performed reintroduction of distance.”
Bonus: LinkedIn Post About A TikTok-Era Electronic Ceremony (Sophie Miller)
“Sofia Richie said ‘I want the wedding of the year’ and her PR team said, ‘YES M’AAM’ 💸💸
Any celebrity wedding is going to get a sprinkle of coverage…
A few pap pics and Vogue articles are pretty much a given when your dad is legend Lionel Richie, your sister is a 00’s icon, and your guestlist is a selection of Hollywood’s most established.
But *THIS* celebration had buzz the A-lister scene hasn’t seen for a HOT minute.
👉 +800k followers on Sofia’s new TikTok account in less than 6 days
👉 178M views on the #sofiarichiewedding hashtag
👉 Sofia Richie and related searches dominating Google top 10 search ranking worldwide for just over a week
👉 searches for Chanel, the wedding’s official designer partner, up over 300%Hotter than the Peltz-Beckham wedding.
Hotter Paris Hilton’s wedding.
And SO much hotter than any recent Kardashian celebration, despite dedicated episodes on their hit show on Disney+ and their combined social following of 500M+.
Sofia and the team did something others didn’t.
🌎 Invited the outside in.
It was more than just an extravagant ‘I do’ followed by a quick snap on Instagram.
It was…
💬 Guest encouraged to post in real-time.
🎬 A perfectly curated dress reveal in partnership with Vogue BEFORE the big day to give fans a treat, not a blurry pap pic.
💍 Super casual and scrappy, iPhone filmed get ready with me’s from the bride herself.
🌎 Released clips from bridal breakfasts and rehearsals showing Sofia and the bridal party just being giddy girls on their wedding weekend.
📱 Every product and outfit broken down in videos and captions for the ultimate ‘insider’ appeal.A groundbreaking approach? No.
A refreshing one? Yes.
Exclusivity’s out.
And so’s perfectly curated extravagance.
The rise of the normie continues 👋👀
(And so does my screenshot collection of dream wedding-scapes and 5 star venues I’ll never be able to afford)
Anyone else been *obsessed* keeping up with the wedding snaps this week?”
davidhadwen's website 