Eclipse Parties and Bandwagoning
“Valley of the Moon” cropped collage
There was a solar eclipse today! At work we had an eclipse party (complete with moonpies, sunchips, and mocktail tequila sunrises) where we got to see, according to the U.S. Navy’s eclipse calculator, the sun at 87.1% obscuration. While I’d put seeing a partial eclipse at about a medium to medium high coolness level, I’m always excited national or global (positive!) group event.
The theoretical word for this is “shared effervescence,” or the" “intensely positive emotional experiences arising from participation in a large-scale collective event". I am ALL ABOUT a collective event. It’s the thing I miss most about the network era of television - that we all got to watch the same stuff at the same time and talk about it all together the next day. Nothing will ever be as fun as collectively watching Lost over its six season run with its cliffhangers and questions and discussions with almost everyone I knew.
Being a “bandwagon” fan of something is often scoffed at, but there’s a reason bandwagon fans exist — the bandwagon is where the shared effervescence is! If you see a bunch of people effervescencing, why would you not want to join? I’m not from Philadelphia, I don’t really like football all that much, and I have never been much of a Taylor Swift fan beyond liking some of her songs. This year, I made a Jason Kelce shirt to wear to watch the Chiefs- Eagles game with my husband and his family because I like being part of a zietgeist! It’s fun! I also spent an embarassing amount of time watching Taylor Swift Eras Tour concert livestreams because I had fun talking about it with my sister and watching all of the Swifties obsess over the secret songs every night. We usually talk about share effervescenes in terms of being inside of a crowd - but that energy can happen virtually as well.
(I just looked up this idea on google scholar to see if it’s been written about by any fan or music scholars yet because….. I’m incapable of thinking about an idea and not planning a research project I don’t have time to do)
I was hypeing up the eclipse party all day, to which some of my students responded that the eclipse wasn’t a big deal and why does anyone care? Because, and this is something I’ve had to learn as I’ve gotten older — it’s FUN TO CARE ABOUT THINGS IN GROUPS. Whether it’s getting into the eclipse hype even though you aren’t in the totality or making Eras tour friendship bracelets even though, tbh, you find Taylor Swift to be a problematic billionaire. I know, like, the logical endpoint to this is cults. But, ya know, there’s a reason we’re all so susceptible to them.
I come from a mixed-religious background, but was raised Jewish. So every year on Christmas, my mom would say we were “helping” my dad’s side of the family celebrate their holiday. And that’s how I reframe bandwagon-ing any fandom or interest. When was in grad school in Champaign, IL in 2016, for instance, I had the privilege of helping Cubs fans celebrate winning their first World Series in 107 years. We went to a bar to watch the final game. People were crying in the streets. It was incredible. I don’t even like baseball.
Anyways, that’s why I was excited about the eclipse.
In the wise words of Ariel (the mermaid),
“I wanna be where the people are. I wanna see, wanna see ‘em dancin.”