Introduction
Like all other aspects of life, the practice of celebration in the 1980s was impacted and transformed by the 1979 revolution. The revolution sought a new system and structure, striving to eradicate the pre-revolutionary societal norms. The practice of celebrations, also altered by the revolutionary atmosphere. The revolutionary government aimed to infuse life with new meaning and shape by transforming celebratory practices. As a result, celebrations originating from ancient Iranian traditions were marginalized, while religious ceremonies were given prominence. Additionally, efforts were made to align the traditional and familial celebrations in accordance with the revolutionary values and new official order.
Nevertheless, traditional and popular celebrations persisted in new circumstances. As policies became more and more stringent, restricting music, and dance, these festivities found their way into private settings. Over time, people found innovative ways to maintain the sprit of joy alive in their celebratory practices despite restrictions on music and live performances. They managed to infuse their events with vibrancy and joy, transcending the constrains of rigidity and austerity in a creative ways.
Materials & Methods
This qualitative research benefited from a mixed methods approach. To investigate the significance of traditional weddings, the researcher conducted eight in-depth interviews with individuals who had celebrated their weddings during the 1980s and three more in-depth interviews with two musicians and a photographer as professions closely related to celebration practices. The data was enriched by analyzing content from following Instagram pages: "Dahe Shast, Dahe Haftad", "Ghadimestan", "Aroos Ghadimi" which included a total of 48 posts and 192 photos and videos depicted ceremonies from the 1980s. To understand the governmental perspective on celebrations and the stance of official institutions, archival materials such as speeches, images, and press articles were examined.
The aim of this article is to explore the experience of celebration in everyday life during the 1980s and to address this fundamental question: In what contexts can we contextualize the essence of celebration in this area?
Discussion & Result
The seemingly mundane world encompasses a vibrant array of experiences (Highmore, 2011). Despite being composed of elements of repetition, habits, and uniform routines that make life possible, everyday life is rich in creative and inventive experiences. Celebrations, as creative spaces in everyday life, simultaneously serve as realms of resistance and dynamism within the monotonous order of life. Celebrations also express collective emotions in everyday life. In this sense, celebrations can serve as a window to comprehend everyday life. In the study a compilation of the concepts of "Everyday life", "Creativity and Resistance" and "Cultural Feelings" from the theory of cultural studies was utilized.
Following the revolution, celebrations originated from pre-Islamic culture of iran were sidelined and overlooked. The government aimed to strip traditional elements from the celebrations and realign them with religious and sacred spaces. Nonetheless, through creativity and dynamism, family celebrations persevered, retaining their vitality and adapting to a new context. While the dominant discourse emphasized abstention from extravagance, the trend toward simplicity in celebrations was more driven by the poor economy and the austerity of the wartime era than by a mere rejection of extravagance. The war, with all its miseries, had consumed the displaced people, depleting their resources and livelihoods. The collective emotional experience during the celebrations was varied and contradictory. People were experiencing a spectrum of emotions, with fear being the predominant one. The emotional range observed during the celebrations could be classified into categories including "apprehension over ceremonial mishaps,"," "subterranean pleasure," "shame of dancing and joy," "anguish from ostentation," "covert behavior," and "feelings of distrust."
Conclusion
During the eighties, through government intervention in manipulating celebratory spaces, a dualistic form of governmental vs popular celebration emerged. On one hand, the "dominant" type of celebration characterized by features like "eliminating and marginalizing traditional celebrations", "linking the celebration to religious and sacred spaces", "simplicity and avoidance of embellishments", "being Halal and steering clear of sinful and frivolous atmospheres". On the other hand, the "popular" form of celebration thrived on aspects like innovative expressions in celebrations, the retention of essential celebratory components like music and dance, covert activities that took celebrations underground, and a communal sense of elation and engagement in the secular celebration.
in this decade, celebrations acted as small havens and conduits of resilience in life. They symbolized creativity and innovation in the face of prohibitions, rigidity, inflation, and a coupon-based economy. Through engaging in celebration, people crafted their own tailored moments alongside official calendar events and demonstrated resistance and diversity in their celebratory behaviors, refusing to conform to the dictates of the official culture. The celebratory experience of the sixties can be described by the following themes: “removing, marginalizing and capturing celebrations influenced by political affairs”, “supervising on celebration and monitoring in public and private space”, “popular creativity and celebrations”, “simplicity enforced on celebration affected by economy of war” and finally "the experience of contradictory emotions in celebration".
Celebrations acted as both a means of enhanced governmental control and an escape from the societal apathy prevalent in a culture marked by extreme tendencies towards monotony, weariness, and dismissal of worldly affairs. While celebrations increasingly highlighted the mundane aspects of life, the government sought to sanctify them to a divine realm through manipulation. It could be argued that in the sixties, celebrations had become a battleground and a site of cultural struggle.