Place on Parade: Consumerism and Disidentification in the Parade Genre

Abstract The American parade has been investigated in terms of how it transforms urban streets into a place where collective memory and identity are consolidated along lines of class, race, ethnicity, and gender (Ryan; Roach). However, the role of the rural parade has heretofore seen little critical analysis. Since any conception of the urban relies on the rural as a foil, we wonder how the American parade, existing in both urban and rural landscapes, promotes and challenges the unchecked expansion of cosmopolitan culture and dominant ideology. This article examines how the parade genre functions as a civic ritual that seeks to unite individuals through nationalism and consumerism, yet may paradoxically become a stage for political dissent. By juxtaposing performances from the Bread and Puppet Theater at the Fourth of July Celebration in the rural town of Cabot, Vermont, and Tony Sarg’s “upside-down marionettes” in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, I theorize how conventions of the parade work to inculcate spectators with a sense of group identity. I argue that these same conventions lay the foundation for political dissent, via a process that José Muñoz calls disidentification, to propose (and at times enact) alternatives to dominant ideology.