What is Reddit's opinion of Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy?

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> I would argue public events are still very commonplace today.

> Think concerts, sporting events, or parades.

Commodified, surely they exist. They used to be free entry, though, and totally fell out of favor in the 17th-18th century.

I'm just aware through secondary sources that this book apparently makes the case. Not sure how well it does it, though.

edit:

> A lot of parks will have free concert series, there are a lot of parades through public streets that are free to observe. Society has changed drastically since the dark ages, and so have the events. However, communal entertainment is still very much a thing.

Oh we don't really have a lot of that here in germany, and if we do, it's more of an excuse to sell related stuff than anything. edit: It's true that a lot of cool non-commodified community events are taking place online today, though.

Dancing in the streets is a wonderful read on how the opportunities to lose oneself have changed over time

I've taken a college course where this subject was the subject of multiple discussions. We referenced Barbara Ehrenreich's Dancing in the Streets (amazon link) and please someone correct me if I'm wrong since I've not read it in years, but she theorizes that the causes of the dancing plague is not unique to that period in time. For example, there is a movie named Joyeux Noel (imdb) where a spontaneous truce was called over the trench warfare during christmas.

Essentially, the theorized cause is lack of ability to collectively celebrate life with other people. Throughout history when human populations have no avenues to experience collective joy, spontaneous parties and dancing occurs. The current popular expression of collective joy is drama/theatre which celebrate tragic deaths and comedic rebirths.

What follows is my brief summary of her book according to my lectures:

Ehrenreich argues that the human need for dancing and merry making collectively have roots in our evolutionary history. Citing a theory that describes packs of early humans grouping up and dancing rhythmically for looking like a single organism to protect themselves from larger predators.

The topic of the college course (comic spirit) heavily related to dionysian ideas and Ehrenreich discusses how most human cultures have some form of dionysian or trickster archetype that encourages breaking down societal barriers. She notes that dancing and the shared feelings of letting loose accompany these celebrations across cultures. Hence, the main theory that dance is as basic to humans as humor or laughter. I'd like to expand more on her book but I've not read it in a while, but that's the part I remember that deals with the question directly.

The book has much information on the entire phenomena and I suggest you check it out if you want to find more sources.