Ethnography

Walking into Barney’s Beanery feels more like I’m visiting a friend’s house than going to a bar. I climb the three or four steps onto an old wood porch and walk into what could have once been a small house in the Twenties. A fun, loud, energetic crowd beckons me in. Glancing to the right I notice a line of bar stools full of men and women sipping ice-cold beers. Looking ahead and to the left there are people sitting in multi-color booths chatting away with friends or watching the football game on one of the huge flat screens broadcasting in HD. Small red glass lights are hanging from the low ceiling and in white letters reads “Coors Light”. Antique license plates, rock 'n roll memorabilia, and posters of bikini-clad women cover the walls and ceiling. In the back corner of the room, I grab a table covered with cut out pictures of celebrities. If I walked to the back of the bar next the restrooms I could play Mrs. Pac Man and other games of a by-gone era.

The crowd feels comfortable in their surroundings, slightly intoxicated, and ready to flirt. Most of the guests are white, upper middle class in their 30s to mid 40s. The men seem dressed ready to relax and drink a few beers in their jerseys and shorts. The women on the other hand are dressed to impress in stereotypical “pick me up” outfits, perfect make-up, stylish heels, and without a hair misplaced. Smiles, laughter, and a bit of perfume drift out the windows into a pleasant Sunday evening..

I first notice an older hippie / 1980s rocker character standing near the pool tables chatting with anyone who pretends to listen. One blonde women in tight jeans and high heels -- 20 years his junior -- walks up with a pool stick and they start playing a game. It doesn’t seem to last long and she returns to her table and sits between two sophisticated looking gentlemen.

Right after she rejoined her clique, another group gets up to play pool. This crew is comprised of the same hippie dude, two slick young men, and a Latino blonde woman gather around the pool table to discuss who will be on whose team. The alpha male and the hippie start to argue about who gets to have the female on their team. I overhear the young man say “Look man, we all wanna to get laid tonight!” He ends up getting the girl in a tube top and mini skirt on his team. The smiles and touches are hard to miss throughout the game and up till the girl's victory.

While this was all unfolding, the table next to me is talking about the hot male television star of "Dancing With The Stars" which just walked in.  The men are putting him down while the women ooze compliments about his hair and muscles.

The last romance I witnessed was an older couple.  I hadn't previously spotted them, but noticed them when they stood up to leave holding hands. They were both well groomed probably close to being seventy, drunk, and intoxicated with beer and one another.

What do these observed interactions mean for our quest to define radical love?  Potential radical lovers have been tricked.

They all dressed, acted, and talked with the same fluidity I would expect if watching “How To Lose a Guy In Ten Days” or “Hitched”. It almost made me sad to realize my society has fallen in love with an image offered by media hypnotists.  We have been spooned fed a formula on how we should act in order to get “Love”. McDonald suggests “While most romantic comedies do not want to hint that the whole edifice of true romance might be as mythical as Santa, we as audience members, consumers, and film scholars need to remember that big business relies on our urge to make ourselves loveable through the consumptions of goods (make-up, shoes, underwear, grooming products, mood music, seductive dinners, and films). Hollywood is just one of this big businesses, and if we can accept that product placement in a film operates to sell more Coca-Cola and Nike products, why not also view the fantasy of romantic love as a product being no more subtly endorsed?” (p.15)

So, if the radical love that Hollywood movies are trying to push is just to sell products and help continue capitalism, then what is “radical romance”?

I recently read an article in “Yoga Journal” about a young engaged couple who in lieu of registering at the mall for gifts they encouraged their guests to give to a nonprofit school in Sarnath, India.  They raised five-thousand dollars and traveled there to serve the children on their honeymoon at this school that educates children who were once called the untouchable caste.  That's an radical romance.  To live our lives thinking about other people as more important than objects we desire.

                                              
                                                  Work Cited

McDonald, Tamar Jeffers. 2007. Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Genre. London
and New York: Wallflower.