Queering Laughter in the Stockholm Pride Parade

Abstract

A n n a L u n d b e r g Summary: This article analyses the Stockholm Pride parade as an effective contemporary political stage, built on laughter and festivity. Taking its political point of departure in what is seen as being highly private and intimate, sexuality and the sexed body, the parade turns upside down one of the most central ideas of modernity: the dichotomy of public and private. Combining the theory of carnival laughter with queer theory, the article illustrates the way in which humour and politics work together in this contemporary blend of politics and popular culture.He is young and blonde, with rosy cheeks, bright eyes, and a well-groomed goatee. He appears to be happy, beaming in the sunshine. Slightly chubby, indeed florid, he looks like an old-fashioned Swedish impersonation of the very picture of health. Clothing: Swedish woman's traditional folk outfit, with blue ankle-length skirt, white blouse, and a colourful apron with traditional embroidery. He has dark blue stockings, and a traditional white bonnet on his head. Shoes: dark blue leather, of a sort you would describe as comfortable, usually worn by women over sixty. Looking at him, I think I too should look just like that in a traditional Swedish woman's folk outfit, although without the beard of course. He seems confident when he stares straight into my camera, loudly bursting into song: ''Hallelujah, praise the Lord!'' Placing one foot out in front of the other, grabbing the apron with a coquettish gesture, and at the same time giving the passing girl a flirtatious glance, he has completed the picture of carnival, and its jesting ambivalence. He is extrovert, he is excessive, he is prepared. Someone is giggling in the background. The parade of pride and joy can begin, and I am there to take part in it.

Festival Cities

“…While there are still more than seventy countries in which such parades or marches would be banned, the US-based Gay Pride Calendar lists no fewer than 393 annual Pride Parades worldwide, of which 178 are held in North American cities. 17 Although this listing covers events of widely varying size and with different client groups, almost all can be characterized as being double-edged 'parties with politics', political stages 'built on laughter and festivity' (Browne, 2007;Lundberg, 2007). On the one hand, observers emphasize the importance of Pride Parades as collective sites of ritualized community resistance that raise awareness of social injustice and discursively inform social meanings in everyday life outside the festival (e.g.…”

Pride Parades and LGBT Movements

“…While some regard emotions primarily as amplifiers of the above mentioned motivational logics, others point to emotions' standalone role in protest activities. While anger is perhaps the emotion that comes first to mind when thinking about emotions driving protest, some researchers have also emphasized the role of positive emotional states, such as fun in protest activities (Wettergren 2009) and Lundberg (2007) specifically points to the subversive role of laughter in Pride parades. In addition, it is not farfetched to assume that Pride parades should have something to do with the participants' sense of pride.…”

‘Normalized’ Pride? Pride parade participants in six European countries

“…Commemorating the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City, the first Pride demonstrations were held in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago in 1970 to publicly demonstrate and assert lesbian and gay identity and pride. The tradition has since travelled globally (Herdt, 1997; Lundberg, 2007: 173). Despite its origins in the USA, the tradition has become ‘translated’ into new contexts to suit different national and local settings (Adam et al., 1999; Browne, 2007; Calvo and Trujillo, 2011; Duggan, 2010; Enguix, 2009; Nardi, 1998; Robinson, 2012; Ross, 2008).…”