international news _ 17th January, 2007
Ravers Banned From King’s Forest
Text by Jonty Skrufff (Skrufff.com)
Five revellers who hosted an outdoor party in woodland near Elveden, Suffolk
have been banned from entering Thetford Forest for a year, after pleading
guilty to ‘carrying on an unauthorised licensable activity’ in Bury St
Edmunds magistrates' court.
The five young men (aged between 17 and 26) admitted hosting a rave in
Thetford Forest (also known as the King’s Forest) last year, and were also
banned from attending any other unlicensed music events for 12 months,
“This is extreme thoughtlessness,” district judge David Cooper said on
passing sentence, “It causes sheer misery to a large number of people who
live in dread of just these sorts of events, which ruins their peace of mind)
and tranquil lives.” (Norfolk news website EDP24
The Judge’s contempt for raves reflected the analysis of acclaimed US author
Barbara Ehrenreich, who appeared on US radio station NPR.org this week
chatting about her new book 'Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective
Joy.’
The radio station described the book as ‘a history lesson on why humanity
engages in large, ceremonial celebrations and why the upper classes have
tried — and often still try — to suppress it (collective ecstasy)”
encapsulating neatly rave’s continuing outlaw status.
“When the phenomenon of collective ecstasy entered the colonialist European
mind, it was stained with feelings of hostility, contempt, and fear. Group
ecstasy was something "others" experienced — savages or lower-class
Europeans,” Ms Ehrenreich explained in a detailed analysis of traditional
partying.
“The essence of the Western mind, and particularly the Western male,
upper-class mind, was its ability to resist the contagious rhythm of the
drums, to wall itself up in a fortress of ego and rationality against the
seductive wildness of the world,” she said.
“In fact, the capacity for abandonment, for self-loss in the rhythms and
emotions of the group, was a defining feature of ‘savagery’ or otherness
generally, signalling some fatal weakness of mind.”
The lower order roots of revelling were also addressed in the Guardian this
week, in a feature examining modern binge drinking which quoted Russian
writer Fyodor Dostoevsky’s recollections of witnessing Londoners partying on
Saturday nights 150 years ago.
“They stuff themselves and drink like animals ... They all race against time
to drink themselves insensate. The wives do not lag behind their husbands
but get drunk with them; the children run and crawl among them,” he wrote.
“It is like a biblical picture, something out of Babylon, a prophecy from
the Apocalypse coming to pass before your eyes."
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