Page - 19 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/02

18 | Anna-Katharina Höpflinger and Marie-Therese Mäder www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 7–21 The concept of the rite of passage was elaborated by Arnold van Gennep and published in 1909.22 He posited, based on ethnographical material gathered from Switzerland to Madagascar, a comparative structure for rituals of social transition and rituals of separation, a phase of liminality, and integration into the new group. This theory was popularized through the work of Victor Turner in the 1960s and since then has often been used, but also criticized.23 Ritual stud- ies expert Ronald Grimes argues, for example, that the ritual structure elabo- rated by van Gennep is too static. Grimes proposes the concept of “ritualizing”, defined as “the process whereby ritual creativity is exercised”.24 He places more emphasis than van Gennep on the fluidity of ritual. A wedding is, as we have seen, such a fluid rite of passage. It is both private and public, individual and col- lective, a commonplace event and something extraordinary and – as we argue – religious and secular. Even totally secular weddings are often linked through their ritual structure to religion. They are mostly more than simply the signing of a contract; they include something of a beginning, climax, and end, with mu- sic, addresses, vows, religious symbols such as rings that are exchanged, and expressions of “eternal” love. They often remained based on a ritual structure, and that structure is usually such that it connects them with current religious rituals. Linked to this ritual structure is the use of religious semantics in wedding rituals: religious rituals remain the common matrix for weddings, even secular ones: religious experts are asked to perform the ritual; religious symbols such as candles, crosses, and rings are included. Sometimes even a civil marriage cer- emony is performed according to the outline of a Christian wedding, with some- thing resembling a sermon given by the registrar and rings exchanged. Alterna- tive religious worldviews can play also play an important role on this semantic level, as we see in the example of the neopagan weddings with handfasting rituals that take place in Britain and the United States.25 Secondly, and in relation to the ritual and the semantic, weddings involve (or stage) extraordinary emotions. Media such as television, films, and the internet provide models for such emotional expression: the wedding day is staged as the “best day” in the life of bride and groom; (romantic) love is performed and sold as the most important thing in life. As a result something transcendental is involved. The love performed at a wedding is not common or ordinary. The ritual communicates love not as a hormonal condition but as something super- natural, with religious metaphors such as “immortal or eternal love”, “love of the soul”, “greatest happiness of life” used to express the special character of the moment and of the ritual. 22 Van Gennep 1975. 23 See Turner 1969; Houseman/Severi 1998, 170. 24 Grimes 1995, 60. 25 See, from an emic perspective, Kaldera/Schwartzstein 2003.