Not Just Sex That Sells: Religious Rhetoric and References in Contemporary Beer Branding

Although explicit references to religion are rare in the marketplace, pictorial representations and rhetoric evocative of religious figures and concepts manifest a unique strategy in contemporary American beer branding. By reflecting societal views, prejudices, and preferences, advertising provides an enclosed narrative of how people think and in turn illustrates the way in which society is structured. This phenomenon discredits the assumption of a strict separation between the secular and the sacred. Beers with religious connotations do not monopolize the market but they do constitute a significant phenomenon in the modern beer industry. Religious references in beer branding often participate in the commodified authentic and cultivate an image of a nostalgic past through idyllic portrayals of monastic brewing. Alternately, beer branding via religion may employ irreverent, blasphemous, or offensive representations. Both the idealized and the indicting representations acknowledge a disparity between the real and the ideal in society. Alcohol’s association with Bacchanalian abandonment of social strictures enables recognition of the contradictions in the professed social order. Yet, in Constructive Drinking, Mary Douglas identifies “drinking as a medium for constructing the actual world” and an exercise in asserting a society’s classifactory schema. The promotional material for beer vividly illustrates the way in which alcohol dually serves to shatter and renew the system and social order. Scrutiny of the two poles of religious representations described reveals that both reassert a hierarchy of humanity and regenerate the reigning social order despite popular recognition of its inconsistencies and its flaws. 1 Douglas, Constructive Drinking, 9. Not Just Sex that Sells: Religious Rhetoric and References in Contemporary Beer Branding drinking customs, running from the sacred to the profane, from silly to serious, have long reflected our values, our beliefs, and the trends in our societies. Beer is as old as civilization 2 As a marketed commodity, beer uses advertising to influence consumers’ beliefs. Branding aims to bolster the individual’s opinion of a beer. In the United States, most beer is purchased in bottles. A large percentage of the cost of a bottle of beer is invested in marketing and promotion. Bamforth and other researchers have also found individuals’ professed preferences for Budweiser, Miller, or Coors are determined more by their product perceptions based on labeling than by discernible differences in taste. Similarly, Bamforth’s foam perception studies illustrate that an individual’s evaluation of a beer is not dependent upon his or her palate: “[p]eople drink with their eyes.” Because the techniques employed in beer branding are so influential in determining consumer behavior and attitude, they warrant academic attention. Aside from advertisements borrowing transcendent imagery in order to imbue “an object with an aura of sacramentality” to persuade the potential consumer, the domain of religion seems wholly separate from that of the marketplace. Seemingly, “most marketers realize they wouldn't have a prayer if they made overt religious references in their advertising.” Like the separation of Church and State, the rituals and taboos of American capitalism seem to necessitate a separation of commerce and church. Mary Douglas’s statement that modern rituals “create[s] a lot of little sub-worlds, unrelated” suggests that religion in the marketplace would be “matter out of place” within the presiding conceptualization of purity and pollution. Yet incidents of religious iconography and symbolism in beer branding surface: Buddha’s Brew, Rye-Zen-Shine, True Believer Tripel, Purgatory Pilsner, Herkules IPA, and A Mash Made in Heaven are all brews that are currently marketed. Such branding infers that alternate motives motivate these depictions beyond mere appropriation of religious rhetoric. For European beers, one may conjecture that this phenomenon derives from a historical connection: many once religious breweries that were later secularized may retain traditional nomenclature in order to cultivate an affiliation with local history and retain branding consistency. However, the use of religious iconography also emerges in the United States despite a lack of monastic history. Many denominations that arose in the United States ban or hold significantly negative attitudes toward alcohol. This attitudinal orientation in Mormonism, the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and Christian Science makes connections to Christian imagery and rhetoric in contemporary American beer branding seem perplexing. To investigate the underlying reasons for these allusions requires perceiving how they are developed and portrayed. 2 Protz, Roger. “Drinking Customs.” Ed. Oliver, Garrett. The Oxford Companion to Beer (New York: Oxford UP, 2012), 299-302. 299. 3 Bamforth, Charles. Beer Is Proof God Loves Us: Reaching for the Soul of Beer and Brewing (Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press, 2011), 22. Bamforth, Charles. Beer: Tap Into the Art and Science of Brewing (New York: Plenum, 1998), 5-6. 4 Bamforth, Charles. Beer Is Proof God Loves Us: Reaching for the Soul of Beer and Brewing (Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press, 2011), 72. 5 Sheffield, Tricia. The Religious Dimensions of Advertising (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006), 3. 6 Kryhul, Angela. “Hold the Angels: Despite an Increased Interest in the Supreme Being, Overtly Religious Ads Don't Have a Prayer.” Marketing Magazine 105.9 (Mar 2000): 9. 7 Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger (New York: Routledge, 2002. Rpt. 1966), 85. Invocations of religious references in beer branding frequently entail mythologizing intimations of the past. As an antithesis, beer branding may also project an irreverent portrayal. From the premise that advertising reflects societal values and dynamics, one may infer that these images convey societal attitudes about religion just as advertisements reflect social conceptualizations of gender roles. Religious allusions in beer branding delineate an understanding of society, its past, its place, and its future. Two different motifs emerge regarding Christian religious references, which are particularly prevalent in beer branding. Discerning the import of these motifs requires consultation of the allusions developed in beer branding as well as brewing history and food theory. In Constructive Drinking, Douglas declares “drinks [in addition to serving as temporal markers] perform the other task of ritual. They make an intelligible, bearable world which is much more how an ideal world should be.” Each perspective exhibits dissatisfied sentiments regarding the social order but similarly reveal an impetus to emulate and venerate positions of status; these expressions do not appear to culminate in an overthrow of the existent social structure. The imagery in this promotional material—in both satirized and romanticized depictions—reasserts a hierarchy of humanity. Happy Hour, Miller Time: Contextualizing Beer in Social Symbology and Food Theory Compounded with probing of how advertising reveals underlying social attitudes, a preliminary but cursory evaluation of alcohol’s relationship in society assists one’s understanding of the tenets conveyed via the food item, alcohol. Rather than being a passive participant in biological mechanisms, food signals a message towards the world. Mary Douglas states that food symbols function on a higher plane than those from other categories (such as dress) that can serve as signifiers of social structure. Because it is digestible, food is not simply a metaphor but can represent an actual transference of one thing’s properties to fundamentally change the state of the individual. Other scholars have agreed with this understanding. Michael Dietler further elaborates upon “the transformative process of ingestion into the human body. Hence, it [food] has an unusually close relationship to the person and to both the inculcation and the symbolization of concepts of identity and difference in the constructions of the self." Roland Barthes also conveys this point in “Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption,” in which he shows how, within a cultural context, “superabundant [food] substances are also institutions. And these institutions necessarily imply a set of images, dreams, tastes, choices, and values [...] Sugar is a time, a category of the world.” In this way, food performs a preparatory role in “‘if-then’ entailments.” From the presence of food (sugar), one can infer the social expectations in the setting. “Miller Time” and “Happy Hour” provide particular temporal guidelines that instruct an individual’s response and behavior; alcohol decodes and promotes the expectations and purpose of the setting. Joseph Gusfield presents a theory of alcohol’s message in modernized, industrial society. Alcohol is associated with ‘play’ [the spontaneous activity during ‘leisure’ time] which is starkly segregated 8 Ed. Douglas, Mary. Constructive Drinking: Perspectives on Drink from Anthropology (New York: Cambridge, UP 1989), 11. 9 Dietler, Michael. “Alcohol: Anthropological/Archaeological Perspectives.” Annual Review of Anthropology 35 (2006): 229-249. Web. Accessed 3 June 2013. JSTOR, 232. 10 Barthes, Roland. “Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption.” Food and Drink In History: Selections from the Annales of Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 5. Ed. Robert Forster and Orest Ranum. Trans. Elborg Forster and Patricia M. Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979): 166-173. 11 Barthes, 167. 12 Douglas, Mary, “Standard Social Uses of Food: Introduction, 1-39. Ed. Douglas, Mary. Food as Social Order (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1984), 22. from settings of ‘work’ today. The end of the workday corresponds with a change in mood and a transition into modes of comportment different from work behavior. Alcohol serves as a “social lubricant” fosters social solidarity and cohesion. Contemporaneously, alcohol allows individuals to say what they think: in vino veritas— Bacchus and Bacchanalian rituals typify alcohol’s common connection with relaxed social conventions—yet Mary Douglas points out that the “social order cannot stand too much veritas.” Acceptance of alcohol in many societies may be ascribed to the malleability of its effects. Compared to the pharmacological effects of entheogens and other psychoactive substances, alcohol intoxication upon consumers seems to be more subject to manipulation by psychosocial forces than intoxication via other substances. The pharmacological effects of ethanol are not strictly biological but partially depend on specific cultural understandings of drunken comportment: that is, what people do/how people act when intoxicated. Alcohol is socially sanctioned because its effects are more pliable to cultural prescriptions and proscriptions for drunken comportment and consequently more compliant/amenable to existent social order. Other psychoactive substances are more unpredictable and uncontrollable and thus present a greater threat to the social order; alcohol and allowed deviance from the social order enables the social order to remain otherwise stable and continuous. Alcohol consumption provides the freedom to deviate from the abiding social structure in a way that is still socially acceptable. The Nostalgic Past: Idealization in the Commodified Authentic In accordance with the high incidence of vivid visual imagery within nostalgic past advertising, references to saints, monks, and other religious figures or concepts often paint idyllic images of a bygone era. Tasting books such as Heavenly Beer: A Taster’s Guide to Monastery Tradition Ales and Lagers appeal to this type of nostalgia. In Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia, Fred Davis illustrates how nostalgic images of the past characterize particular views of the present. Romanticized images of the past demonstrate dissatisfaction with modernity. Nostalgia “juxtaposes the uncertainties and anxieties of the present with presumed verities and comforts of the lived past.” Invocations of the nostalgic past frequently dwell upon early associations between religion and beer. Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess affiliated with beer brewing, has inspired the nomenclature of a brewery from Oregon owned by women. Historical Belgian custom to name strong ales after the devil and tripels after saints inspired the name “Saint Satan” which was drawn from these conventions. Several breweries market a seasonal beer described as a traditional Lenten beer, and the “Craft Brewing Company” in California prominently features a monk on each of their labels. These connections may be overlooked as sheerly incidental: religion is incorporated into beer branding because there is an intrinsic link historically. The religious rituals of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and 13 Gusfield, Joseph R. “Passage to Play: Rituals of Drinking Time in American Society,” Constructive Drinking, 7390. 14 Douglas, Purity and Danger, 83. 15 Health, Constructive Drinking 28-40. 16 Muehling, Darrel Dl. And Sprott, David E. “The Power of Reflection: An Empirical Examination of Nostalgia Advertising.” Journal of Advertising 33.3 (2004): 107-122. 111. Web. Accessed 25 June 2013. 17 Protz, Roger. Heavenly Beer: A Taster’s Guide to Monastery Tradition Ales and Lagers (London: Carroll & Brown Limited, 2002). 18 Davis, Fred. Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia (New York: Free Press, 1979). 19 Davis, 141. Egyptians and “the longstanding tradition of monasteries as centers of beer production" all offer interesting stories to pique consumer interest (a boon in advertising) and serve as fruitful fodder for linking one’s product with quality. But this dismissal undermines the significance embedded within the representations and their link to history, the product, and the consumer. Branding that invokes “St. Something” insinuates fastidious attention and heedfulness which culminates in a superior product. In her discussion of the Benedictine motto ora et labora (‘Pray and work’), Deborah Vess succinctly encapsulates the modern perceived connection between quality control and monastic care. “[W]ork is a form of prayer, so Benedictines treat everything as if it were Christ himself. Whatever one touched should be transformed into a holy vessel for God’s work.” The imagery of medieval monasteries thus evokes a powerful, effective, and motivating message. This narrative of monastic craftsmanship does hold some validity. Monastic life freed its members from some of the stressors of medieval life such as food insecurity, pursuit of personal property, and individual obligations to reigning leaders. Ability to devote time to brewing, greater security in maintaining adequate supplies, and a subsequent higher capacity to experiment with brewing techniques and recipes made monasteries wellrenowned for their brews compared to those produced by their non-monastic contemporaries. Even the unreligious or the apathetically religious may reflect upon the monks as those who invested their product with devotion and care that was consistent with their preoccupation with Higher Things. Religious references in branding implicitly assert the transcendence of these brews above the overly-industrialized yields of mass-producing breweries. These allusions to religious brewing correspond with a narrative abasing the industrialization of beer in subsequent periods of history. These quality-evaluations juxtapose the “self-product” from the “Other-product”: the beer distributed by “big beerhemoths.” The rhetoric sets up an antagonistic dichotomy of the “Corporate Pig-Dogs vs. Enlightened Beer Drinkers.” Branding that invokes the nostalgic past makes monastic origin equivalent with brewing acme. The large national breweries’ beer that holds significant shares of the market is implicitly represented as inferior product manufactured for profit rather than deriving from a passionate objective to express craftsmanship. References to beer’s religious heritage goes back to a period before “the ‘big guys,’ who seem to be, for some folks, the devil incarnate.” The takeover of brewing by entrepreneurial spirits in the succeeding ages of ale houses, saloons, and taverns is associated with greater amounts of additives, adjuncts, and adulterants added to beers. The dichotomous depiction of the beer industry (dividing breweries along lines of “big” and “micro”) asserts an identification of capitalism’s preoccupation with profit. Whereas ‘big beer’ concerns itself with profit, microbreweries devote themselves to craftsmanship. Since larger breweries cater to a wider audience, they are also less likely to invoke explicit religious references and more likely to “play it safe” with more conventional branding techniques, so religious allusions are used to differentiate from big beer. Moreover, depictions of medieval Europe, an exemplar of hierarchical status politics, insinuate that it is ‘natural’ to have individuals to look up to (and for 20 Dietler, Michael. “Alcohol: Anthropological/Archaeological Perspectives.” Annual Review of Anthropology 35 (2006): 229-249. Web. Accessed 3 June 2013. JSTOR. 241. 21 Vess, Deborah, “Monastic Moonshine: Alcohol in the Middle Ages,” Ed. Robinson, CK. Religion and Alcohol: Sobering Thoughts (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), 152-153. 22 O’Brien, Christopher Mark. Fermenting Revolution: How to Drink Beer and Save the World (Gabriola Island: New Society, 2006), 82. 23 O’Brien, 108. 24 Bamforth, C. Beer is Proof God Loves Us, 63. them to be wealthier and more well versed than one’s self, who desires to emulate them). Consistent with other endeavors to define one’s self and one’s inclusion in a group based on food consumption, the imbibement of nostalgia-inducing beers differentiates the self from the “Other” who consumes mass-produced beer. Here, one aligns one’s self with quality. Advertising implies that the products’ attributes transfer to the consumer, and thus drinking quality beverages signals taste and membership in a prestigious group of connoisseurs and gastronomes. The nostalgic past portrays religious figures (monks particularly) as knowledgeable informants to consult; their opinion is esteemed in determining which beverages are more gourmet. The process of obtaining Westvleteren XII, one of the most esteemed and sought beers in the world, through the brewery’s highly regulated phone lottery system and vehicle verification during pick up furthers an elitist dimension in contemporary beer branding. To imbibe superior beer is to elevate one’s status in the hierarchy of humanity and the echelons of the craft beer movement. Utilization of the nostalgic past frequently incorporates instructions regarding correct consumption of the beer purchased. Many beers that market themselves by quality include a recommended serving temperature on their labels. Other beers may not have a label that is prominently featured: bottles of Westvleteren XII do not have a label at all, and many brewery websites picture their beer in appropriate glassware. Branding by not branding asserts a defiant opposition to modernized means of selling products primarily through persuasive advertising. Contrasted with the prominence of bottle labeling in many depictions, an unidentifiable beer in a bottle proclaims that the beer’s taste is superior. This message is particularly poignant for craft beer enthusiasts who disdain drinking from the bottle as an inferior experience; thus, to present the product in appropriate glassware is to assert that one is knowledgeable and proficient in beer brewing. The development of the Trappist appellation, indicative of a beer’s origin, also exemplifies this nostalgic technique. The label ‘Authentic Trappist Product’ becomes exclusionary and thus bespeaks for a possession of quality beyond that attained by other beers. The Trappist appellation seemingly appears to restrict abuse of nostalgic past, but it develops a link between the current product and tradition that is not entirely accurate. Outka and Jhally also explore the phenomenon of commodifying “traditional” brewing practices and the relationship between the commodified product and authenticity. Contemporary Trappist brewing recipes differ from traditional medieval recipes. Achel, for instance, has a higher alcohol content than medieval Trappist beers. This divergence reveals a tension with the historical past and the breweries’ propagation of a nostalgic image that, while not accurate, fulfills the purposes of the brewery. As with all nostalgia, this propagation of the nostalgic past is selective in its memory. Branding dependent upon the nostalgic past may wander into the realm of fabrication in order to present a more compelling narrative. The popularity of the inaccurate English IPA origin story exemplifies the persuasiveness of mythologizing. Romanticized representations of religiosity ignore contemporary political strife and also overlook bureaucratic elements of monastic life: centralized structure; bulls, statutes, and ordinances; and standardized mandates and 25 Outka, Elizabeth. Consuming Traditions: Modernity, Modernism, and the Commodified Authentic (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009). Jhally, Sut. The Spectacle of Accumulation: Essays in Culture, Media, and Politicis (New York: P. Lang, 2006). 26 Jones, Kendall. “Happy IPA Day! Here’s a Blast from the Past.” Washington Beer Blog. Web. Published 1 Aug 2013. Accessed 1 Aug 2013. Brown, Pete. “India Pale Ale” Ed. Oliver, Garrett. The Oxford Companion to Beer (New York: Oxford UP, 2012), 482-486. prescriptions for individuals’ behavior. Nostalgic allusions to monasteries deny the corporate and corporeal aspects of medieval monastic realities, especially the scabrous aspects. As articulated by Henry Taylor in The Medieval Mind, “[p]ractice always drops below the ethical standards of a period.” Elements of the rapacious, profiteering medieval Church are excluded from the accounts insinuated by beer branding. One of the more remarkable outlying aspects of this marketing technique is its neglect of the monastic attitude towards beer. The Rule of Benedict, written in the sixth century, provides general guidelines for the operation and management of monastic communities. Chapter 31 (“What Kind of Man the Cellarer of the Monastery Should Be”) bespeaks to the importance of the position and its duties within the monastic life. However, later chapters reveal that beer was often accepted only as an inferior drink to wine and was drunken in its stead primarily in its absence. Chapter 40 (“On the Measure of Drink”) in the Rule of Benedict explains that monks would ideally abstain from wine altogether but allows for limited consumption: wine is by no means a drink for monastics; but since the monastics of our day cannot be persuaded of this let us at least agree to drink sparingly and not to satiety, because ‘wine makes even the wise fall away’ (Eccles. 19:2). Corroborated by other sources such as monastic histories, this chapter reveals that medieval monks demonstrated a consumptive preference for wine: beer was rather a beverage to be consumed begrudgingly if wine was not available. This beverage preference is consistent with food’s function as a signifier of status and membership in the community. Wine was affiliated with wealthy individuals, and this beverage preference amongst monks (many of whom were drawn from the nobility) demonstrated their desire to be continually associated with the class of their birth. This explanation does not appear to be widely utilized, a trend that attests to Douglas’ observation that “[c]omparative religion has always been bedeviled by medical materialism.” Likewise, the materialist explanation for high rates of beer consumption during the medieval period [tells about modernity] while fallaciously attributing materialist explanations for historical incidents and preferences. Many scholars assert that medieval beer drinking emerged because water was unhygienic and likely threatened disease such as typhus and cholera. Although lacking scientific accounts for why, medieval people are credited with noting the pathological risks of water consumption were negating when it was brewed into beer. Due to boiling, which kills germs, beer was immune to spreading these contagions and thus was deemed safe to drink. However, other reports of water’s use in beverages discredits this narrative. Breweries at the time often expressed particular interest in obtaining supplies of clean water. Thus, even if medieval society did not have knowledge of pathogenicity and the causative agents (bacteriological contaminants in water) inducing sickness and death, they had enough sense and empirical observation to deduce that “dirty” water—deemed by proximity to industrialized villages or businesses dumping its waste, characteristics of cloudiness, rather than in quantitative measurements of ppm of germs and bacteria—was to be avoided. Water was often used to dilute 27 Lawrence, 156. 28 Taylor, Henry Osborn. The Medieval Mind: A History of the Development of Thought and Emotion in the Middle Ages. Fourth Edition (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1959), 369. 29 Regula Benedicti (RB). Web. Accessed 11 June 2013. 30 Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger 36. 31 Unger, Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 5. (or ‘baptise’) wine even amongst the highest echelons of society. ‘Diluting’ was hence not a means of being frugal or prolonging the supplies. Other sources describe other monastic practices including water consumption. Carthusians consumed ‘bread and water’ on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and Irish St. Servanus’ mid-fifth century text is known to say ‘For drink they [that is, the monks] shall have plain water and sometimes mixed with milk, since wine and beer will be unknown to them.’ Medieval penitentials also often mandated a diet of bread and water, which demonstrates that water was still consumed by itself, but in a manner that lowered the status of the drinker. This explanation also reflects a different understanding of water in modernity. Water purity was likely not as significant of an issue until later industrialization, just as it would not have been an issue for the Puritans when they came to America, although they insisted upon building a brewery soon after arrival that corroborates how entrenched individuals are within the taste preferences of a cultural context. Drinking beer rather than water instead expresses a particular status. In the medieval period, beer was, roughly, a sign of prestige — a statement that conveyed one earned enough income and could afford the nutritional benefits of beer and did not have to drink water. The constituents in beer including “B vitamins, magnesium, potassium, folic acid, selenium, and polyphenols (a potent and common class of antioxidants)” evidence the nutritional value of beer and its ability to sustain individuals. In medieval Europe, having grass was a status symbol (for only the truly rich could afford to have land that was not in production for food); similarly, being able to drink beer expressed that one was not poor. The poor agricultural yields of the medieval period further substantiate this hypothesis. The ability to enhance water by brewing shows one’s ability to afford this treatment, for the ingredients for brewing may have been difficult to obtain. The lowest peasants likely were not able to afford or keep the necessary supplies for brewing, especially after tithing and taxation relieved them of a significant portion of their produce. Beer in the medieval period may be likened to the contemporary prevalence of soft drinks, fruit juices, water flavorings, and even bottled water. Although the implied social norm has lessened due to individual agency instituting attitudinal changes, water (especially tap water) is often still considered inferior. The ability to transcend tap water expresses individuals’ surpassing of a certain socioeconomic threshold wherein they can afford drinking behavior that posits water as beneath them. This hypothesis demonstrates one of the misleading messages presented by the commodified authentic. This understanding is not commonly reached within scholarly or popular discourse but should be acknowledged as a poignant disparity between the real and the ideal regarding beer’s history and the contemporary connection drawn through the church. Notably, the majority of the omissions in the nostalgic presentation of medieval monks are the aspects that seem most similar to modern society: bureaucracy, ordinances, and political strife. Davis succinctly describes how images of nostalgia signify dissatisfaction with one’s present circumstance: nostalgia’s special relationship to the past has to do with the relatively sharp contract that the experience casts on present circumstances and conditions, which, compared to the 32 Martin, A. Lynn. “The Baptism of Wine.” Gastronomica Fall 2003 3.4 (21-31). 33 Lawrence, C.H. Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages (London: Longman, 1984), 135. 34 Nelson, Max. The Barbarian’s Beverage: A History of Beer in Ancient Europe (New York: Routledge, 2005), 93. 35 Martin. 36 Bamforth, Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing, 70. past, are invariably felt to be, and often reasoned to be as well, more bleak, grim, wretched, ugly, deprivational, unfulfilling, frightening, and so forth. The David-and-Goliath narrative in beer ironically posits the “Dark Ages” as ‘the good old days.’ This characterization typifies popular perception(s) of modernity, specifically conveying qualities of malaise and discontent towards industrialization. As quoted previously, nostalgia “juxtaposes the uncertainties and anxieties of the present with presumed verities and comforts of the lived past.” The constructed, romanticized version of historical reality does not prompt deconstructive inquiry into the factuality of this account. Most individuals do not know much about the medieval period nor do they particularly wish to enlighten themselves. Whether the medieval period is actually a preferable mode of social organization is not to debate. This idealized portrayal does not propose that medieval social, political, or economic organization is preferable: the narrative merely expresses a viewpoint that is agreeable to some individuals. With the sentiment of discontentment present, individuals can lament labyrinthine corporate structure; they can idealize how much better or easier life would be in a historic period under alternate economic, political, and social structures. Nostalgia is not accompanied by a true desire to return to the period; indeed, it is often marked by a recognition that this former state/experience will not be attained again—the feeling is merely to be lived as sentiment before a return to ordinary life is signaled. The apocalyptic perception that ‘Modernity is the period most wrought with issues’ pairs with nostalgia of yesteryears. Nostalgia promotes social cohesion that cements the existent structure. Images of nostalgia enable positive commemoration of desired aspects of historic life. Simultaneously, these depictions absolve the self and society of fault for contemporary failings. Nostalgic images may see to relieve anxieties about the changes from the past but renew people’s commitment to the present. Products that invoke nostalgia delicately maneuver the presentation of a traditional image “with just enough contemporaneity thrown in” so popular social demands that products are “sanitary, efficient, and immensely profitable” can be simultaneously fulfilled. Nostalgia enables yearning for aspects of history that are deemed desirable but allows one to retain the comforts provided by modernity. The Simultaneous Inversion and Solidification of Social Structure: Irreverence Irreverent, blasphemous, or offensive views of religion or the religious in beer branding emerge in seeming opposition to the romanticized images. Brews named “Cardinal Sin,” “Stumbling Monk,” or “Grumpy Monk” (depicted as grumpy because his beer stein is empty) typify this irreverence. At times, branding within this classification seemingly poses a threat to the social order. Critical evaluations of monastic indulgence may appear to present a modern 95 Theses reminiscent of Martin Luther’s critique of the degenerated church and assertion that the church has no unconditional authority. The specific social, ritual, and symbolic uses of alcohol explain why this medium is to express this sentiment. “Alcohol is to social science what dye is to microscopy. . . . What this dye does is show up certain kinds of fundamental features of the structures of the cell, and I suppose that we can probably use alcohol the same way to penetrate the structure of social life.” In accordance with the adage in vino veritas, alcohol consumption in times of play allows individuals to release their frustrations with the contradictions of the 37 Davis, Fred. Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia (New York: Free Press, 1979), 15. 38 Davis, 141. 39 Davis, 119. 40 Heath, 336: qtd. Duster (1983, 326). reigning social order, which is always portrayed as absolute but is ultimately always recognized as arbitrary and resultant of a mental classificatory differentiation of reality. The permittance of Dionysian behavior and thought allows for temporary abandonment of the overarching social structure and strictures. By dissolving the distinctions between the saintly and the sinners, alcohol enables critiques of the devout that in other contexts would be inappropriate. It may seem that alcohol “frees” us of nagging insecurity, uncertainty, and fear due to recognition of the contradictions embedded within a social structure. Alcohol’s preeminence in the ‘play’ realm enables it to serve as the messenger regarding the tenuous nature of social construction. The glorification of blasphemy and heresy insinuated in branding such as Sound Brewery’s “Tradition Liberated” tagline appears to promote a dismantling of the current system. Likewise, the Cambridge Brewing Company sells a Belgian-style strong ale brewed with “an authentic Trappist yeast strain” named “OFF-(trap)PISTE Belgian-style Grand Cru.” An explanation for the name’s derivation is provided. The term ‘off-piste’ meaning “existing or taking place on snow that has not been compacted into tracks;” that is, the brewery is breaking new ground with this brew. This image of breaking new ground is tied with the brewer’s enjoyment that he is breaking from tradition and social rules. The brewer Will admits that “It is illegal to use the moniker trappist in production of a secular product” but provides the following justification: My use of the word trappist is meant to let the consumer know that this is a Belgian-style ale, however, as it is parenthetical, the ‘trap’ is silent. This’ll probably offend some beer purists, which is exactly the sort of thing I enjoy doing. This rhetoric parallels the appropriation of religious rhetoric of transcendence. Perhaps due to the mood associated with beer, religious references used to differentiate from other beers assume heretical status in order to differ from the big breweries. For instance, Dan Weyerbacher’s description of the brewery’s quadruple demonstrates a joking use of religious terminology. When they first suggested we age our QUAD in bourbon barrels, I said, ‘THAT’S BLASPHEMY!’ ...and so it is!’ The intent to cleverly and humorously use the concept of blasphemy is interesting. References invoking dissidence, heresy, and an A-hop-calypse challenge the presiding corporate beer moguls and in doing so garner consumer support that also sees itself as Other-ed from the big beer industry. Hence, the same dichotomization occurs as is the nostalgic imaging of the Self/Other. Presumably omitted from this narrative is the conjecture of breweries’ response to hypothetical opportunity to expand into these positions. While this rhetoric does propose some reorganization of the brewing industry (namely for the currently marginalized company to gain prominence), this technique does not pose revolutionary reform of the brewing industry to a prior period or creation of a wholly new system. Willingness and endeavors to expand show that breweries do not ultimately profess against the hierarchy within the beer industry. Thus, although seemingly revolutionary, this phenomenon also reinforces contemporary practices and social order. The rhetoric developed by Apocalypse Brew Works and other breweries prophesying an A-hop-calypse does not condone social reform and ‘the end of the world as we know it.’ The modes and particular linkages made in irreverent branding demonstrate how this phenomenon contributes to the current social order. For instance, some labels mock fundamental elements of religion or a religious denomination: the Mormon Coffee Stout, for instance, 41 Beer Archive: Off-(trap)PISTE Belgian-style Grand Cru. Cambridge Brewing Company. Web. 42 Blasphemy. Weyerbacher. Web. pokingly mentions two substances that are forbidden within the tradition of the Latter Day Saints. This type of representation can function to further marginalize non-mainstream religious communities that hold values different from the mainstream society. Studying portrayals of religious figures in modern cinema, Blyth articulates that “alcohol is a statement about the character using the substance” and a monk/priest’s abusive relationship with alcohol is used to comment upon the status, stability, and utility of traditional religious institutions today. However, the mockery present in beer branding should not be viewed as an emergent phenomenon indicative of modernity’s attitude towards religion and prophetic of future obsolescence. Literature and popular songs, rhymes, and compositions have caricaturized, decried, or merely observed indulgence and religious in-adherence among the ‘devout’ for centuries. The image of the drunk monk is one that resonates after centuries of being told. In Gargantua and Pantagruel, a legend of a Benedictine’s quest for the Oracle of the Divine Bottle, the attachment of the character Friar John to wine “makes him ‘a true monk if every there has been one since the monking world monked its first monkery.” Additionally, medieval exempla, such as one which “described the fate of a friar who loved wine so much that he refused to dilute it with water: he was tortured in purgatory,” parodia sacra, and “many other Latin parodies of the Middle Ages [which] are nothing but a selection of all the degrading, earthy details taken from the Bible, the Gospels, and other sacred texts” and contextualize modern images derived from a precedent legitimizing critical representations. Vess insists that “the drunk monk was likely much more difficult to come by than these stories would suggest.” However, even if constituting unfair misrepresentations of religious figures, these caricatures can still convey popular public perception of the group. As outlined in the initial part of this section, irreverent depictions break down culturally constructed barriers. “[H]is drinking will convince us that he is thoroughly flawed and human, just like us.” They—the they of ascendancy and superior status—are in fact “like us” and subject to the same limitations and shortcomings of human nature. One may observe that alcohol and the ‘play’ realm beyond (regular) social structures is comparable to the tabloids, which allay feelings of inferiority produced by comparison to the lives of the rich and famous. Conversely, the comparison to popular infatuation with celebrity scandals, affairs, and mishaps also presents an antithetical interpretation. Celebrities epitomize capitalist success and the attainment of wealth, fame, and beauty. Our want of these characteristics engenders our interest in them and their lives. We revel in their pitfalls and shame, but we do so because we believe them to be ‘higher’ than ourselves, and the irreverent beer branding reasserts their prominence over us. In Priests, James Fischer notes that the media ‘use priests and monks and nuns because they are instantly identifiable with certain values the public either thinks it embraces or wishes it could.’”Although the scandalization seems to ‘bring them down a peg,’ continuous allusions to their impropriety demonstrate a constant interest in their affairs. To state it plainly, if we did not 43 Blyth, Teresa, “The Collar and the Bottle: Film Portrayals of Drinking Clergy,” 79-93. Ed. Robinson, CK. Religion and Alcohol: Sobering Thoughts (New York: Peter Lang, 2004).79. 44 Vess,148. 45 Martin, 26. 46 Bakhtin, 15. 47 Bakthin, 20. 48 Vess, 149. 49 Blyth, 79. 50 Blyth, 83. consider them better than us (if they were normal, average people), we would not care about the details of their lives. Determining which piece possesses explanatory value is futile, and likely, it is both. In Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin discusses the medieval worldview and the disparity in behavior between the official/unofficial realms that coincide with divisions in roles. In the ‘unofficial’ realm, “it is difficult to say where praise ends and where condemnation starts.” Irreverent branding in alcohol exemplifies speech combining praise-abuse in the unofficial realm. In his discussion and theorization of the carnivalesque, Bakhtin identifies a division of the human body into higher and lower strata. In this framework, the lower stratum consists primarily of animalistic behaviors and physical functions: digestion, defecation, and copulation. The higher stratum refers to the more refined qualities and endeavors considered to differentiate man from other species: cognition, rationale, and spirituality. Mikhail Bakhtin proposes that these divisions correspond with directional signifiers (‘up’ and ‘down’) in medieval and Renaissance society and literature that symbolize heavenly or earthly realms, respectively. In the carnivalesque and with depictions of the grotesque body, the earthly lower stratum of the animal body is used to comment upon the upper realm. This observation is echoed in the idea that alcohol is used as the means to communicate “a comment on the structures of our faith.” The inversion of the lower-upper strata by the carnivalesque compels acknowledgment of the disparity between the real and ideal (or the is and the should). One must admit that the existent social order does not in fact entirely embody the values and dynamics that it proclaims to esteem. Furthermore, this inversion fosters the expression of the feeling that there is “something amiss” in the seemingly clear-cut categorizations. This conceptualization of animal processes as base explains why irreverent representations in beer branding depicting religious figures frequently depict them engaging in physical acts especially sexual activity and gastronomic indulgence and less commonly show their exhibition of other faults such as sloth, anger, and greed. These unflattering portrayals frequently show the unorthodox expressed in corporeal terms. Sexual implications seem most prevalent and are exemplified in names like “Monk’s Mistress,” “Monk’s Indiscretion,” and Evil Twin’s “Wet Dream,” the label of which incorporates the words ‘The Trappist’ above the brew’s name. This dual incorporation of religion and sex asserts interesting notions about the nature of advertising and its relationship to society’s continuation. Bakhtin explains that the carnivalesque and the grotesque body assert the “dual-bodied world of becoming” and thereby insinuate reflective components prophetic of the future. Additionally, alcohol, like the grotesque body, like sex, necessitates acknowledgement of the orifices and interorientations that disillusion the conceptualization of fixed boundaries between the self and the other. According to Douglas, these rituals that acknowledge contradictions serve to perpetuate the system. Rather than solely protestations of the wrongs in contemporary society, they can solder and fortify the contemporary classifactory schema employed. The temporary collapse of hierarchical distinctions is not to dissolve these institutions but to allow for their continuation. Douglas’ careful choice of the title Constructive Drinking exemplifies drinking is not merely destructive (Dionysian); it is also constructive. As previously explored, alcohol is not likely to directly lead to revolution and threats of actual social disruption correspond with escalating constraints of alcohol consumption. Alcohol consumption is therefore bound in social rules that limit the risk of societal disintegration. For instance, colonial and imperialist settings throughout history have yielded greater constraints on the drinking (and other drug habits) of subjugated