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The dance marathons - Irish-American Literature
MELUS, Spring, 1993 by James T. Farrell
1. Why the Marathon?
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Dance marathons have been but one type of a wave of fatigue contests which has rolled across the country in the last four or five years. Other fatigue demonstrations and fatigue contests have been tree-sitting, rolling peanuts along a country road with the nose, driving automobiles with the hands tied, walking contests, roller skating contests, no-talking contests, talking demonstrations and marathons, fishing marathons, and the like. Dr. [Harold) Lasswell, in conversation, has suggested one theory which tends to explain these fatigue contests and demonstrations. Modern means of publicity, particularly the radio, have created new publics and they have enlarged old publics, developing the need, or at least the potential need, for new actors and new entertainment patterns. The desire for the spotlight is obviously an important motivation in our society. The whole stress and emphasis of a democratic state is individualism. The ideal, in contradistinction to past societies like that of ancient Greece, is the new and the novel, the eccentric. The ideal of novelty in the lower layers of society would as a consequence be some such thing as a fatigue contest. The desire for distinction works harmoniously with the desire for economic advancement, because the spotlight, radio and newspaper fame is what leads people on to making more money. Thus the fatigue contests offer the winners prizes, and also the hope of increased gain in the form of vaudeville or cabaret engagements, vaudeville booking, or further contests. Some have compared the dance marathoners with those subnormals of the middle ages who flagellated themselves for the purposes of saving their souls. Such a comparison should be made with a recognition of the psychological and social differences between that era and our own. It should be particularly recognized that the medieval ascetics contorted themselves for a religious ideal, for a mystic good, while in our dance marathons the principal ideal is external goods, and that the contestant probably never experiences such an ecstacy as was probably common to the medieval psychopaths. It also seems true that fanatics of the middle ages probably lived a rich, varied, and fun psychic life while undergoing their self-inflicted tortures. They were motivated by an ideal that was at the core of a socially unified society. There was a complete, rich, and coherent religious symbolism awaiting their streams of reverie. In the case of the marathon dancer, their activity is the product of a chaotic and anarchic society. There is no organized symbolism or ritualism which can serve to embellish their lives while they are contesting, nor to enrich it with an added social and mystical meaning.
The mechanistic life of modern times is, I believe, an important factor in explaining the raison d'etre of the dance marathon. Most of the contestants are poor or members of the petite bourgeoisie. They are thus subjected to the working conditions normal to these classes. Thus their experiences in the business world have tended to be of a stratified and rigid nature. A limited number of their impulses have been mechanically chained, and a large residue have been left to an anarchic search for objects of gratification. The dance hall, the brothel, free sexual experience, pool rooms, movies and the like tend to provide the proper objects for gratification in such cases. The dance marathon from such a point of view is a highly desirable institution. It provides a larger arena, in which one can become something of a public figure, and impulses for fame, fortune and success, which can receive only a vicarious satisfaction in the movies, or a temporary easement in a dance hall, can here find actual and concrete success.
2. Promoters
I know nothing directly of the promoters. In many cases they are the managers or owners of dance halls. In others, they are of that type of fugitive promoter who flits about organizing one small spectacle after another, as often racketeering and resorting to dishonest practices as not. Recently on the North Side the promoters of a contest that had gone about six weeks disappeared leaving the marathoners stranded without carfare. In one of the earliest marathons in Chicago, there was a shooting row amongst spectators who quarreled over the merits of contestants. The police closed the contest, and the contestants received bad checks from the promoters. Also the promoters conduct their spectacles with the aim of personal profit rather than that of providing sport. They hire doctors, nurses and trainers (although earlier the trainers were not hired) to keep the contestants fit. They provide the food, a carefully and intelligently planned diet. They direct the lives of the contestants, and after the marathon has run for a considerable period, they are the confidants of the marathoners, acting to them like mothers would to their babies. This gives them a strategic position. If the marathon is losing money they can change the diet, shorten the periods of rest, or provide poorer ventilation, thereby forcing the contestants into a state of sheer exhaustion, and concluding the events. To the contrary, if the contest is profitable, they can bend their efforts, both in the training, and in the application of psychological suggestion, to prolong it.
