Make America Drunk Again Red Plastic Cups
Who here has not enjoyed a common cold, refreshing drink from a ruby-red plastic cup? Alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages akin find themselves comfortably enclosed within the confines of the vivid carmine vessel that has become a ubiquitous American staple at barbecues, picnics, parties, in dugouts and at pocket-sized league games, in food cars and at lunch trucks, and even every bit a last resort at dive bars—and, of form, college students' dorms and apartments, where it also functions as a key component in Flip Loving cup and Beer Pong.
Your drinking vessel may indeed impact your imbibing experience, but the red plastic loving cup serves every bit the neat equalizer in drinking activities—from the top shelf to the supermarket shelf, the red plastic cup captures and contributes to the spirit of the occasion. It helps make biting booze a more pleasant feel. After all, how can information technology be distasteful if it'southward delivered from the study depths of the cheerily colored vessel? Packaging matters! Drinking practices deport their ain distinct rules and expectations relating to the age, gender, and status. The red plastic cup crosses many of these boundaries to effigy prominently in American drinking customs.
The most famous of all the scarlet plastic cups is produced by Solo, the long time producer of single use products that are sold almost everywhere. Founded in 1936, the "paper container" manufacturer produced a paper cone loving cup that typically went with water coolers. A wax-lined cup used in the 1950s for fountain sodas and takeaway drinks might exist viewed as precursor to the signature red cup in terms of sturdiness and widespread adoption. The crimson plastic cup first appeared in the 1970s and worked its fashion into pop culture seamlessly—even spawning a airheaded, but fun ode past country vocalist Toby Keith (which we will get to soon enough). Solo's simple design for the red loving cup has been easy for competitors to copy, but in recent years the company has implemented small but noticeable changes—such equally a square bottom, indented grips, and Solo embossed on the side—to add farther stardom for customers looking for the make. Consumers tin can residual assured that the blueprint changes have non impacted the functionality of the red loving cup—then flip away, or ahem, drink out of it without fear information technology volition slip out of your hands.
Social drinking is a ritualized act. There are sure social codes of consumption that help define the experience past setting expectations and establishing appropriate or adequate behaviors. Anthropologist William Donner documented social rules surrounding toddy drinking in Sikaiana, a pocket-size Polynesian atoll in the Solomon Islands. (Toddy seems a generic name for drinks made from fermented palm. In this example, toddy is made by fermenting the sap of coconut shoots.) Donner constitute that drinking reorganized the community, allowing boundaries to exist renegotiated. Part of this stems from the ways in which drink is shared. In Sikaiana, toddy distribution follows a rather specific format which helps establish the community as a identify of equality:
"Participants course a circumvolve. They distributor pours a portion and passes information technology to i person in the group. This person drinks the cup until its is empty, usually in one potable. Then he returns the cup to the distributor and some other serving of the exact same size is poured for the next person. This continues until everyone in the group has had a plough and so the distributor starts another circular. If a person arrives tardily, the benefactor may offer him a larger portion so that the latecomer tin catch up with the people who are already drinking. In larger groups, several cups are passed out simultaneously, but ever in a round fashion so that everyone is given an equal amount to drink" (1994: 250).
Among the Xhosa, beer is also consumed in accord with a social code. At a beer-drink (a public drinking effect), the beer is kept in either bandage-iron pots or plastic or wooden containers, and served in tin beakers (billy cans) of diverse sizes:
"When beer is allocated, the host section'south mast of ceremonies points out the size of the beaker because the receivers have certain expectations in this regard based on the current state of their beer-exchange relationship with the givers. So a tin can of beer given to a neighboring group may be announced with carefully chosen words, such equally 'This is your beaker, it is a full iqhwina [seven liters], as it should be when there is a full cask for men' " (McAllister 2003: 197).
The drinking vessel is primal to this feel. It'southward an equalizing factor and a measure of consistency for attendees. Information technology too serves equally the entry-indicate for the temporary social customs that has gathered. Drinking from the cup confirms attendance at the event and authorizes participation in subsequent issue activities—conversation, singing, dancing, joking and laughing, even confrontations are mediated by drinkable and cup possession.
Our red plastic cups work similarly. Cup in mitt, we mingle. Liberated past the social permission granted by the blood-red plastic cup, we take hold of up with former friends and make new ones. Information technology becomes a factor that connects attendees at the event—we all have a ruby plastic loving cup, so nosotros all belong. And we assert that these cups are ours by writing our name on them, which further making them a handy tool for socialization. This sort of possession also minimizes the burden on our hosts to have a bounty of cups available for guests. (In college and in grad school, we wrote our names on cups because we paid for them at parties and it was in our interest to keep track of our cups.) The do also functions to manage our booze consumption. Nosotros become a cup at an event and we're free to fill information technology with any of the bachelor options. It holds roughly the aforementioned corporeality for everyone—or to the lowest degree it gives the illusion of equality with regard to the ratios in mixed drinks. Amidst the Sikaiana, the distributor/host determines how much is poured into the loving cup for each circular and how long to wait between rounds:
"Serving large portions and not waiting between rounds will cause the participants to get drunk rapidly. On the other hand, later such a happy state of inebriation has been reached, the distributor may make up one's mind to deadening the footstep of drinking in order to command the level of intoxication and preserve the supply of toddy (Donner 1994: 250).
While nosotros may not necessarily be served in the aforementioned fashion with our red plastic cups (that might be a downer of a party to attend), our named cups provide a fashion to monitor access to drinks. If you lose your cup, you might be out of luck. Information technology tin also be a signal that the cup-less should perhaps be cut-off, specially when information technology'south clear that the de-cupped has passed beyond happy, joyful drinking to disruptive behavior.
The ruby plastic cup may have a bit of a party-animal reputation. It's hardly likely you'll exist drinking fine wine or quality spirits from a ruby-red plastic cup. Or that you lot'll find a ruby-red plastic cup at a banquet or gala. The red plastic cup is a champion of the everyday and and the unpretentious. It suggests a relaxed, convival temper and invites everyone to join the party. It won't reveal the contents contained so whether information technology's booze, tea, fruit juice, or water, anybody belongs and everyone can participate.
And so whatever your preference, raise your blood-red plastic cup.
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References:
Bunimovitz, S., & Greenberg, R. (2004). Revealed in Their Cups: Syrian Drinking Customs in Intermediate Bronze Age Canaan Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Inquiry (334) DOI: ten.2307/4150104
Donner, W. (1994). Alcohol, Customs, and Modernity: The Social Organisation of Toddy Drinking in a Polynesian Guild Ethnology, 33 (3) DOI: ten.2307/3774009
Magennis, H. (1985). The Loving cup as Symbol and Metaphor in Former English Literature Speculum, sixty (iii) DOI: ten.2307/2848173
McAllister, P. (2003). Culture, Practise, and the Semantics of Xhosa Beer-Drinking Ethnology, 42 (3) DOI: 10.2307/3773800
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
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Source: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/theres-more-to-that-red-plastic-cup-than-you-thought/
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