Fallen angel: the consumption of religion through american cocktail culture

Abstract

This essay examines the figure of the cocktail in American cultural history to establish it as a point of convergence between consumer culture and religious expression. The authors set out to understand which structures of religious experience persist within the cocktail, and what about them so captivates American consumers. The structures explored include: the fetishistic and totemic nature of cocktails and their accoutrements; the importance of pilgrimage within cocktail culture; a retention of ritualistic forms; an extant modern desire for transcendence through community; and the surprising relationship between religion and cosmopolitanism. The essay begins by examining the religious mood set by clandestine drinking during Prohibition, and traces that mood through its historical antecedents in alchemy, colonialism, and the medicine industry. The essay continues with an exploration of the process by which totemic images came to be associated with cosmopolitan cocktail culture in Harlem nightclubs, and Cuban and Caribbean tourist destinations. Finally, it compares the commercialized artistic aesthetics of surrealist art installations and the mid-century cult of tiki, in whose temple-styled lounges primitivism, alchemy, symbolism, ritualism, and colonial fetishism all facilitated the fusion of religious feeling with exotic drinks.