Gwen Berry, the Flag, and the Nature of Ceremony

The photo that made Gwen Berry (left) infamous.
With DeAnna Price (center) and Brooke Andersen

This weekend, during national trials for the Tokyo Olympics, the Women’s Hammer Throw event mattered for the first time, probably, ever. Gwen Berry, two-time gold medalist at the Pan-American Games, finished third, qualifying for the Olympics. But during the medal ceremony, Berry, who is Black, didn’t participate in the National Anthem, turning instead to face the crowd.

The Usual Suspects flipped their wigs, of course. Matt Walsh, Meghan McCain, and Ben Shapiro used their mass-media platforms to shriek, sometimes incoherently, about Berry’s horrendous travesty. Representative Ben Crenshaw went on the Former President’s favorite news network to demand Berry be ejected from the team. Wypipo Twitter, hardly a bastion of nuanced deliberation, turned downright ugly in its condemnations, and frequently racist.

(No, I won’t link their Tweets. They don’t deserve the oxygen.)

In my ongoing quest to better understand American conservatives, in terms they’d use to describe themselves, I spent time performing what rhetorician Peter Elbow calls “the believing game,” taking another person’s position seriously and respecting it, without trying to debunk it. Conservative allegiance to ceremonies of Americanism have long baffled me. Yet after some consideration, I’ve had some possibly helpful insights I’d like to share.

The pundits outraged over Berry’s demonstrative refusal are, unsurprisingly, the same pundits outraged over Colin Kaepernick kneeling. These same pundits also complain whenever news re-emerges that grade school children aren’t universally required to perform the Pledge of Allegiance daily. Fox & Friends, where Representative Crenshaw aired his demands, also complained, during the Obama Administration, that President Obama was inconsistent and frequently sloppy in returning military salutes.

(Executive protocol doesn’t require Presidents to salute, but many do so out of good taste.)

To outsiders, these forms of demonstrative Americanism appear entirely ceremonial. That is, people perform these actions simply because we perform these actions. Yet to their loyalists, the ceremonial quality isn’t empty; the ceremony gives it mass. Like a priest speaking the words of institution, and thereby transforming inert bread into the Body of Christ, ceremonial Americanism transforms the person in the ceremony.

Remember when the Former President hugged an American flag at CPAC, to thunderous applause? Progressives and liberals derided the action. Yet for the Former President’s intended audience, this action had significant weight. Ceremonies like saluting the flag, singing the National Anthem, and speaking the Pledge of Allegiance, make the ceremony enactors more American, a state that needs constantly renewed.

Would critics have been happier with this older photo of Gwen Berry? Who can say?

If we’re honest, liberals and progressives understand this impulse. Even unbelievers want someone with official standing to officiate their weddings, because the ceremony, not the sentiment, makes the marriage. Likewise, progressives trust the Courts, a bastion of ceremony, to enforce laws justly. Consider how important it is to dress appropriately, use people’s official titles, and rise or sit without hesitation.

Observance of ceremonial rules, in other words, matters. The only difference is which ceremonies different groups honor. The progressives who claim they don’t understand the outrage over Berry or Kaepernick’s non-participation in flag ceremonies, would understand altogether if, say, one of Former Guy’s indicted advisors addressed an enrobed judge by first name inside a courtroom.

Ceremonies like the National Anthem, or “all rise,” gain their authority because, like religious liturgy, everyone performs them together. A stadium facing the flag, hands on hearts, stops being, temporarily, massed individuals; they become united in purpose. Individuals stop existing, provisionally. For the moment we’re singing “Oh Say Can You See,” we briefly no longer exist.

Therefore, protests like Berry’s or Kaepernick’s also gain substance from ceremony. By disrupting the unified performance, they drag us back into ourselves during our moment of ecstatic transport, making us again, unwillingly, human. They ask us whether the mass to which we’ve surrendered our individuality actually deserves such ceremonial acclaim. They force us to be conscious during a moment of unconsciousness.

This defiance of rules matters in sports, an activity defined entirely by rules. Obscure rules like the Fair Catch Kick don’t inhibit football; the rules make the game. Like standards surrounding the National Anthem, the individual disappears into a regulated world and is fleetingly transformed. Therefore, maybe it shouldn’t surprise us when lovers of the rules hate seeing others honoring the rules selectively.

Because some people desire to disappear, briefly, into ceremonial unity, reminders of human finitude disturb them. Again, for them, the ceremony isn’t emotion; it literally transforms and renews their American natures. Like a caterpillar in a chrysalis, breaking them loose prematurely stops them becoming whole. No wonder they’re angered by displays like Berry’s. They’ve been denied their renewal.