The Social Pageantry of High School Reunions
Class reunions are age-old pageants for social comparison and preserving the status quo. But what is their social function in 2020?
I am not American, but the idea of high school reunions has always fascinated me. In popular culture, the class reunion is more often than not depicted as an American tradition. Having grown up watching American film and television, I came to understand high school reunions as the quintessential product of an individualistic, status-seeking society like the USA, and as possessing a mysterious, norm-preserving function I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
There’s surprisingly little academic research to be found on the social function of the high school reunion. Commentary available in the public domain is decidedly skeptical of the tradition, which is often seen as obsolete in the social media age. After all, if we wanted a temporary insight into our former classmates’ lives, to check in on their supposed progress as they navigate adulthood, a visit to their social pages would usually suffice. Social media offer a one-sided view, the curated one that emphasizes breezy success and often conceals life’s inevitable failures and disappointments.
