Another Relic: Debonair Deportment
Every dictionary should have an obituary section for
deceased words. Not just words like forsooth and hark, which
thankfully have become archaic, but rather for words that have
become meaningless and unserviceable because a decaying
society has deemed them more obsolete than washboards,
clothespins, wringers or buggy whips.
Think of the last time you heard someone described as
debonair, suave, refined, polished, distinguished, or urbane. How
often do the nouns decorum, propriety, breeding or gentility
surface in your conversation or reading?
Before the late fifties these words were commonly and
rightfully used to describe public figures like Tyron Powers, Cary
Grant or Gregory Peck who strove for a gentile and sophisticated
demeanor. These men had bearing and finesse, elegance and
style, not merely because they were strikingly attractive and
charismatic, but also because they had refined their habits of
speech, manner, dress, and deportment. To be sure, these habits
may have been contrived, manufactured, feigned, or coached, yet
such celebrities, as models of distinction, shone with an image of
chivalry, grace and elegance. Likewise, David Niven, Fred
Astaire, Grace Kelley, Katherine Hepburn, and John F. Kennedy
exuded a refined air of class and aplomb. Even lame imitators
like Jane Mansfield, who clearly lacked intellect, social graces
and natural beauty, attempted, a la Blanche Dubois, (and often
with comic results) to emulate an air of breeding and refinement
because those qualities were considered admirable.
Recall the synthetic image of sophistication that Playboy
attempted to fabricate? Surrounding the centerfold, there, in ad
and article, was the refined playboy always portrayed as the hip
gentleman, an educated connoisseur of fine wine, liquor, jazz,
and impeccable clothing, a dashing figure garbed in a smoking
jacket with a long-stemmed pipe in hand, in the manner of Bond,
James Bond. All of Hugh Hefner's neuroses and insecurities
percolated from this counterfeit role to which he typecast
himself when in fact as a smut peddler, he was just a notch
above Larry Flynt, yet although Hefner was a fraud, one must
credit him with some sense of style and taste.
Well, this is all passé, for today our actresses, models,
teens, including folks from virtually all levels of society, are
satisfied mimicking the demeanor and dress of San Francisco's
$10 North Beach sex skanks and Oakland's ghetto pimps. The
cast and production crew of "Anal Biker Sluts" seems to be
shaping our national model of decorum. The signature, stamp—or
more appropriate—the stain of this epoch has been the pervasive
rejection and castigation of elegance, refinement, resplendence,
cultivation, and old-fashioned good taste. In time, in an effort to
cater to these diminishing standards, I suspect that BaskinRobbins' wafer ice cream cones will be modeled after little
toilets, and Paris Hilton will be doing commercials for Mattel's
pubic waxing and golden shower versions of Barbie and Ken.
The coarsening of mankind, especially in Western cultures,
is quite evident, so discarded adjectives such as cloddish,
boorish, crude, disheveled, crass, uncouth, and unkempt would
be far more apropos to describe a constantly increasing number
of our fellow citizens, regardless of their social standing or
education. In fact, gather a band of impoverished, uneducated
refugees from any third-world country (not Texas) and a band of
Americans in any California K-mart and, putting skin color and
American obesity aside, in respect to the attentiveness of their
wardrobe or the cleanliness of their garments, you could not tell
them apart or discern that they likely represent polar opposites
of the economic spectrum.
Men, in particular, have no regard at all for style or
deportment, and even worse, women have abandoned any
expectation for it from their men. Our clothing is tattered,
wrinkled, and ill fitting, our hair disheveled, and our gaudy,
plastic shoes battered and filthy. Few women and virtually no
men, again including the wealthiest celebrities, are capable of
coordinating colors or harmonizing fabrics and textures of
clothing. Upon opening a fashion magazine, one repeatedly finds
the words chic and elegant sprinkled in every paragraph like
Christmas-card glitter, but such adjectives are applied
fraudulently to grotesque designs of shoddy, tawdry quality. We
reside obliviously ill dressed in the deepest corner of Mr.
Blackwell's hell.
Then looking beyond superficial finery, we, with the posture
and manners of apes, slouch, shuffle, spit, snarl, scratch, pick,
and curse without discretion or shame. Slovenly in dress, vulgar
in manners, at home and about, en masse we resemble a band of
mangy cavemen out for the kill. Whether we are in or out of the
cave, the most effortless courtesies nary exist. Bellowing in
public, blathering in a theater, on a cell phone or otherwise, is
tolerated, as is virtually any other rash, insolent, self-centered
behavior. With complete gusto, speech is garnished with
vulgarities at every chance. With no consideration for others, we
sneeze and cough with no obligation to cover our faces. In fact,
hospitals routinely post signs to remind patients and visitors to
cover their faces when they must cough or sneeze. The average
American man upon blowing his nose at a dining table typically
resumes his meal without washing his hands. Likewise, most
American men seem willing to comb their hair or polish their
shoes about as often as they see a proctologist.
Am I a curmudgeon yearning for the past? Looking to the
past for standards is often dismissed as distorted romanticism
and wistful nostalgia, so a dated custom such as pulling a chair
out for a lady or tipping one's hat might seem an antiquated,
pretentious affectation, but consider the gracious respect a tip of
a hat and a smile conveyed. Like the military salute, it was a
sign of cordial fellowship, of civility, not servility. It was a daily
reminder of the commonality and regard that humans should
extend to one another. But can you imagine a man pulling a
chair out for a lady these days? An American male is more apt to
yank the chair from beneath her so that, as she tumbles over, he
can look up her dress and cop a feel as he helps her to her feet.
Yes, in this country nowadays the closest we have to "very
classy" are the ubiquitous "vulgar asses." Whether it be
dreadlocks, Day-Glo hair, exposed underwear, piercings, nose
rings, tattoos, tongue studs, grunge, hip-hop, or gothic fashions,
Americans have about as much sophistication as Pygmy warriors
putting on the Ritz by smearing themselves with root and berry
juice before stepping out for a bit of headhunting.
What's the reason? Degeneration and decadence for sure,
but beyond that the cult of the grotesque is now entrenched in
the western collective consciousness just as deeply as any
perverted, heathenish religion. This mindset is infectious. Shall
we label this phenomenal maladjustment the "rebirth" of the
philistine or the "death" of the philistine? The number of
Americans who could rightly be called philistines has increased
immeasurably, so we might view the phenomenon as a
cataclysmic litter of tasteless offspring. Yet we might also
assume that the concept of philistinism has completely expired.
Hence, if everyone is a philistine, then behaving as a philistine is
the acceptable benchmark for normalcy and good taste.
Much of the populace, particularly the young, now
automatically idolizes any form of art, fashion, culture or
behavior that is revolting, disturbing, or hideous, meaning the
avant-garde and the brute instantly gain deference and idolatry.
How far has it gone? Johnny Toxic, a wannabe porn-rock star,
has made a documentary of beautiful, naked girls vomiting. He
boasts that it is more revolting than you can imagine.
Mapplethorpe's schizophrenic photo talents shift erratically from
true beauty to a man urinating into another man's mouth. Art
fashioned from excrement has found its way into museums, and
neo-philistine mutants like Ozzie Osbourne, Eminem, Courtney
Love, Anna Nicole, Mike Tyson, Tom Green, Howard Stern,
Dennis Rodman, Madonna, James Traficant, and MTV tickle our
fancy. Tosh.O is always ripe with rot. To these trend-setting lords
of the crass and vulgar, rejecting and scorning traditional
respectability is automatic.
Once such advocates set us on this irreverent track of
deviation, the route can lead only to depravity. The humdrum
past is obsolete, dull, conventional, staid, conservative, so the
future must forever be increasingly outrageous, shocking, arrant,
irreverent, knavish, or confrontational. Perpetually "pushing the
envelope," this over-worn nonsensical idiom, has become the
new mantra: Undermine decorum! Advance the objectionable!
And as if this did not foul our nest enough, the exhibition of
"attitude," an obnoxious, self-centered antisocial comportment
has gripped an expanding segment of our society like an
uncontrollable manifestation of Tourette's syndrome.
Deviate attitudes, vulgar behavior, and brutish deportment,
being transparent symptoms of pathology, have always been the
terrain of the lawless and rebellious—the crude, rude, and lewd—
but mark my words, in America, if unchecked, this newly
hollowed bog of incivility will prove to be the noxious birthplace
of a previously unfathomable wasteland of anarchy, which, of
course, saddles us for a very bumpy ride to oblivion.