If popular entertainment during the Depression--the Great one-- taught us anything about flaunting conspicuous consumption during lean times, it is that what is acceptable on that immense white screen is not as warmly or widely welcomed in the flesh-and-blood world.In an effort to bring customers into theatres in a society so recently fallen from post-war affluence to grinding poverty, breadlines and tent cities, Hollywood spit out an obscenely divergent product in large number. There was something for everyone (if not several somethings), much of it escapist.The Thirties was, after all, the pinnacle of the musical, gangster, horror, costume drama, biographical, social realism and screwball comedy genres.The latter, in fact, is only truly at home during that decade of despair. Screwball comedies made since then are not actually "screwball" comedies: they are simply funny movies featuring wacky characters engaged in crazy antics. The soul has left the genre ,though not consciously: it is simply the result of society's changed face.
Screwball comedies gave us a new breed of heroine: the whimsical, well-educated, devil-may-care heiress. Playing such a role was practically a rite of passage for most leading ladies. For others, it became a career in and of itself. (The versatile Claudette Colbert won her only Academy Award playing just such a confection.)This virtual army of manic, breezy, fast-talking beauties--for they were always beautiful--wreaked their way through the rest of the decade, winning the men of their choice (be he a newspaperman, a male gadabout or a regular working bloke) by the time FINIS flashed on the screen.
These women and the insulated world they inhabited, before breaking free to sample, however briefly, the plight of the common people, were the most unrealistic of the entire Depression. Yet, they, and their type, were consistently cherished by millions of Americans. Still riotously funny, they represent some of the finest comedies ever put to film.Somehow, the disparity between the easy life of wealth of those celluloid phantoms and that faced by the average man or woman when they stepped back onto the sidewalk was neither inconsiderate nor tacky. It was simply entertainment that allowed you to dream away reality for an hour or two.
When actresses weren't impersonating the wealthy, they were often portraying that other Thirties distaff staple, the working woman: stenographers, operators or shop girls. The type lived in a rented room, worked hard,aspired to something better --and usually got it, along with a nice, regular Joe, by the time the lights flicked back on.These women--picture Ginger sans Fred, if you will,perhaps munching on a burger at a lunch counter--were relatable: clever, pretty, and resourceful, they were fairly realistic role models.
The closest contemporary representation we have of the type is, strangely, that of the Reality Star.Weed out the worst of the media whores, and what you have is a familiar bunch:average women aspiring to something better in increasingly fraught times.Sitting in our living rooms watching the motley parade of aspirants, we aren't intimidated or even intrigued but we do understand where they are coming from.What they are trying to achieve isn't easy but it is reachable, and in ways that young women in the Thirties would likely recognize.
Something that has changed in the last 75 or 80 years is the ridiculous distance between the privileged and the rest of us. The Middle Class is now closer to the bottom of the food chain than to the top. We can no more realistically aspire to real, 21st-Century wealth, measured in the billions, than we could hope to become Lord High Priest(ess) of Mars.During the Great Depression, even the poorest person in that breadline could achieve anything, even a high strata of wealth, if diligence, luck and opportunity were on his or her side.
One effect of this disparity is that the nature of conspicuous consumption has also changed.I cannot pick up a copy of 'Vogue' or Elle and hope to afford anything in the entire issue, except for something from one of the de rigueur Target ads. A recent issue of 'Vogue' jumped, precariously and absurdly, onto the 'Recessionista' bandwagon. After instructing us,volte-face from their usual tack, and with nary a hint of irony, that a great way to save money would be to mend our own (presumably haute-couture) clothes, they immediately fell back off by recommending a designer sewing kit that will set you back the better part of $1,000.00. What a way to be of the people, 'Vogue'. But, wait....where is it written that they, or anyone, even in our nation's current straightened circumstances, must be accessible or even understandable to everyone?
Just because you are eating Ramen and hot dogs doesn't mean that Anna Wintour should change the editorial content of the magazine she heads.In the eyes of the Middle Class, would obliviousness or heedlessness be the greater crime? That is the question that has increasingly plagued Gwyneth Paltrow since she started her e-letter 'GOOP'several months ago.
'GOOP' (sub-titled: nourish the inner aspect )consists of 6 categories: Make, Go, Get, Do, Be, See, which are focused on, singly, in a regular rotation. Neither a great fan of the Academy Award winning actress or of hostessing advice in general, I have nonetheless been a 'GOOP' subscriber since the first edition. Having skimmed each newsletter, I am hard-pressed, on the surface, to see what all of the fuss is about ,one way or the other.It is adequately written, holds few surprises, and uses a lot of 'adapted' recipes as well as recommendations from various (usually famous) friends.
Paltrow claims that she started it for altruistic reasons, at the request of (apparently) non-famous friends. If she is to be believed--and I see no reason to allow doubt to enter here--she has a reputation as an excellent and in-the-know hostess/traveler/reader/what-have-you. Let's call her the maven for my generation of all things cultural and domestic and be done with it.
I subscribed to the newsletter out of equal parts curiosity and ego:I was eager to catch it at the beginning, to see it before other people around me knew what it was. I guess I am a snob that way. And Gwynnie has been accused of the same thing though for other reasons. She has been lambasted for elitism, cluelessness, and condescension, just for starters.Flaunting her famous buddies probably doesn't help matters, either.
She admits that she is lucky in her life. She says she is just trying to share her domestic gifts, as well as lessons she has learned, with the masses. That she does it from an undeniable position of advantage is, apparently, polarizing in ways that neither she, nor I, could have imagined. In recent days, the debate over 'GOOP' has exploded all over the popular media, after quietly simmering on blogs and other on-line outlets for months. Paltrow was compelled to publicly defend her newsletter , which, while occasionally grating, is really small potatoes.
Are these loudly complaining critics anti-GOOP because they think the content inferior? Or because they pick up on an underlying superior snottiness that has always, as long as I have seen her give interviews, going back 15 years or longer, been part of her personality? Should she be expected to change along with the times, to go from heiress to shop girl so that the rest of us feel better about our own plights? For me, that would be the true condescension.
From an entertainment or advice standpoint, I don't care if 'GOOP' lasts for years or folds next week. I find it neither compelling nor useful in any practical sense. Yet, if it goes under,as a result of the current furor, I will genuinely mourn its passing. What should have been of limited interest to all but her rabid fans, has, unexpectedly, become a bellwether for these trying times. It has become the center of a divisive debate of which there is no adequate resolution.
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