The Man in the Blue Denim Pants

By R.Z. Sheppard

SHOWING OFF IN AMERICA: FROM CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION TO PARODY DISPLAY by John Brooks; 296 pages; Little, Brown; $12.95

As every ex-schoolboy has probably forgotten, Thorstein Veblen coined the phrase "conspicuous consumption" after examining the untaxed sachems of the Gilded Age, their mansions, yachts, gargantuan dinner parties and cyclopean stickpins. In The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) Veblen did not hide his disdain for such display. He belonged to an era of sociology before it married computer science, bred statistics and headed for the neutral horizons of market research.

The sociologist as moralist peaked in the late '40s and '50s. Americans who had endured the pangs of the Depression and wartime rationing enjoyed an unprecedented feast of goods and services. Focusing on the problems of affluence more than on its benefits, Scholars David Riesman, Reuel Denney and Nathan Glazer published The Lonely Crowd. More lightly credentialed observers got into the act. Books such as The Organization Man, Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and The Status Seekers became bestsellers to a "we" generation confused about keeping up with the Joneses.

John Brooks' Showing Off in America attempts to explain how much more confusing the status race has become, since keeping up can now mean an ostentatious demonstration of unpretentiousness. He offers two propositions: 1. In status competition, display of wealth evolves into display of style. 2. The most effective status-seeking style is mockery of status seeking.

Brooks calls this "parody display." His most obvious example is blue jeans, first mass-produced by Levi Strauss in the 19th century as cheap, durable work pants. This had nothing to do with Veblen's view of fashion as a weapon in class conflict. But when worn faded and threadbare by college students in the next century, a pah" of Levi's flashed the word that one was secure enough to dress like an underpaid ranch hand. The parody was enriched when grimy denims became the uniform of unemployed hippies, and the current irony is that designer jeans meet Veblen's criteria for conspicuous consumption. They are expensive, unassociated with labor, and their labels are insignia for old-fashioned competitive display.

Had Brooks pushed the denim saga one more chapter, he might have come up with Thorstein Veblen jeans, preferably worn with a vicuna sweatshirt at a Rodeo Drive block party to benefit striking grape pickers. Such scenes belong to theatrical rather than routine life, though today the distinction is often blurred. Star-struck by the endless celebrity parade, a growing number of ordinary people stage self-dramatizations in public places. But are the pseudo John Travolta, roller-discoing among the pedestrians, and the orthodontist attending the U.S. Open dressed like Bjorn Borg intentionally ironic or deadly serious?

The question is too psychologically layered to be answered by Veblen's mechanistic theories. Brooks suggests that the parodic style of showing off is purest at society's extremes. There is the avant-garde's Warholian art and minority put-ons of majority classes, like black mockery of white manners.

Working from the top, Brooks' candidates for pioneers of the new style are Bernie Cornfeld, whose flamboyant style ridiculed the low profile of international business; Governor Jerry Brown, the Jesuit-Zen candidate who flouted the rules of politics; and George Plimpton, the upper-class New Yorker whose characterizations as a dilettante in professional sports disguised a professional writer. But what of Gloria Vanderbilt, who declassed herself to become the Duchess of Denim, and of the homosexual parodists in entertainment and fashion?

Though Brooks insists that such people are the new wave, he presents a grim picture of a static middle class trapped in social pincers. Too insecure for parody, they attempt straightforward competitive display. Warns the author: "It may drive the not-quite-rich to bankruptcy, divorce, social disgrace, and misery. It may keep the poor in poverty despite rising wages and benefits. We deal with desperate people engaged in desperate actions."

Showing off, then, is a form of competition. But if the bulk of Americans cannot profitably throw themselves into the game, the future of parody display may not be as bright as Brooks would have us believe. For parody is a style that feeds on the growth of conspicuous consumption, which, in turn, is dependent on optimism and a vigorous economy. Brooks does not adequately address this point. This may be due to the book's format, which is mainly a collection of previously published magazine articles that, despite reworking, still lack clear organization. Ideas are too compressed to breathe, and generalizations in one place are frequently neutralized by qualifications elsewhere. In addition, Brooks' bibliography is superficial, consisting mainly of popular books and articles. One odd omission is the name of Tom Wolfe, the nation's preeminent journalist of styles and manners whose term "radical chic" is used without attribution. At its best, Showing Off in America is provocative enough to get readers thinking of themselves as social beings after a decade of bestselling ego-lit. At its worst, the book succumbs to irony as an unwitting parody of Veblen's sociology. -- By R.Z. Sheppard

Excerpt

"Disproportionately little parody is to be found in current American speech, as distinguished from actions and gestures. Since words are the original home of parody, this may appear to be an enigma. Parody in discourse, as in writing, remains largely an elitist form, while in action and gesture it has become a democratic form. Perhaps parody in its original state is disqualified for democratic adoption by its connotations of intellectuality. To create parody, one must think; to utter buzzwords, only open the mouth and blow."

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