The Decline of Older Life Styles

Babbittry

The historically dominant life style is best defined as “Babbittry”. It is an aggressive, social, uncultured, energetic and optimistic way of life of late frontier. It is a secularisation of life styles associated with those of the fundamentalistic Protestant “Bible Belt”, as they emerged out of the revival of Methodist and Baptist Movements in the early and the mid-nineteenth century. This style is stereotyped in the small town, church-going, Protestant moralism of the Middle West, especially in the Iowa of Grant Wood, who depicts the parsimonious, taciturn upholders of public property.

Aristocracy

The aristocracy of the late 19th Century best illustrates the traditional upper-class life styles. Brahminism on the Boston-Beacon’s Hill (a dilution of New England Transcendentalism) suggests this style. Gramercy Square Intellectualism in New York City is a similar phenomenon. These intellectuals had their ties with the European, and the English social and cultural influences. These European influences were frequently blended with aristocratic and intellectual culture, as was the case, for example, with Henry Adams. Such limitations could be looked upon as a continuation of a process already begun within the European upper classes themselves. Through the 17th and the 18th centuries, the landed aristocracy of Europe was penetrated by the newly wealthy bourgeoisie who adopted this life style. By the time the Americans began to imitate the Europeans, their model was largely an imitation itself. Such artificial aspects were imitated and continued in the Upper Middle class of the American South, which emphasized elegance, leisure, noblesse oblige, high etiquette and slavery. The Civil War rented this class asunder but its style remained a model for posterity.

The American upper class life like that of European aristocratic life underwent a continuous process of dilution. In the 19th century, the entrance of the rubber barons into this class provided an infusion of healthy vulgarity. With the newly gained wealth from the newly formed industries, they added gaudiness and garishness to American culture. Both these styles were described by Veblen, Edith Wharton, and Gustavus Myers.

There was clear evidence that these upper class life styles had declined and had all but disappeared. Certainly there were no Southern aristocrats who could be taken seriously. Senator Claghorn, the mint-julep drinking Southern Colonel and Blanche Dubois, the deluded Belle in “A Street Car Named Desire”, had caricatured a dead epoch. A few aged dowagers on Beacon’s Hill represented a living connection to the 19th Century but the tradition had been broken effectively by the industrialization of Boston’s Route 128. Gramercy Square, now in the jet age, qualifies as a historical monument. The Babbittry of Iowa and Minnesota had given way to the location-minded, Cadillac driving farmer who may still go to Church but who takes his Bermuda trip more seriously. These life styles had not been able to sustain themselves. This requires some explanation.

Between 1880 - 1924, hundreds and thousands of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe had entered the United States. They entered the society beneath the Anglo-Saxons and the Northern Europeans who had come earlier to set the American Culture. They were cut off from a big enriching source. They had to survive on their native cultural springs. Examples, models and styles were infused into the U.S. System by the Europeans throughout American history. Life styles not capable of supporting themselves had got their strength from the continuous infusions from Europe. After 1924, with no European immigrants, the old styles were not able to support themselves. All the historic forms of American Culture were on the verge of collapse, and especially since the 1950’s, they had succumbed to a series of new trends.

C) Trends

The Cultural Revolution enabled the consumer to lead a life of artistic consumption. The “Art Explosion” formed a new basis for status and life styles in the broad middle sector. No matter how dependent any old world cultural traditions for Americans are, this is a new development wholly. It had replaced the small town Middle class Bourgeoisie-Babbittry, not to mention the Protestant Church itself.

The upper class society was dominated by a new international society dominated by “International Aristocrats”.

This was formed by the multimillionaire businessmen, Greek shipping magnates, Latin American aristocrats, S.E. Asian politicians, Spanish nobility, World political leaders, Movie stars, artistic heroes, model fashion designers and party girls. This style of life came to be known as “La Dolce Vita”, a film which emphasized the moral and cultural degeneracy of a style. It included jet travel, leisure, international partying, Swiss Boarding Schools, Yachts in the Mediterranean, and residences and apartments in several continents. The cultural explosion presented through these life styles that found a place in the behavior of the international upper class, became the models for the rest of the life styles in the U.S.A.

D) Causes for the Disappearance of Older Styles

The Anti-immigration policy of the U.S. after 1924 had played a vital role in the disappearance of the older life styles. The older tradition had lost its sustaining force in course of time, resulting in a slow disappearance of old style. There were some disidentification trends discernible among the second generation of immigrants and a Pro-American acculturization.

The rapid reaction of the rural culture to the growing influence of urban and metropolitan culture had helped the rural population to undergo a city-ward or metropolis-ward exodus. This was a historical factor rampant between 1880 - 1950. These city-dwellers and the abandoners of their tradition of wholesomeness and Babbittry had no definite modes of life styles.

Before the Second World War, the traditional upper class had succumbed because they had no opportunity to make any new fortunes. America’s industrial families had learnt to rationalize, reinvest, expand, grow capital-wise, resulting in monopolistic combinations both parallel and vertical. Through decentralization, professional managerialization had become stabilized. There was no need to make any more money, they wanted to whiten their wealth from every possible smear. They got their pioneer-businessman’s life, rewritten by “hireling biographers”. They educated themselves at prestigious universities; they established some of their own. They set up some philanthropic trusts under their family names and held dignified cotillion and debutante ceremonies. They linked themselves with the European nobility of the earlier respectable, but declining landed-wealth class. Newport, Arlington County, Beacon Hill, Upper Park Avenue, Grosse Point, Lake Placid were centers of their activities. They got imported models of conduct from their European nobility (the old saga of the American heiresses and the Italian dulles). It was the time when the European nobility had declined and became degenerated through the loss of its functions. Theirs was the style that had no social or economic base. It was unauthentic at the time of emulation. To the newly prosperous American, it looked good the slow attrition of this aristocracy was no concern for the era, particularly since a new connection had been established between Europe and Hollywood. The relation with the Hollywood Celebrity added glamour and excitement of international immortality, a solution for the quest and a meaningful use of leisure by the upper class. The sale of false antiques to the neo-rich American class by the newly impoverished owners, became the practice. A capital out of nothing resulted out of this activity of the noble class.

With sophistication in transport, inter-continental class had no need to stick to a place. There was the jet set, discotheque community. The La Dolce Vita was actively embraced, so the Op, Pop, Camp, multimedia, drug and counter cultures, sophisticated Black Panthers, and S.D.S radical movements. These upper classes always had a more than normal share in making a liberated individual. They were quick to shift from one plank to another with a proven inconsistency.

The membership into this class had been global. The qualifications were money, titles, sexual attractions and reputations. It had no national base at all. So the American upper class had become an easy prey. They had abandoned their older gaudiness and vulgarity. The emergence of a mass-economy oriented, world-position came to be reckoned as a new class. Their prosperity is far out of proportion to their range of youthful expectations. They had their experience of self-esteem through their positions in business, industry, bureaucracy and academia. It was still new to an American who had no tradition to fall back upon. A life style is yet to be born. It has yet to organize leisure. This class has provided a solution, unique in itself for defining and presenting a new style of life for American society in the post-war period.