I’m trying to unpack the meaning of this.

On the one hand, it is a statement of fact. People who shop at Forever 21 — young, middle-class women (including yours truly, except for the young part) — tend to be bourgeois. But there are probably poorer (read: working class) women who shop there, too; the rock-bottom prices allow anyone to look chic and fashionable. Young. Pretty. Forever 21. Isn’t that what everyone wants, regardless of how much money you have in your purse?

If one were to apply a more academic reading to this piece of clothing, one could say that it’s a tacit acknowledgment that class warfare exists. Forever 21 is a mega clothing store chain that has reaped the benefits of the worst tendencies in global capitalism. In order to open up these thousands of stores across America, Asia, and Europe, and sell fashionable clothing at cheap prices, they have to staff these stores with cheap labor and, most importantly of all, sell clothes at (probably) ridiculous markups because they can draw upon the cheap labor of (usually female) workers in sweatshops.

This sweater is a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of one’s privilege, but it draws attention not just to the economic circumstances (or, the status) of the wearer, but also the cultural and economic divide that exists between girls and women who enjoy the profits of a capitalistic system and those who suffer under it. 

Sketch by Jacques-Louis David of the Tennis Court Oath (1791), which marked the emancipation of the French bourgeoisie, or the Third Estate, from the Estates-General.

Urban charters had grown out of collective efforts to sustain collective responsibility in the medieval town. Even though urban administrators were elected to their positions, medieval towns were not centers for democracy or equality. Quite the opposite, in fact. The medieval town was ruled by an urban oligarchy. A burgher was “elected,” or chosen, by his fellow burghers to serve at his administrative post. Prosperous merchants had the most to gain from charters, as it was they who controlled their towns’ governments. Generation after generation they looked out for themselves and their economic interests.

Did the development of urban charters and laws contribute to the bourgeoisie’s achieving class consciousness in the Middle Ages?

I would argue that establishing the customs of the towns—which emphasized the rights, privileges, and liberties of the medieval bourgeoisie— was a crucial process that set the bourgeoisie apart from both their seigniorial lords and the rural peasantry.

Sheila Delany provides a succinct overview of the reasons for which the medieval bourgeoisie began to claim for themselves specific legal freedoms and privileges, which she rather brilliantly connects to the bourgeois revolutions that marked the end of a bloody 18th century:

From the start the medieval bourgeoisie were in competition with feudal lords. They competed first for labour-power, for they required a pool of free workers and artisans to produce what they would sell. Free, that is, from feudal ties, free to move where they were needed, free to work when they were needed, and free from property. To this end most town charters guaranteed freedom to any serf who lived peacefully in the town for a year and a day…But the bourgeois himself, whether merchant, employer or financier, also required freedom from domination by lay and ecclesiastical lords. He wanted freedom to trade unimpeded and travel safely, freedom to hire and release employees, to raise or lower prices, wages or interest, to accumulate a fortune, marry a noblewoman or purchase an estate. The political privileges granted to the urban bourgeoisie were known as ‘liberties.’ Indeed the notion of ‘liberty’ was the distinctive contribution to European thought of the bourgeoisie breaking free of feudal bonds; it culminated in the slogans of French and American bourgeois revolutionaries of the 18th century.

I emphasize the last point of this passage to highlight the continuing relevance of the medieval bourgeoisie to our modern political discourse. Our modern conceptions of liberty and freedoms were derived, at least partly, from definitions that the medieval bourgeoisie had begun to codify in urban charters so that they could adequately protect and defend their economic interests.

 “Bourgeoisie you have understood nothing.” A poster made during the May 1968 student riots in Paris.

Before WWII, higher education had been only for Europe’s wealthier classes, but in the postwar era there was greater equality in higher education, and a whole host of middle-class kids—baby boomers— were now able to get a university education. Reducing and eliminating tuition, government subsidies, and scholarships also helped bring about higher enrollments.And enrollments did grow dramatically as a result of these new policies; in France, for example, 4.5% of youth attended university in 1950, but this number jumped to 14.5% in 1965.

The May 1968 student riots began with middle-class youth (they were later joined by the working class, who went on strike, almost crippling the French economy). The generation that revolted in the ‘68 riots were relatively affluent and had been the targets of mass advertising and consumerism. Popular culture was primarily consumed by the middle classes and reflected middle-class interests. The products of postwar popular culture—music, television, films, Coca-Cola— were advertised as lifestyle choices; buying and consuming such products not only communicated to the outside world the socio-economic privileges that you enjoyed, but also were indicative of who you were as a person.

The ‘68 riots was, in effect, a bourgeois response to bourgeois consumerism. Students demanded a greater voice in administration of their universities in May ‘68; they took over buildings, invited industrial workers to support them, and were keen on starting a revolution. As these protests spread all over Europe and abroad to America (most notably at Columbia University), it became clear that the students were protesting against the authoritarian nature of university administrations and harbored anti-war, anti-imperialist attitudes. Most striking, however, was that these movements were really about the narcotic of mass consumerism— the fundamental rejection of bourgeois values that had become increasingly identified with the ownership of products that were massively produced, advertised, and consumed in the postwar era.

Un bar aux Folies Bergère by Édouard Manet (1882, English: A Bar at the Folies-Bergère)

Edouard Manet was born to a bourgeois family that boasted political connections to the Swedish monarchy and the French judiciary. Manet could have had a brilliant career in either the army or law, but instead chose to strike out and become an artist instead, with a particular focus on topics that were of interest to 19th-century bourgeois gents such as himself: domestic pleasures, leisure activities, and events that touched upon French political and foreign interests.

Manet’s work is what prompted his critics to coin the term “impressionism” in the first place. A Bar at the Folies-Bergère is a famous painting and tries to mirror, almost quite literally, the traditional still-life painting. Unlike a traditional still-life, however, this painting shows objects of commercial consumption in a setting where leisure itself was consumed.

Many art critics believe that Manet intended this painting to be a social commentary on late 19^th century life—especially the disconnection that people felt (which one may see in the expression on the barmaid’s face) to the social encounters of modern life. Shop girls and barmaids such as this one shown above had to supplement their meager incomes through prostitution, and the foreboding image of the bourgeois, well-dressed fellow in the background suggests that the woman herself could have been seen an object of consumption.

frenchhistory:

Nicolas de LARGILLIERRE
Paris, 1656 - Paris, 1746

Le prévôt des marchands et les échevins de la ville de Paris
1689

@credits

The Provost of Merchants (prévôt des marchands), or Dean of Guild, headed the burgh council and the burgh’s merchant company

The merchant bourgeoisie painted in all of their glory. The rise of bourgeoisie as the dominant class in modern Europe has its origins with the development of a new class of merchant elites and their ability to exercise political power in their cities and towns. Because they were the first capitalists and thus the richest members of their urban communities, becoming part of the merchant elite afforded one with a whole host of opportunities. For example, holding political office (such as being part of the burgh council, as mentioned above) was contingent upon one’s membership to the merchant guild.

The Chocolate Girl (known also as La Belle Chocolatière, or Das Schokoladenmädchen) is one of the most famous works by the Swiss artist, Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-1789), and depicts a pretty maid serving a tray of hot chocolate.

See my post here about coffee and coffee houses.

At first, the consumption of caffeinated drinks were used for medicinal purposes, but soon after their introduction into European life, they were drunk for pleasure, as we all know that caffeine tends to stimulate you quite a bit (ahem!). Caffeinated beverages also tend to stifle hunger, especially hot chocolate! Drinking chocolate was first introduced into Europe by way of Spain who were exposed to the wonders of the cocoa plant from their colonies in the New World. The drink was made by pulverizing the dried beans and boiling them in water with vanilla, cinnamon, or chili peppers.

The first chocolate-drinking establishments were set up in the 17^th century and were open to those who could pay the entrance fees. By the 18^th century, all European countries were consuming chocolate, but Spain had by far the highest consumption levels in Europe and it was, for some time, reserved for the elite primarily (i.e., the nobility and the bourgeoisie).

Jud Süß (1940), directed by Veit Harlan: Full film streaming above with English subtitles.

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, believed in producing high-quality products. In order for propaganda to be effective, it had to be well-made, subtle in its messaging, and—most importantly—entertaining so that it could appeal to the widest audience possible. Under his auspices, this stylish costume drama, based very loosely on the life of an 18th-century court Jew, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer (1698-1738), was seen by over 20 million Germans when it debuted in 1940.

The film is an anti-Semitic historical fantasy about the rise and fall of Oppenheimer at the court of Duke Karl Alexander. On his way to becoming one of the Duke’s most trusted advisers, Oppenheimer convinced the Duke to let the poor and filthy-looking Jews leave their ghettos and come settle in the town of Württemberg, let the Duke spend extravagantly in order to gain his influence and trust, implemented exorbitant taxes on the ordinary citizens of the town, slept with German women at court, and finally— in an act that reveals the depths of Oppenheimer’s depravity—raped the heroine Dorothea Sturm (played by the model for ‘Aryan’ beauty, the director’s wife Kristina Soderbaum), who happened to be the daughter of an influential merchant and town elder. Driven by shame, she then drowned herself in a river.

The anti-Semitic message is clear: If you let the ‘Aryan’ Germans and the Jews mix, you are essentially contributing to the breakdown of the social order: The virtue of German women will be compromised, ordinary townspeople will be exploited, and the parasitic Jews—whose only fealty is to money and other Jews—will run roughshod over the German people for profit and sexual gratification, if we let them!

Much has been written about Jud Süß as a piece of propaganda, but I think the best way to look at it is as a Bourgeois Family Tragedy.

Linda Schulte-Sasse says

Jud Süß borrows the basic scenario of the bourgeois tragedy; its plot likewise revolves around the disruption of social harmony and the invasion of familial bliss by figures initiating courtly intrigue. Here, too, the family, in which the viewer quickly develops an emotional investment, represents a microcosm for the State; the violation against the Sturms stands for that against Wurttemberg. Yet Jud Süß departs from the bourgeois tragedy in an essential way; namely, the film displaces the source of evil usually ascribed to the aristocracy to the Jew.

But what, according to the worldview espoused by the film, are the bourgeois family values that are being threatened by the Jews?

The following scheme summarizes the class coding of the bourgeois tragedy: love, fidelity, honesty; dedication to community; humanity, sympathy, conscience; ‘virtue’ above the material; tenderness, love; women domestic, virtuous; straightforward language; kindness; forgiveness, trust.

The values of the aristocracy (but in this film attributed to the Jews) are:

intrigue; politics; ambition (power, personal glory); materialism; sexual pleasure (amusement); women as objects; use of French terms; gallantry, politesse; revenge.

Isn’t it interesting that these aristocratic, ‘shallow’ values were then ascribed to the bourgeoisie much later on with the waning of aristocratic power and the rise of industrial capitalism?

antisocial-socialist:

“This illustration was done in 1953 by a well-known Soviet painter and illustrator, Valerian V. Shcheglov. The drawing depicts Soviet school children celebrating Lenin’s heritage and the tradition of the Russian Revolution.”

This is a really interesting drawing because it places Lenin in such a bourgeois, domestic setting— the father of the revolution is also the father figure of Soviet children everywhere. Drawn at the center of this ‘family’ portrait, Lenin is a fatherly specter watching over this fairly domestic scene of children singing traditional songs—maybe caroling?—in front of a Christmas tree. Doesn’t it make Lenin seem much more cuddly than his successor, Stalin?

In fact, Lenin as the leader and father figure of all children seems to have been a popular motif in soviet art.

The description for this font, called bourgeois, “echoes letterforms from the early 20th century drawn in a contemporary style.”

Amazingly enough, this bourgeois font is also supposed to conjure up the very specific image of the bourgeois family and their cultural values:

The Bourgeois family live a very normal life. The Bourgeois family believe in the environment as long as it doesn’t inconvenience their lifestyle. The Bourgeois family believe in people’s right to protest the but disapprove of violence in an utterly conventional way. The Bourgeois family can’t see why sexism is an issue because it isn’t to them. The Bourgeois family would like to help the world’s big problems, trouble is they only know how to discuss small ones. The Bourgeois family would like to work in jobs that directly help people but they just cant afford the salary drop. The Bourgeois family don’t see racism as a problem as they don’t meet many black people in their daily lives. The Bourgeois family believe in rebellion against the previous generation, but rigidly follow the conventions of their own peer group. The Bourgeois family want ‘freedom’ but they don’t realise what that means, they just use it as a rhetorical statement. The Bourgeois family is a font from Virus available in 32 different variations.

Is this what it meant to be bourgeois in the twentieth century? Or is this a description of the Baby Boomer generation?