Anyone else read Lauren Collins’ excellent essay in The New Yorker about Gerard Depardieu giving up his French citizenship in order to steer his ship to clearer, tax-free waters? It’s wonderful, and not only because of the accompanying picture (above).

On the one hand, her essay is about Depardieu’s career and how his upbringing and celebrity represents, in a sense, the bourgeois fantasy of the man who grows up poor but ends up making something out of himself. Depardieu is, indeed, a self-made man; not just an actor, but a pretty successful entrepreneur as well. On the other hand, the essay reveals quite a bit about the current state of French socialism about which I was admittedly ignorant. 

The issue here is that Depardieu refused to accept the tax rate of 75% on the superrich and has renounced his citizenship. He is now—if I’m not mistaken— living in Belgium or Russia. (He was recently given Russian citizenship and counts Vladimir Putin as one of his pals). A few interesting points here are 1) the 75% tax rate is a temporary measure (3 years) to dig out of a huge national debt,  2) the tax rate affects only about 3,000 people in France, as the divide between the superrich and the lower classes is not as drastic as it is in the United States (for example), and 3) the majority of the French people support this tax hike and it is one of the many reasons the Socialists were able to get back in power after 17 years or so in the wilderness.

Depardieu, an international celebrity who is, in a way, a symbol of modern French cinema, is now a figure of derision. It seems that many French people believe that paying taxes is their patriotic duty and that capitalist success stories, like Depardieu, should give back to the country who made them a success. But Depardieu believes that it is he who has given so much to France, and so why is everyone trying to punish his success? 

Depardieu would have scores of people—and an entire political party, even— who would agree with his stance in the United States, but what’s fascinating to me is that Depardieu’s outlook has been discredited, ridiculed, and derided in France. The consensus is quite simply: Pay up asshole. The debate rages on here, but it seems to be quite settled back in France, where there is a mix of both capitalist and anti-austerity measures in order to bring that country back from financial insolvency.

Paraphrased from Marx’s famous dictum, this little cartoon draws attention to the wonderful, little bourgeois toys that Marx could have never even dreamed would be available for proletarian consumption (and entertainment!): iPods, computers, televisions…

In fact, Marx probably would have never gotten around to composing the Communist Manifesto. He would have been too busy posting on tumblr.

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. 

With the assistance of Gustave Eiffel, Le Bon Marché boasted the first metal roof structure in the world, making it a monument of architectural innovation.

New industries in the late 19th century helped expand the market for consumer goods, which brought the economy out of stagnation by the end of the century. Overseas imperialism also opened new markets for European consumer goods. New forms of retailing and marketing appeared—department stores, chain stores, packaging techniques, mail-order catalogs, and advertising—which simultaneously stimulated and fed consumer demand.

A new way in which goods were being consumed was through the development and construction of department stores in the mid-19^th century.  Department stores, such as Le Bon Marché in Paris (apparently the first department store ever) sold a wide selections of consumer goods under one roof. These modern stores increased the economic pressure on small traditional merchants who specialized in selling only one kind of product. In a traditional shop, the retailer (who was also the producer) offered a single product—gloves, for example—in limited quantity at a fairly high price. Oftentimes, this price was not set and the customer would haggle with the shopkeeper until a price was agreed upon. “Browsing” was virtually unheard of— an individual who entered a shop was expected to make a purchase.

Department stores, however, made profits from a quick turnover of a very large volume of goods set at low prices. In order to stimulate sales, department stores sought to make shopping a very pleasant experience by offering well-lit expanses filled with alluring items, well-trained and friendly clerks, in-store reading rooms, and restaurants.

Middle-class women especially were encouraged to patronize these stores even though critics had charged that these stores turned sober housewives into irrational shoppers, who were wasteful of family resources and let their consumer fantasies run wild in a store like Le Bon Marché. Indeed, women were the ones who primarily participated in the vast expansion of consumerism and domestic comfort that marked the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century. Women filled their homes with manufactured items such as clothing, china, furniture, carpets, drapery, wallpaper, and prints. In these decades, women’s pursuit of fashion in their home furnishings seemed to lean towards imperial motifs as Empire began to increasingly invade the domestic spaces of the bourgeois household: Persian-inspired designs were seen on textiles, oriental carpets were laid across floors, wicker furniture was placed in drawing rooms, and Chinese porcelain was used at mealtimes. 

The transept from the Grand Entrance of the Crystal Palace, Souvenir of the Great Exhibition, William Simpson (lithographer), Ackermann & Co. (publisher), 1851.

With the rise and dominance of the bourgeoisie in the late 19th century, the relationship between imperialism, commerce, and consumerism begin to be celebrated in—what I call— “spectacles of Empire,” in which technological advancements and industrial growth were put on display in great exhibitions meant to communicate the “greatness” of Empire. The idea behind such exhibitions is that anyone—but really middle-class families— could buy tickets and “enjoy” the Empire on the weekend.

One of the most famous exhibitions of the 19^th century was the Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, held in London in 1851, otherwise known as the Crystal Palace exhibition.  A monument of modern iron and glass architecture, the exhibition housed and displayed an abundance of goods from British colonies and other nations. Karl Marx himself even commented on the exhibition, saying that it represented the height of some sort of capitalistic fetishism of commodities.

New inventions were also crucial to the success of this exhibition. The Tempest Prognosticator, for example, was an ingenious little device that utilized leeches to predict storms.

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).

An interesting point made in Amy Nelson’s excellent essay “Cold War Celebrity and the Courageous Canine Scout” was that the Bolsheviks had stigmatized the keeping of pets, like a family dog, because it was a practice that symbolized bourgeois decadence. It was only after World War II, especially after the heroic feats of canine cosmonauts such as Laika came to be known, that the practice of keeping pets became more common.

But how did the Soviets reconcile the fact that having pets - a bourgeois practice in it of itself - was antithetical to socialist values? Nelson provides an answer:

Among the many factors influencing this newer trend was an ethos of utility, which stressed the practical value of dogs as “workers” who helped humans hunt wild animals, herd livestock, and protect socialist property. Socialist ideology also valued dogs’ contributions to the military during the war and their long-standing importance to scientific research.

I highlight this point in her essay (which, indeed, has very many points) to emphasize how even bourgeois practices can be justified to fit within the seemingly antithetical worldview of Soviet Russians.

5-45:

Ta, Wikipedia. I always mix these two.

Hilarious, but I think someone on Wikipedia is taking a piss here. One is the very definition of bourgeois decadence and the other is…not. Although with the American electorate being generally ignorant and stupid, and also having no idea what socialism even means (besides as a knee-jerk word for “un-American,” which can be combined with a variety of other words, such as “fascist,” much in the vein of “commie Jew fag”), I guess I wouldn’t be completely surprised if a little clarification was in order here.

This picture is from Mortimer Chamber’s The Western Experience, a pretty generic “Western Civ”-type textbook for college students. The painting (“Many Happy Returns of the Day”) is by one William P. Frith, and is supposed to communicate middle class/bourgeois domesticity in 19th century England. Frith apparently painted a lot of upstanding family scenes with moralistic overtones. He was married to Isabelle and had twelve children. At the very same time, down the road, he and his mistress, the sweet Mary Alford (his former ward), sired seven more children. Was this a first sign of bourgeois decadence? Discuss.