Caffeine Society
Early in the fall of 1960, 1 received an elaborate color brochure advertising the Chev- rolet for 1961. Inside, the only full-page illus- tration is a brilliant portrait of a man in the front seat of a de luxe new model. His hard- top convertible (advertised for its unobstructed view) is parked near the edge of what seems to be the Grand Canyon. . . The man is not, however, peering . . . at the scenery. Instead . . . he is preparing to look into his 'View- master,' a portable slide viewer using card- board disks holding tiny color transparencies of scenic beauty. On the seat beside him are several extra disks. Standing oetside the car are his wife and three small children. The eldest of them, a little girl about ten years old, at whom his wife is looking, is herself preoccupied with a small box camera with which she is preparing to take a picture of her father seated in the car.
flits, says Professor Boorstin, is an example of what has happened to the American Dream- t() the old vigour, excitement and aspiration. All the resources of the American economy are marshalled to display 'the image of a man (with the Grand Canyon at his elbow) looking at an image, and being photographed as he does it!
In other words, Mr. Boorstin, a widely travelled American historian who at present holds a visiting chair at the Sorbonne, is con- cerned with what J. B. Priestley calls `Admass.' It is a familiar enough theme. We have all read about Madison Avenue, Hidden Persuaders, the Organisation Man, the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit. This is the world of the opinion poll, the 'corporate image,' the press-conference and the public relations officer, the magazine digest and the ghost-written speech or book. People who write about them tend to be either defensive or indignant, but not to say much that is fresh. Mr. Boorstin is a brilliant exception What strikes him most about these phenomena is their unreality rather than their wickedness. He resists the temptation to blame Madison Avenue. The advertising agencies in his view are symptoms, not causes. So he concentrates upon the notion of unreality. He points out that in journalism, radio and television news is in more than one sense manufactured. In common with the employees of these media, the public begins to find 'pseudo-events' (planted stories, press-releases, interviews with and profiles of celebrities) more vivid and certainly more en- tertaining than the genuine events to which they relate. Celebrity becomes a function of Publicity. Pop-singers acquire greater renown than statesmen or artists—unless the statesmen Or artists turn into TV personalities or acquire high visibility in some other way. Indeed, pub- licity agents, gOssip columnists and similar middlemen may become celebrities in their own right, so that Walter Winchell and Louella Parsons are included in a recent Celebrity Register along with Sartre and Reinhold Niebuhr; or that television interviewers may be- come better known to the general public than their succession of victims; or that more votes are recorded in the annual elections for Miss Rheingold than for most political contests. Per- haps the same confusion is now apparent in English life. At any rate an English under- graduate wrote an essay for me in which he re- ferred to Rheingold Niebuhr. When American authors write the are in many cases no longer sure whether they are writing for a hardcover or a paperback edition, for print or for the movies or perhaps for Broadway. Authors
are merchandised, when they achieve fame, like movie stars: Mr. Boorstin quotes a remark that Hemingway was a Douglas Fairbanks of letters, while J. D. Salinger is a Garbo. When Americans go on holiday, like the Chevrolet family at Grand Canyon they travel in insulated comfort, at sev- eral removes from reality. When they wonder what they feel about an event or an issue, they find out from public-opinion polls. When they worry about American prestige abroad their solu- tion is to produce a more attractive 'image.'
All in all a glib, well-meaning, euphemistic, narcissistic society. Mr. Boorstin's analysis of it is so acute, though, that one wishes he had gone further. He distinguishes between the old Ameri- can Dream and the new American Trance. The first was `Utopian' yet splendid, the second is mild and vulgar. But are we entitled to assume that there is no causal connection : that the phenomena he describes have not grown almost inevitably out of capitalist-democratic society? Mr. Boorstin seems to suggest as much, as when he mentions the slower progress toward Admass in quasi-aristocratic countries. If the develop- ment is inevitable, or at least 'natural,' what follows? Are we to conclude that modern American society is fundamentally corrupt? Or that it is merely paying a price—perhaps a heavy one—for other benefits (widely diffused pros- perity, a reasonable degree of decency and liberty) that are 'real' even if somewhat tainted and cliche-ridden? At one stage Mr. Boorstin speaks of 'the menace of ideology'; yet he appears to be arguing that a society ought to have goals and standards which lie outside its own self- justifying self-portrait. If 'ideology' is so dread- ful, perhaps we must be content with our glossy `images' instead. But is is hard to believe that the choices are so exclusive.
MARCUS CUNLIFFE
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