Abstract
I live in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, above the small town of Volcano, California. Every summer my forested environs are festooned with what is called the “Classic Car Show,” or the “Concours d’Elegance” in the more pretentious neighborhoods. Hotrod enthusiasts traverse sparsely populated corridors of the state, intermittently discharging their trailers at picturesque locations to undertake choreographed formations of glint and horsepower. Comely and attentive consorts of the invariably male operators serve as what appear to be indispensable accessories. The events are unusually popular, and the local economies relish the attention. These often wild and exotic machines are judged according to criteria that account for the complex aspects of their provenance. Their patrons are mesmerized and seduced, in no small part due to the backdrop of incense cedars and granite outcroppings. The woman, the wilderness, and the machine. Although hardly proud of it, and certainly doubtful of its gender neutrality, I detect in this confluence a popular concentration of beauty, American style.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Volcano just happens to be a few miles from the even smaller town of Jenny Lind, the namesake of which never even visited. The phenomenon of Jenny Lind is discussed in Chap. 5.
- 2.
There is etymological evidence of the intrusion of utility upon beauty, for the English word pretty has come to occupy much of beauty’s linguistic territory. Pretty is an interesting word, for it is derived from the Old English prat, which is related to trickery or fraud. When later transformed, or rather reformed, as the word traverses the new priorities of the Enlightenment, pretty retains the connection to cleverness while losing the derogatory connotation of its origin. Whereas a prat might hoodwink a bishop in an era before cleverness manages to eclipse ecclesiastical pronouncement (Leslie 1888, p. 338 marginalia), pretty depicts the admirable industry and skill of honey bees: “The bee in his bisynes beste is allowed, And pretiest is his wirching to profite of the peuple” (Dean 2000 p. 112, lines 989, 991). So when an American appreciates a pretty vehicle, landscape, or woman, there is at least some etymological evidence that the encounter activates more than aesthetic tastes. Cars, wilderness, and women can be breathtaking, but each one of them may easily be reduced to variables in utilitarian calculations.
References
Bettelheim, Bruno. 1976. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Knopf.
Bordo, Susan. 2000. The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Brecht, Bertolt. 2003. Brecht on Art and Politics. London: Methuen.
Dean, James M., ed. 2000. Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications.
Eagleton, Terry. 1990. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford, U.K.; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Hayes-Conroy, Allison, and Jessica Hayes-Conroy. 2008. “Taking Back Taste: Feminism, Food and Visceral Politics.” Gender, Place & Culture 15 (5): 461–473.
Hearne, Betsy Gould. 1989. Beauty and the Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Laurencie, Lionel de La. 1923. “Benjamin Franklin and the Claveciniste Brillon de Jouy.” The Musical Quarterly 9 (2): 245–259.
Leslie, Jhone. 1888. The Historie of Scotland. Translated by James Dalrymple. 2 vols. London: William Blackwood and Sons.
Schiff, Stacy. 2006. A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America. New York: Henry Holt.
Warner, Marina. 1995. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. London: Vintage.
Zipes, Jack. 1984. Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales. New York: Methuen.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lukes, T.J. (2016). Introduction: From Rhyme to Reason. In: Politics and Beauty in America. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-02090-1_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-02090-1_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-02088-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-02090-1
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)