Easy Street

One common theme in most cultures is a certain self importance of the rich. The old notion of Social Darwinism tends to rear its ugly head whenever people shake their heads at the cliques that form in high school, the need to have the trendiest new toy or hottest accessory. However, this isn’t a problem isolated to 21st century girls obsessed with watching The Hills. The nobility of Dickens’ Great Expectations and the raucous college students of Bret Ellis’ Rules of Attraction both share a similar obsession, using possessions as ways of measuring others until others become those possessions. The spoiled rich of 19th and 20th centuries share a common trait of consumption, obsessed with material wealth and success to the point that even fellow human beings become tools, something to have, own, and control, dehumanizing those around them to feed their own wants and goals.

Even the masters are slaves. The masters, in this case the economically well endowed, are slaves to keeping up personal appearances, making sure their honor is impeccable and their wealth obvious. When Pip, the main character of Dickens’ tale, comes into a great fortune, the first thing he does is buy new clothes, the most expensive the tailor in his small town can make, but then arrives in London and feels that his clothes aren’t right because they’re out of style. This trait carries over to the students of Ellis’ Camden University, where the pupils treat class like a joke and focus more on brand names than each other’s name. Lauren, after agreeing to sleep with a total stranger, walks passively behind him, looking at the whole thing as if someone else is making it happen, “In the Freshman’s room now. What’s his name? Sam? Steve? It’s so…neat! Tennis racket on the wall. Shelf full of Robert Ludlum books. Who is this guy? Probably drives a Jeep” (Ellis, 15). She looks down on him because he’s new, he hasn’t acclimated to the trends, hasn’t become part of the general norm in the microcosmic society that she chooses to inhabit. Not that this stops her from having sex with him, of course. As the social elite, the rich take it upon themselves to steer the world, through economic means, into one that’s preferable to their taste and suits their vapid ideas of beauty and art. Corporations are often the most to blame for this, since they are the prime movers and shakers on a global scale. In “The Politics of Culture”, Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan discuss this concept of culture from above, wherein those high in social class and material status “[allow] only certain kinds of imagery and ideas to gain access to mass audiences…inevitably further[ing] attitudes as perceptions that assure its continuation” (Rivkin, 1026). This isn’t just the ranting of conspiracy theorists; many companies have tried to make an international model of their product the norm.

Those who try to stay true to the latest trends and keep up with them label others after the same goal as posers, trying to muscle into territory they believe is right fully theirs. Lauren rails against this to a group of her friends during lunch time, lamenting the college they go to. “’I’m sick of this place. Everyone reeks of cigarettes, is pretentious, and has terrible posture. I’m getting out before the Freshman take over.’ I forgot ketchup. I push the plate of fries away. Light a cigarette” (Ellis, 36). Her willful cognitive dissonance is only made further ironic by the fact that she’s not the only one complaining of inauthenticity. Everyone imagines that they’re the only ‘real’ thing, the only human in a room of robots. “Research suggests,” says Chris Barker, “that claims to authenticity are at the heart of contemporary youth subcultures” (Barker, 429). While finding this authenticity is almost impossible for someone outside of it, those who are on the inside seem to have no such difficulties. Pip, who acts like this elegant gentleman when leaving his farming town to go to London, gets brought painfully down to Earth when Herbert, his friend and roommate of a more distinct nobility, has to gently guide him into a politer set of table manners. During their first dinner, he often pauses midway through his tale to correct some action of Pip’s. “Now, I come to the cruel part of the story—merely breaking off, my dear [Pip], to remark that a dinner-napkin will not go into a tumbler” (Dickens, 172). The ruling party often has this irritating notion that they’re the only ones to be correct, and if you’re of a different opinion then it’s because you’re not one of them. Simone de Beauvoir points out that “In the midst of an abstract discussion it is vexing to hear a man say: ‘You think thus and so because you are a woman’; but I know that my only defense is to reply: ‘I think thus and so because it is true,’ thereby removing my subjective self from the argument. It would be out of the question to reply: ‘And you think the contrary because you are a man’” (de Beauvoir). These walls exist because it’s hard to create a self without an other. Pip may have lived in both worlds, as a gentleman and as a poor man, but he can’t say anything about either because his claims to both are tarnished.

Indeed, by categorizing people as being in this binary of Rich or Poor, In or Out, it’s nigh impossible for people to treat each other as people, and they only become a series of labels, a group of items, until they eventually become an item themselves. Pip’s fortune is eventually revealed to be nothing more than a step in a grand revenge fantasy hatched by an ex-convict who wanted to simply brag of having a gentleman in London. “If I ain’t a gentleman,” he says to Pip, “nor yet got no learning, I’m the owner of such” (Dickens, 311). He only wanted Pip so he could elevate himself, know that he was the owner of someone who had achieved all he couldn’t, his own way of spitting at the system that had tossed him overboard. The convict himself wasn’t really rich, but worked his hardest so that Pip could be in his stead. Sean, one of Lauren’s classmates, describes her only as “the girl who fucked Mitchell last night and who I want to fuck” (Ellis, 40). Sean makes no effort to learn her name, learn anything about her, just decides that he wants to have sex with her, make her a notch on his bedpost. The saddest part is, in this environment, no one seems to know anyone, as if everyone’s perfectly happy isolating themselves and only interacting when they want. They’ve reached the top and can only become more wealthy by collecting the people around them, or they’ve got no money and collect people as a form of currency, elevating themselves by proxy. Jean Baudrillard emphasizes this, stating that “in a more integrated society, individuals no longer compete for the possession of goods, they actualize themselves in consumption” (Baudrillard, 409). These aren’t people any more. They’re a group of oppurtunities, of ideas, of possible pleasures and prides wrapped around one another until the human is obscured by the watcher’s desirous perception.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with want. It’s a perfectly natural, perfectly harmless thing when neutral. However, when it turns malicious, when it becomes more about ephemeral wants over long lasting desires, that’s when the dark side of desire jumps on stage. Both Dickens and Ellis sought to expose this in their works, taking none-too-subtle jabs at those they found most deserving; those who eat until their stomachs bulge, drink until they drown, and hoard without any notion of the wants of others.

Works Cited
Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies. 3rd ed. Sage Publications Ltd, 2008. Print.
Baudrillard, Jean. “The System of Objects”.   Literary Theory: An Anthology.  Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan.  Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 408-418
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005. Print.
Ellis, Bret. The Rules of Attraction. MacMillan, 1988. Print.
Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. “The Politics of Culture”. ”. Literary Theory: An Anthology.  Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan.  Malden: Blackwell, 1998. 1025-1027.

Ethnography

• Casual look at IP addresses shows a wide range of locales and cultures represented; England, Germany, Russia, all across the US, Japan and Australia.

• People are broken into different ‘Ranks’ by the owners of a channel, based on relationship to the owner, experience with the subject the channel’s oriented on, time spent in the channel, or how sociable they are.

• Due to these requirements, people of higher rank tend to be more social/popular than people of lower rank.

• People who cause unneeded drama are looked down upon, often times either temporarily or permanently banned from the channel in question.

• People rarely pull rank, except if someone is being openly and unnecessarily hostile.

• Some people stay out of channels so they can talk to only the people they want to talk to and avoid drama.

• When people come on and talk about a problem, people usually offer advice or sympathy, while others abhor bringing personal problems on and complaining. There’s an undercurrent of distrust, though, since it’s nearly impossible to tell when people are telling the truth.

One of the most distinguishing characteristics of the internet is its ability to bring together people of all backgrounds. Even though internet access has been long viewed as a priviledge, the increase in people who are logging on is astonishing. One of the most common forms of socializing on the internet are Internet Relay Chat (IRC) programs. Though one might expect that something that is, by default, supposed to bring together all types of cultures would not have its own distinct social patterns, there is a slight bit of culture at play here.

One of Simone de Beauvoir’s main ideas on the struggle for women’s rights comes from the idea that there is an ‘Us and Them’ mentality; however, from the interactions I saw, there was very little of that. The groups were too diverse for them to all link to one culturally outstanding trait that unified them. There was a clean representation of many different groups, and they were much more willing to joke about their differences than be honestly offended by anything. For instance, one of the persons in one channel, or chat room, was gay, and the majority of people teased him about it and he would fire back quips accordingly. In the one case that someone did give him flak for it, a lot of the other people there came to his defense. While certain channels might have had a slight bias for certain things based on topic (such as there being more chargers fans in a channel dedicated to Southern California or more gamers in a channel about video games) there is a general cultural blend, since even in the regions or fandoms mentioned there is a blend of cultures.

The problem of language is one that many people would expect to encounter in this type of international environment, but it was maybe only in the background. Despite all the unique cultures represented, there was only a minimum of slang, probably to keep confusion to a dull roar. The conversations had to be very precise, since you couldn’t look through the screen and see the person was smiling sarcastically at a joke. Some examples of it still slip through, such as when British people mention going back to ‘University’ for the new school year. The internet itself has developed its own slang, too, and since it takes a certain skill with computers to work one of these programs, there is a slight lean in the direction of people with higher technical knowledge or education. English is the language of choice, though that may have also been the consequence of me going to a primarily English speaking network and only going to English speaking channels. I did notice some channels focused on German and Spanish, though didn’t enter them due to a lack of fluency. While Sausser may have been correct in the idea that certain places have differing ideas about signs and signifiers, it does seem possible that there is, at every language’s heart, a core that can be accessed by study of the lingual patterns. Even the internet shorthand of acronyms and inside jokes can be easily learned, and represents a culture itself.

Now, one of the main points of this assignment was to look for romance, of which there were few. Due to a heavy (but not total) male population, this is obvious. However, even when surrounded by men and with the veil of secrecy and anonymity that comes from the internet, there was still a polite air about the conversations. Joking around was permitted, but if the insults became much less playful than pointed, people would either tell those involved to take the dispute into a private chat, or the people running the channel would personally step in and settle the dispute. There wasn’t any need to thump your chest and prove your manliness, and even the one instance of that, where someone starting talking down about another because he was gay, and therefore less classically masculine, everyone got behind the victim. The basic goal of these rooms is to keep the conversation going, and being unnecessarily mean drives the conversation in the exact opposite direction from where it really needs to go. There may be some boasting about accomplishments, but it’s not done so much that it’s the only thing that’s going on. People are generally on to talk to friends, discuss topics that are relevant to their interests, and relax.

Though the internet often serves as a joke about people who are unable to socialize in any other capacity, these networks are genuinely used to help people connect despite far reaching differences in status and physical location. The internet has often been called one of the greatest examples of democracy of our time, and in many ways these idle discussions are keeping this fledgling nation strong.

For this project, I noticed there were a lot of roles it seemed the playwright was trying to hint at and design characters to fill. So, when we decided as a group to look at certain categories of the play, I tried to assign each character to what they're stereotypical role was, both from what I saw in the play and what I imagined Tennessee Williams to have been aiming for. I'm very used to looking for the 'psychology' of characters or things I'm looking at. I wrote 5 questions that I gave to Charles on Saturday, though I came up with the idea during our first meeting on the Tuesday before this project was due.