Dancing in the Streets (22 page)
Read Dancing in the Streets Online
Authors: Barbara Ehrenreich
only a thinning line of bystanders stretched along parts of the parade route. On this May Day at least, the theaterical nature of Nazi political production was too apparent. For many observers, it was obvious that the streets were but stage scenery, the blue smocks simply costumes, the gestures and speeches awkwardly followed scripts, and the audience insufficiently animated.
66
66
The historian Peter Fritschze quotes a worker who was required to march in this event: “As the parade passed a pissoir, I said to myself âin you go â¦' As I stepped out of line, the guy next to me followed, and when we were done, we ran home.”
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As for the great Nuremberg rallies: In recent years, German historians have emphasized their “tedium and banality” as well as their manipulative intent. The official Documentation Center opened at the rally site in 2001 shows a side of the events either unglimpsed by Riefenstahl or carefully edited out: the influx of prostitutes that accompanied the rallies, along with soaring rates of venereal disease; the shortage of public toilets, and the “filthy” conditions of the few that were available.
68
And if the show itself was endless and dull, there seems to have been plenty of beer drinking on its margins. The police reported the arrest of drunken “political leaders” caught vandalizing a fountainâperhaps by putting it to use as a toilet.
69
After 1935, even the Nazi party began to lose interest in the
rallies, which were not only expensive but unreliably productive of the proper “mystic” effects: “So many ingredients were needed to create the right atmosphere for a mass celebration: a starlit summer sky ⦠a receptive audience, a well-rehearsed mass choir or a choreographed march past [
sic
]âand then a shower of rain could ruin everything.”
70
68
And if the show itself was endless and dull, there seems to have been plenty of beer drinking on its margins. The police reported the arrest of drunken “political leaders” caught vandalizing a fountainâperhaps by putting it to use as a toilet.
69
After 1935, even the Nazi party began to lose interest in the
rallies, which were not only expensive but unreliably productive of the proper “mystic” effects: “So many ingredients were needed to create the right atmosphere for a mass celebration: a starlit summer sky ⦠a receptive audience, a well-rehearsed mass choir or a choreographed march past [
sic
]âand then a shower of rain could ruin everything.”
70
We can conclude, then, with some confidence, that the nationalist spectacles of the modern eraâfrom the official festivals of the French Revolution to the fascist mass rallies of the 1920s and '30sâwere a sorry substitute for the traditional festive gatherings they replaced. This failure had nothing to do with ideological content, which ranged from radically left-wing during the French Revolution to viciously reactionary in the fascist states of the twentieth century. It was the medium that failed: the endless parades, the reviews of the troops, the exhortatory speeches. One could argue that this medium necessarily contains its own messageâabout power, militarism, the need for the individual to be subsumed by the collectiveâand that the message itself had grown tiresome over time.
But judged simply as a species of entertainment, the nationalist spectacles seem to have fallen rather short of the mark. They were, for one thing, utterly solemn events. The traditional carnival had been an occasion for subversive humor, in which customary forms of authority could be inverted and the mighty safely mocked, for a few days at least. But the nationalist events we have surveyed in this chapter featured no parodies of the puritanical Robespierre, for example, and certainly no one playing the part of Hitler as a “king of fools,” riding backward on a donkey through the streets. Where the carnival had been joyously irreverent, the nationalist rallies, and especially the fascist ones, were celebrations of state authority, designed to instill citizenly virtue or at least inspire awe.
Could better nationalist spectacles have been devised, with perhaps more color, less speechifying, and some comic relief? Yes, certainly, and Queen Elizabeth's jubilee celebration in 2002 provides
an example of what can be done with the spectacular medium: There were the usual military touchesâflyovers by fighter jets, for exampleâbut also a veritable variety show featuring pop music, extravagantly dressed dancers, and humanizing glimpses of the royals. But a spectacle, by its nature, offers an inherently more limited experience than a participatory event. In a late medieval carnival, for example, everyone had a role to play and a chance to distinguish themselves individually by the brilliance of their costumes, the wittiness of their jokes, or their talents as dancers or athletes. You went to be seen, as well as to see. At an event organized entirely as a spectacle, though, all creativity is invested in the spectacle itself, and none is demanded of the spectators. They are not there to be seen, except as part of an inert mass. All attention focuses on a central point: the parade, the speaker, or the hoopla that showcases the arrival of the head of state.
an example of what can be done with the spectacular medium: There were the usual military touchesâflyovers by fighter jets, for exampleâbut also a veritable variety show featuring pop music, extravagantly dressed dancers, and humanizing glimpses of the royals. But a spectacle, by its nature, offers an inherently more limited experience than a participatory event. In a late medieval carnival, for example, everyone had a role to play and a chance to distinguish themselves individually by the brilliance of their costumes, the wittiness of their jokes, or their talents as dancers or athletes. You went to be seen, as well as to see. At an event organized entirely as a spectacle, though, all creativity is invested in the spectacle itself, and none is demanded of the spectators. They are not there to be seen, except as part of an inert mass. All attention focuses on a central point: the parade, the speaker, or the hoopla that showcases the arrival of the head of state.
But we do not have to confine ourselves to inferences about the limits and frustrations of spectatorship relative to more physical forms of participation: Within a generation after the mass rallies of the 1930s and '40s, young people in the heart of the postfestive Western world would rebel against the immobility required of the “audience” and, against all expectation, begin to revive the ancient tradition of ecstatic festivity.
The Rock Rebellion
What has been repressed, no matter how forcibly and thoroughly, often finds a way of resurfacing. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Anglo-American culture was struck by an outbreak of “hysteria” or “mania” described by alarmed observers as obscene, disruptive, and even criminal. Neither the United States nor England was, in the mid-twentieth century, a likely site for such unrestrained behavior. Both societies were heavily burdened by the puritanical legacy of the sixteenth century; each had contributed to the suppression of festive and ecstatic traditions among colonizedâor, in the case of the Americans, enslavedâpeoples. But it may be that their very success in expunging “foreign” ecstatic traditions heightened their vulnerability to the call, when it came, to get up and move and dance and shout.
From the beginning, the rock rebellion manifested itself as a simple refusal to sit still or to respect anyone who insisted that one do so. Wherever the “new” music was performedâand it was new at least to most white peopleâkids jumped out of their seats and began to chant, scream, and otherwise behave in ways that the authorities usually interpreted as “rioting.” Most of these incidents,
according to Linda Martin and Kerry Segrave in their book
Anti-Rock: The Opposition to Rock 'n' Roll,
“just involved kids dancing in the aisles at theaters; jiving in their seats; and stomping, clapping, and yelling a lotâhaving a good time, in short. The authorities thought an audience should sit quietly and sedately, perhaps clapping a little at the end of the performance.”
1
In 1956, performances by Bill Haley and His Comets, who were at the moment the most popular rock group in the world, provoked “a national outbreak of dancing in the aisles, chanting in the streets, and deliberate rudeness toward assorted figures of authority.”
2
In both England and the United States, managers of the theaters and concert halls where rock groups performed responded by enlisting the police to control the “rioters,” so that early rock concerts evolved into a kind of slapstick ritual: Kids would stand up and begin dancing in the aisles; the police would chase them and stuff them back into their seats; the kids would get up again.
according to Linda Martin and Kerry Segrave in their book
Anti-Rock: The Opposition to Rock 'n' Roll,
“just involved kids dancing in the aisles at theaters; jiving in their seats; and stomping, clapping, and yelling a lotâhaving a good time, in short. The authorities thought an audience should sit quietly and sedately, perhaps clapping a little at the end of the performance.”
1
In 1956, performances by Bill Haley and His Comets, who were at the moment the most popular rock group in the world, provoked “a national outbreak of dancing in the aisles, chanting in the streets, and deliberate rudeness toward assorted figures of authority.”
2
In both England and the United States, managers of the theaters and concert halls where rock groups performed responded by enlisting the police to control the “rioters,” so that early rock concerts evolved into a kind of slapstick ritual: Kids would stand up and begin dancing in the aisles; the police would chase them and stuff them back into their seats; the kids would get up again.
Throughout the 1960s as well, rock concerts were routine settings for confrontations between young fans and the police. Members of the Jefferson Airplane complained that “as soon as kids got up to dance in the aisles the cops would disconnect the amps.”
3
Rolling Stones concerts almost invariably led to “riots,” with the Vancouver chief of police, for example, complaining that one of the group's concerts provided the “most prolonged demand of physical endurance I have ever seen police confronted with during my 33 years of service.” In Vancouver, as in other cities, the police began to demand and get complete control of the curtains, lighting, and sound systems for rock concerts.
4
Audiences responded with still more “riotous” behavior, such as rushing the stage or counterattacking the police with fire extinguishers and missiles. Jim Morrison of the Doors blamed the cops: “If there were no cops there, would anybody try to get onstage? ⦠The only incentive to charge the stage is because there's a barrier.”
5
Barriers of any kind only served as a provocation to the fans, who sought a freedom of motion and physical self-expression horrifying to the adult worldâa chance to
mingle with one another, to move to the music, and later to assert themselves in the streets outside the concert venues.
3
Rolling Stones concerts almost invariably led to “riots,” with the Vancouver chief of police, for example, complaining that one of the group's concerts provided the “most prolonged demand of physical endurance I have ever seen police confronted with during my 33 years of service.” In Vancouver, as in other cities, the police began to demand and get complete control of the curtains, lighting, and sound systems for rock concerts.
4
Audiences responded with still more “riotous” behavior, such as rushing the stage or counterattacking the police with fire extinguishers and missiles. Jim Morrison of the Doors blamed the cops: “If there were no cops there, would anybody try to get onstage? ⦠The only incentive to charge the stage is because there's a barrier.”
5
Barriers of any kind only served as a provocation to the fans, who sought a freedom of motion and physical self-expression horrifying to the adult worldâa chance to
mingle with one another, to move to the music, and later to assert themselves in the streets outside the concert venues.
Of course the rock performers had to take some of the blame for their fans' unruly behavior, if only because they too movedâdancing and jiving to their own music in ways that shocked and offended adult viewers. Pop singers like Eddie Fisher had moved too, but only from one conventional, operatic gesture to anotherâclasping their hands together on their chests or stretching their arms out, palms up. A good part of the frisson of early rock lay in the rhythmic and often sexually suggestive movements of the performersâgrinding their hips, thrusting their pelvises, rolling their shoulders, leaping and falling on the floorâ“rocking,” in short, as a way of announcing that the “new” music was inseparable from creative, free-form, beat-driven motion.
Among white performers, Elvis Presley pioneered the new physical expressiveness, requiring the family-oriented
Ed Sullivan
Show
to censor out his lower body from the TV screen. Bo Diddley, a black performer, was not so lucky. His contract for a 1958 nationwide TV booking stipulated that he had to perform without moving, in order to “preserve decency.” Once on air, he forgot this rule or, more likely, simply found it impossible to hold his body separate from the music, and was docked his entire fee.
6
Little Richard probably got away with jumping, prancing, and climbing on his piano only because of his over-the-top, manic, seemingly asexual persona.
Ed Sullivan
Show
to censor out his lower body from the TV screen. Bo Diddley, a black performer, was not so lucky. His contract for a 1958 nationwide TV booking stipulated that he had to perform without moving, in order to “preserve decency.” Once on air, he forgot this rule or, more likely, simply found it impossible to hold his body separate from the music, and was docked his entire fee.
6
Little Richard probably got away with jumping, prancing, and climbing on his piano only because of his over-the-top, manic, seemingly asexual persona.
But it was, again and again, the audience that stole the show, often to the consternation of the performers. The rock historian James Miller reports that the better Elvis Presley got at performing, “the less he got to do it. The problem was the tumult he now routinely provoked.” Describing a 1957 concert, the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
reported that “Presley clung to the microphone standard and staggered about in a distinctive, distraught manner, waiting for the noise to subside a bit.”
7
A few years later, Beatlemaniacsâthe just-pubescent followers of the Beatlesâeffectively silenced their
heroes with their frenzied screams. At no time during their U.S. tours was the group audible above the shrieking, which forced the band to abandon the concert stage in 1966, only two years after their first American appearances.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
reported that “Presley clung to the microphone standard and staggered about in a distinctive, distraught manner, waiting for the noise to subside a bit.”
7
A few years later, Beatlemaniacsâthe just-pubescent followers of the Beatlesâeffectively silenced their
heroes with their frenzied screams. At no time during their U.S. tours was the group audible above the shrieking, which forced the band to abandon the concert stage in 1966, only two years after their first American appearances.
By the late 1960s, rock performers were negotiating their own security arrangements with the managers of concert venues, partly out of fear that they would be crushed by their fans, should the latter succeed in actually conquering the stage. Even the gentle, cerebral Grateful Dead eventually got “sick of out-of-control fan behavior” and distributed a flyer to concertgoers forbidding gatecrashing, bottle throwing, kicking down fences, and “miracling,” or begging for free tickets outside the venue.
8
When the content of the spectacle was rock music, young people were no longer willing to accept the spectacle form, with its requirement that large numbers of people sit still and in silence while a talented few perform.
8
When the content of the spectacle was rock music, young people were no longer willing to accept the spectacle form, with its requirement that large numbers of people sit still and in silence while a talented few perform.
The rock rebellion can be interpreted in all kinds of ways. It was an uprising of the postwar generation, bored by affluence and stifled by the prevailing demands for conformity in lifestyle, opinion, and appearance. It was a challenge to the racial segregation that divided not only communities but music, which could be “pop” (for whites) or “race music” (for everyone else). And as the 1960s wore on, it fed into a widespread counterculture, which in turn helped animate a political movement countering war and domestic injustice.
But the rock rebellion was also something simpler and ostensibly less “political”âa rebellion against the role of the
audience
. In the history of festivities, the great innovation of the modern era had been the replacement of older, more participatory forms of festivity with spectacles in which the crowd serves merely as an audience. In the two centuries leading up to the twentieth, even audiences had been successfully tamed. If you went back to seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century France or England, you
would have found theater audiences, for example, that were disruptively rowdy, interrupting the actors with their own comments, milling around during the performance, or actually sitting on the stage in the midst of the action. By the end of the eighteenth century, aristocratic ideas of decorumâalong with the innovation of reserved seatingâbrought, according to sociologist Richard Sennett, “a certain deadness into the theater. There were no more shouts from the back of the hall, no more people eating food while they stood watching the play. Silence in the theater seemed to diminish the enjoyment of watching the play.”
9
audience
. In the history of festivities, the great innovation of the modern era had been the replacement of older, more participatory forms of festivity with spectacles in which the crowd serves merely as an audience. In the two centuries leading up to the twentieth, even audiences had been successfully tamed. If you went back to seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century France or England, you
would have found theater audiences, for example, that were disruptively rowdy, interrupting the actors with their own comments, milling around during the performance, or actually sitting on the stage in the midst of the action. By the end of the eighteenth century, aristocratic ideas of decorumâalong with the innovation of reserved seatingâbrought, according to sociologist Richard Sennett, “a certain deadness into the theater. There were no more shouts from the back of the hall, no more people eating food while they stood watching the play. Silence in the theater seemed to diminish the enjoyment of watching the play.”
9
Utterly missing from the audience's new role was any kind of muscular involvement beyond the occasional applause, and this prohibition extended to musical performances as well as the theater. From the nineteenth century on, all forms of Western music were being consumed by immobile audiences. At a military parade, for example, the martial music might be stirring and the marching soldiers might themselves be caught up in the pleasures of rhythmic synchrony, but the good spectatorâas opposed to the occasional exhibitionistâstood perfectly still and, except when straining to see better, remained as unobtrusive as possible. Concerts had become the most common setting for musical performances, and at these the role of the audience was to sit quietly and refrain from any motion at all. Even the most covert forms of dancingâfoot tapping and head noddingâcould disturb one's fellow listeners; audience members had learned how to hold themselves in a state of frozen attention.
The motionless perception required of an audience takes effort, especially when the performance involves the rhythmic motions of others. As we saw in chapter 1, recent research in neuroscience suggests that the neuronal mechanisms underlying the perception of motion by another person are closely linked to the
execution
of that motion by the perceiver.
10
To see a man marching or dancing, swaying as he plays the saxophone, or simply waving his arms to draw melodies from an orchestra is to ready oneself internally to join in
the marching, dancing, swaying, or arm waving. Infants automatically imitate the actions of others; with age, they acquire the ability to inhibit the imitative impulse. So the well-behaved audience memberâwho does not snap her fingers or nod her head in time to the musicâis not really at rest; she is performing a kind of workâthe silent, internal work of muscular inhibition.
execution
of that motion by the perceiver.
10
To see a man marching or dancing, swaying as he plays the saxophone, or simply waving his arms to draw melodies from an orchestra is to ready oneself internally to join in
the marching, dancing, swaying, or arm waving. Infants automatically imitate the actions of others; with age, they acquire the ability to inhibit the imitative impulse. So the well-behaved audience memberâwho does not snap her fingers or nod her head in time to the musicâis not really at rest; she is performing a kind of workâthe silent, internal work of muscular inhibition.
It is
sexual
inhibition that rock is usually creditedâor blamedâfor challenging, as in one writer's explanation of rock as “the unleashing of generations of repressed sexuality,”
11
with the music serving only to convey a less inhibited, African American sexual sensibility to the repressed white middle-class “mainstream.” No doubt mid-twentieth-century Anglo-American culture was sexually repressiveâhomophobic and skittish about heterosexual sex as well. There's no doubt, too, that sex had a lot to do with the rock rebellion, if only because of the irresistible appeal, at least from a female point of view, of stars like the “sleazy,” working-class Elvis or the witty and vaguely androgynous Beatles: They represented romantic possibilities that went well beyond necking in a car with the khaki-clad, buttoned-down, young white men of the time. But there is more to the story than sexual repressiveness and the perhaps inevitable revolt against it. Mainstream mid-twentieth-century culture was deeply restrictive of physical motion in general, whether or not it had anything to do with sex.
sexual
inhibition that rock is usually creditedâor blamedâfor challenging, as in one writer's explanation of rock as “the unleashing of generations of repressed sexuality,”
11
with the music serving only to convey a less inhibited, African American sexual sensibility to the repressed white middle-class “mainstream.” No doubt mid-twentieth-century Anglo-American culture was sexually repressiveâhomophobic and skittish about heterosexual sex as well. There's no doubt, too, that sex had a lot to do with the rock rebellion, if only because of the irresistible appeal, at least from a female point of view, of stars like the “sleazy,” working-class Elvis or the witty and vaguely androgynous Beatles: They represented romantic possibilities that went well beyond necking in a car with the khaki-clad, buttoned-down, young white men of the time. But there is more to the story than sexual repressiveness and the perhaps inevitable revolt against it. Mainstream mid-twentieth-century culture was deeply restrictive of physical motion in general, whether or not it had anything to do with sex.
Entertainment, for example, meant sitting and watching TV or movies. There were still “carnivals,” but these no longer involved dancing or sports other than, say, throwing objects at a target. At a mid-twentieth-century carnival or fair, machines did the moving for you; all the carnival-goers had to do was sit in a seat and let the roller coaster or Ferris wheel propel their bodies along a preexisting path. Religious worship was, in the dominant Protestant tradition, equally sedentary, allowing participation only in the form of hymn singing. There was dancing too, of course, but before rock's emergence into white culture, this typically meant ballroom dancingâdecorously choreographed fox-trots and waltzes that allowed for
little group interaction or individual variation. Even walking had been made largely obsolete by suburbanization and the automobile culture it spawned. At the time, of course, no one reckoned the eventual price of all this routine immobilization in the form of obesity and other health problems.
little group interaction or individual variation. Even walking had been made largely obsolete by suburbanization and the automobile culture it spawned. At the time, of course, no one reckoned the eventual price of all this routine immobilization in the form of obesity and other health problems.
In the mid-1950s, sports still offered an opportunity for physical expression, primarily for the athletes and cheerleaders. Most people, though, were merely spectators, encouraged at high school pep rallies to stand up in the bleachers and cheer for an occasional good play, but otherwise to remain motionless. The restrictions against physical motion weighed particularly heavy on girls: Not only were there no school sports for girls, but those sports that were open to girls, usually under the sponsorship of YWCAs and churches, had been redesigned to limit the amount of motion involved. In the official girls' version of basketball, for example, players were allowed only two dribbles in succession and were prohibited from crossing the center line. For females, even sex was meant to be motionless and passive. The leading marital advice book of mid-twentieth-century America warned against female “
movements
” during sexâthe idea being disturbing enough to merit italics.
12
Insofar as sexual activity was described at all, it was in terms of static “positions.”
movements
” during sexâthe idea being disturbing enough to merit italics.
12
Insofar as sexual activity was described at all, it was in terms of static “positions.”
Hence, in no small part, the particular appeal of rock mania to teenage girls. Elvis and especially the Beatles inspired a kind of mass hysteria among crowds of young white women, who jumped up and down, screamed, cried, fainted, and sometimes wet their pants in the presence of their idols. To adult commentators, Beatlemania was pathologicalâan “epidemic” set off by the Beatles as carriers or “foreign germs.” In a particularly ingenious, partly tongue-in-cheek explanation offered by the
New York Times
Magazine
in 1964, the girls were merely “conforming” and “expressing their desire to obey.” They wanted to be subsumed into the mass, which, in the author's view, was the same as being “transformed into an insect.” After all, he observed triumphantly, there had been an
earlier craze of “jitter
bugs
,”
o
and “Beatles, too, are a type of bug.”
13
But former Beatlemaniacs report that the experience was empowering and freeing. Brought together in a crowd, girls who individually might have been timid and obedient broke through police lines, rushed stages, and, of course, through their actions, determined that the Fab Four would be the most successful and best-known band in world history.
New York Times
Magazine
in 1964, the girls were merely “conforming” and “expressing their desire to obey.” They wanted to be subsumed into the mass, which, in the author's view, was the same as being “transformed into an insect.” After all, he observed triumphantly, there had been an
earlier craze of “jitter
bugs
,”
o
and “Beatles, too, are a type of bug.”
13
But former Beatlemaniacs report that the experience was empowering and freeing. Brought together in a crowd, girls who individually might have been timid and obedient broke through police lines, rushed stages, and, of course, through their actions, determined that the Fab Four would be the most successful and best-known band in world history.
Rock struck with such force, in the 1950s and early 1960s, because the white world it entered was frozen over and brittleânot only physically immobilizing but emotionally restrained. In prerock middle-class teenage culture, for example, the requisite stance was
cool
, with the word connoting not just generic approval, as it does today, but a kind of aloofness, emotional affectlessness, and sense of superiority. Rock, with its demands for immediate and unguarded physical participation, thawed the coolness, summoned the body into action, and blasted the mind out of the isolation and guardedness that had come to define the Western personality. To the Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, white rock fans were simply trying to reclaim “their Bodies again after generations of alienation and disembodied existence.”
cool
, with the word connoting not just generic approval, as it does today, but a kind of aloofness, emotional affectlessness, and sense of superiority. Rock, with its demands for immediate and unguarded physical participation, thawed the coolness, summoned the body into action, and blasted the mind out of the isolation and guardedness that had come to define the Western personality. To the Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, white rock fans were simply trying to reclaim “their Bodies again after generations of alienation and disembodied existence.”
They were swinging and gyrating and shaking their dead little asses like petrified zombies trying to regain the warmth of life, rekindle the dead limbs, the cold ass, the stone heart, the stiff, mechanical, disused joints with the spark of life.
14
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