I live in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, above the small town of Volcano, California.1 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.
This volume concentrates on the connection of American beauty to politics, an oft-neglected influence in treatments of aesthetics. The politics is that of liberalism and its prosecution of reason in the name of mastering nature. I deem this partnership of politics and beauty lacking in full compatibility, and I focus on its resident conflict between disinterest and utility.2 Machines in general and cars in particular may be receptive to exotic designs, but they also assist our movement through nature. Wilderness may be magnificent and inspirational, but its occupation is a tribute to human industry. And while women can be considered dreamy and exotic, they are nature’s conduit of species preservation. This intrusion of anthropocentrism into beauty is hardly coincidental, and I will argue that its presence is not fully salutary.
For each element of American beauty that I examine, there is an extraordinary individual around whom I can trace the evolution of these important cultural components. My enterprise is a bit of a tightrope walk, as I hope to communicate the brilliance as well as the deficiencies of their contributions. In the case of women, it is the circus impresario and beauty contest inventor P.T. Barnum (1810–91) who accompanies and amplifies the distinctively American evolution of female beauty. For wilderness I focus on John Muir (1838–1914) and a complex amalgam of environmentalism, inventiveness, and artistry that disqualifies him from any easy designation as a naturalist. And as for machines I depend primarily upon Harley Earl (1893–1969), the design maven of General Motors (GM) who identifies and cultivates in the American market a receptivity to fanciful transport.
On the surface, these three individuals could not be more different. In fact, I know of no other tract in which they are discussed together. However, in each one I detect a robust appetite for a more rewarding American culture, along with an extraordinary sensitivity to the liberal political ambience with which the culture contends. I argue that their astonishingly successful contributions to its sense of the beautiful are due to that very sensitivity. I consider them to be inventors of American beauty. Obviously, none of the three is primarily a political or aesthetic philosopher, so I do risk presumptuousness in distilling a cultural agenda from their more protean endeavors. However, the monumental notoriety and admiration that each generates surely signals a dialectical exchange whereby popular appetites encounter novel and exotic opportunities for deployment. I intend to make more sense of their popularity by connecting it to political philosophy.
The three central characters are male, and the three elements of American beauty appeal disproportionately to what might generally be depicted as male taste. An absence of such bias would be surprising, however, since the intrusive influences I describe originate from the historically unbalanced domains of American politics and commerce. Nonetheless, an enhanced integrity for the concept of beauty does not come automatically with its ungendering (see Bordo 2000). Recent attention to the aesthetic aspects of food preparation, for instance, may reduce beauty’s sexism (see Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy 2008); however, such a development does little to release American beauty from the distractions of utility. A beautiful meal, like women, wilderness, and cars, can surely activate the familiarity and comfort of utility.
Two essential preconditions apply to my undertaking: (1) that there is a relevance to the concept of beauty and (2) that national boundaries can instigate and protect indigenous meanings of such concepts. I am tempted to just state axiomatically that beauty exists and countries matter, given that neither position is patently outrageous. I certainly have no intention of undertaking a rigorous and exhaustive inventory of beauty’s specifications or of engaging the competing permutations of theories of the state to determine the precise relative influence of national politics as opposed to international classes. And, needless to say, American beauty is hardly exclusive; that women, wilderness, and machines participate internationally in beauty does nothing to my contention regarding America’s special concentration.
I will just say for now that no one, except the most assiduous of Marxists (Eagleton 1990), dismisses either cultural distinctions due political boundaries or a persistent human interest in beauty. As for undeniable national distinctions, a cursory comparison of America and Britain suffices; for although liberalism saturates both countries, its initial deployment is more miserable in Britain, and thus leads to a reticence and robust (Marxist) resistance not seen in America. And as for a beauty that transcends the manipulation of economic class, even Marxists Georg Lukács and Bertolt Brecht are resigned to the legitimacy of artistic standards. Ironically, they debate the relative excellence of “bourgeois” artists like Balzac and Shelley (Brecht 2003, p. 208). For any further demonstration that beauty exists and that political boundaries can influence its reception, my substantiation more nebulously saturates the volume rather than occupies a discrete discussion.
So the following chapters, and their brief descriptions in this introduction, represent my attempt to distinguish a primarily American concept of beauty, trace its origin, and characterize its specific components. I conclude with a critical assessment of American beauty and speculate on its release from its former constraints.
Chapter 2: “Eat Then Beauty, Said the Monster”
Absent a less encumbered precedent with which to compare the American permutation, any lament regarding the political dilution of beauty would fall short. Therefore, Chap. 2 discusses two types of beauties, namely, an ancient and classical one, followed by a modern and liberal one. And while I will later consult the aesthetic reflections of heavyweights the likes of Plato and Burke, I prefer to introduce the contrast via two popular and compelling fables, the employment of which is irresistible due to each’s concentration on a female protagonist, and thus necessarily on traits relevant to the first component of American beauty that I will isolate. A brief vignette in an ancient Roman novel stands for classical beauty, and an eighteenth-century children’s story by a French educator living in England stands for beauty under the influence of liberalism.
The first fable, that of Cupid and Psyche, is recounted by Apuleius (125–80 CE) in his The Golden Ass. The story depicts an experiment whereby Venus’s celestial beauty is temporarily extended to Psyche, a mortal woman. The result is disaster, as this all-too-intimate manifestation of beauty infects those who encounter it with an overwhelming sense of inadequacy. Only Cupid, the god of love, remains as a compatible partner; but in order to retain even a semblance of sociability, Psyche disguises her tryst, telling her human companions that Cupid is an elderly businessman. The affairs of beauty are too exquisite, too disinterested to occupy the mortal environment. In fact, only Psyche’s eventual sanctification can reconcile capacity with status.
The second fable is “Beauty and the Beast,” which appears in its most famous version as a children’s tale related by Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont (1711–80). Although similarly concerned with the compatibility of beauty and humanity, it offers an alternative reconciliation. Here, the “elderly businessman” and the pecuniary and pedestrian interests he is thought to represent are no epithet. Instead, Belle’s most enduring and rewarding love is reserved for just such a character, one represented by none other than her father. Beauty is reconfigured from what is at best oblivious to human subsistence in the first rendition into a respect for and enhancement of it in the second.
Admittedly, there is a lack of symmetry between my two archetypes. Psyche appears in a monumental literary work and is associated with the various profound and volatile components of the human subconscious, whereas Belle is easily enveloped by the Disney sensibility and thus vulnerable to scholarly disdain. In my defense, however, I would first point out that “Beauty and the Beast” has been subjected to rigorous scholarship (see Hearne 1989; Bettelheim 1976; Warner 1995; Zipes 1984). But even more importantly, I would say that Belle’s “virtuous” beauty gravitates automatically to more cozy and didactic treatments precisely because her beauty is an accessory to the challenges of human subsistence. The Beast in this scenario, who due his modesty is quite successful in the survival domain, is mortally fearful of Psyche’s distracting beauty, so he domesticates it by planting it safely in his garden. Belle’s is surely a “safer” beauty, a pleasant companion to Beast.
Perhaps my most unconventional impressions of the latter tale regard Beast’s eventual transformation into a dashing prince. Standard interpretations claim that Belle is rewarded for appreciating his inner qualities, and yet these very qualities are incompatible with the trappings of princeliness. He is endearing to her precisely because he resists princely arrogance, powerful because he resists princely gentility. As a result, Belle is the one who must be transformed. It is her ultimate surrender to beastly beauty that elevates her hero to an unconventional princely status.
Belle’s liberal etiquette is the alternative to Psyche’s elevation to heaven, where she resists human manipulation—political or otherwise. Belle remains on Earth, where Beast exercises his formidable practicality to adjust her qualities accordingly. Although elements of Psyche’s beauty may persist in Belle, they are subject to human adulteration. Discovery and purity, both of which elicit modesty and mystery in their human devotees, are replaced by invention and adaptation, which can only elicit a sense of hubris and mastery. Indeed, it is this newer conception of adaptable beauty that informs the American version.
Chapter 3: Swords and Scabbards: Locke’s Occupation of Shaftesbury and Burke
If Chap. 2 investigates the “before and after,” Chap. 3 investigates the equally important questions of the “how and why” underlying the transition from Psyche to Belle, from beauty discovered to beauty adapted. As promised, the focus will be on political forces and, in particular, the rise of liberalism. Throughout the book I employ the concept of “survival” as a shorthand descriptor of liberalism’s objectives; however, in this chapter I expound upon its specifics. Obviously John Locke (1632–1704) will be an important component of this analysis, but mostly in the context of his connection to his famous student Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713). Their close personal relationship exquisitely coincides with an enlightening intellectual one, whereby the most formidable advocate for Beast’s aptitudes encounters an almost frantic interest in retaining some semblance of the undomesticated rose.
Whereas Locke associates nature with swans and cassowaries, Shaftesbury encounters spiders and snakes. Locke views nature as inconvenient and subject to spoilage, but reason is sufficient to overcome its challenges with clever instruments such as neutral arbitration to avoid the inconvenience of judging in one’s own case, and hard currency to avoid the spoilage of surplus resources. For Shaftesbury’s much less hospitable nature, reason is redeployed to compensate with beauty the otherwise intolerable, insurmountable spoilage coincident the human endeavor. Cleverness ought not be concentrated in Locke’s tracts and proofs, but liberated in meandering speculation and poetry.
But while Shaftesbury may not share Locke’s confidence that nature’s vicissitudes can be pacified, he is nonetheless converted to liberalism’s anthropocentrism. His version of human reason may not eliminate inconveniences, but it certainly ameliorates them. So Shaftsbury’s concept of beauty does not disqualify Locke’s ambitions regarding survival; rather, his beauty is a crucial component in the survival arsenal, the ingredients of which are determined by their response to Locke’s agenda. Beauty is successful to the extent that it compensates for subsistence failures.
This unprecedented association of beauty with human sustenance allows the sublime to be elevated, for if beauty can be adjusted to suit its capacity to distract one from pain, then why not also celebrate the painful residual? Edmund Burke (1729–97) completes the surrender of aesthetics to politics by actually enjoying the pain of survival failures. Although he resists the conflation of the sublime and the beautiful, his sublime nonetheless fulfills Shaftesbury’s mission to beautify human vulnerability. His perspective briefly flourishes in America, and thus I discuss Niagara Falls as a sublime precursor to the ensuing indigenous permutations of beauty.
That Shaftesbury’s musings regarding beauty are so obviously tied to his exposure to Locke, the quintessential liberal, is no coincidence. In fact, I hope that my investigation of their connection will ignite a wider speculation: that the field of aesthetics as we now understand it is a byproduct of the liberal juggernaut. Although I need not argue such an extreme point in this volume, it is important to establish unequivocally the intrusion of politics into the realm of beauty.
Chapter 4: Humbug Feminism: P.T. Barnum, Sara Baartman, and Joice Heth
Benjamin Franklin invents the glass armonica, the musical equivalent of his Farmer’s Almanac. Like the almanac, the armonica dignifies the diversions of common folk by, in this case, relocating to the concert hall the parlor trick of rubbing the rims of drinking glasses with moistened fingers. And although even Mozart and Beethoven compose for this instrument in their most populist reveries, the armonica is quintessentially American because it inducts simple survival implements into the domain of high culture.
Franklin’s preference for the sentient and common over the exquisite and genteel is not restricted to music, however. And here we encounter Franklin’s attractiveness to women that given his portraits is not readily explainable. In fact it is their beauty, not his, that is opera...