I mean, that's what this has to be, right? Deliberate self-parody?
It is, he says, a manifestation of "the modern trend toward undifferentiated dressing, in which we all strive to look equally shabby." Denim reflects "our most nostalgic and destructive agrarian longings -- the ones that prompted all those exurban McMansions now sliding off their manicured lawns and into foreclosure." Jeans come prewashed and acid-treated to make them look like what they are not -- authentic work clothes for horny-handed sons of toil and the soil. Denim on the bourgeoisie is, Akst says, the wardrobe equivalent of driving a Hummer to a Whole Foods store -- discordant....So by wearing the jeans I have on now, I'm endorsing the guillotine and the Reign of Terror? Because that's kind of awesome, really.
Edmund Burke -- what he would have thought of the denimization of America can be inferred from his lament that the French Revolution assaulted "the decent drapery of life"; it is a straight line from the fall of the Bastille to the rise of denim -- said: "To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely." Ours would be much more so if supposed grown-ups would heed St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, and St. Barack's inaugural sermon to the Americans, by putting away childish things, starting with denim.
3 comments:
I too find it awesome and will indulge to wear jeans all the time, if it means celebrating the destruction of those who exploited people and enforced their privilege through force.
I'm really trying to figure out how much of this little rant from Will is a "I'll show you all how smart I am, watch me use my fancy degrees to put you all in your place" and how much is just Grampa Simpson going on about onion belts and complaining about the Kaiser.
Part of me wants to believe it's Will making a defense of himself as an intellectual because he knows he looks like a jackass when he trots out his Global Warming Denialist schtick, but I really think it's probably more of a Grampa Simpson thing.
--NonyNony
Apparently, this man has never differentiated between brands or price tags. With a mere glance the elite ghels and bois can tell if the jeans present at their social event represent the monied class or the clueless plebes. Wranglers only speak to prestige among the cattle crowd.
The trend has merely come full circle from oh...Tudor times when even gentry wore versions of 'fustian' all over Europe.
Vive le Revolution Industriale and this guy should maybe scale back on pondering things while zeroing his attention in on tight denim-clad curves.
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