(Gentleman Jack is a good friend who has been having a rough go of his job search and general direction in life. These are his at times, brilliant, eccentric and esoteric musings. These are The Loxley Files. Hopefully you’ll learn something.)
Yes, I decided to refer to my latest missive as a “communiqué.” Why did I make this choice? Well, I can’t remember what initially brought the word to mind – probably something to do with Qaddaffi at the UN. As soon as I thought of the word I was reminded of Paul Fussell’s 1983 classic Class: A Guide Through the American Status System. In this hilarious and thoroughly insightful book, Fussell identifies various social castes by the class anxiety and insecurity that motivates everything from their consumption habits to vocabulary. He points to the insecurity of terrorist groups (remember this is 1983, so think more Red Army Faction than al Qaeda) for always issuing “communiqués.” Though other terms would be equally descriptive, communiqué has that learned, official ring to it that lends an air of the legitimacy these groups so desperately crave.
Unfortunately, the free association did not stop there. As soon as I thought of Class, I was reminded of “Class Dismissed” by Sandra Tsing Loh in the March 2009 issue of Atlantic Monthly. I wanted to write in then but I was in Afghanistan at the time, searching for Taliban gold and generally doing my best to chastise the tribesmen leaving me very little time to for letters to the editor. (That’s actually not what I was doing at all, I’ll say I was a non-combatant and nothing else, as making up new lies whenever it comes up will be good leitmotif for my posts).
Tsing Loh’s article centers on Fussell’s concept of Xs, people who do not concern themselves with what class they fall into; who, being liberated from class anxieties are thus liberated from the class system entirely. These types are generally of the creative class, bohemians if you like, who are primarily concerned with intellectual stimulation and things that excite their interest. Unfortunately, Tsing Loh’s treatment illustrates an acute misunderstanding of the concept. She argues that because people in creative and independent professions have accumulated a great deal of wealth over the last 10 or 15 years, they have become victims of the anxieties of their own bohemian class.
The wrong turn she makes, sending her the wrong way down a one way street, is that she does not identify Xs by their ideas and actions. Tsing Loh seems to assign the term to anyone with a “creative” job that allows them the flexibility to work from Starbucks and dress like shit [Ed Note: Hey, I do that!]. An X is not an X because of their job; in fact I could not think of a more un-X definition. An X is an X because they feel the need to express themselves, and not for validation, but simply for the sake of self-expression. What’s more, they do so with little regard for compensation or the reaction (good or bad) of others. The people she identifies as fallen Xs are not Xs at all. Instead of being people who eschew societal conventions in favor of their own individual ideas, they’re just a bunch of people who take casual Friday too far. Just as Industrial Age white collar workers wore neck ties to demonstrate they did not work with machinery (which could suck in the tie and decapitate them), these false Xs wear jeans and don’t shave most of the week to demonstrate that they’re important enough not to have to dress a certain way, and want the validation they get from making sure you know it. These people are not Xs, they never were.
So who are these people, gentle reader? They’re just the same old anxious middle class they work so hard not to be. They’ve traded in their plastic fantastic Madison Avenue scene for green products they are completely committed to for as long as it remains convenient. But they’re still out there striving to be fit in, keep up, out do and to be perceived as anything but what they are. So in the future, instead of working to be perceived as better, just be better; and instead worrying about what class you’re in, worry about whether I’ll lighten up next week.
[Author’s post-script: I would have enjoyed quoting directly from the book, particularly in regard to communiqués, not to mention Xs. Unfortunately my copy is locked in a storage unit – the key to which is lost. Not to worry, I’m in talks with the family mechanic to borrow some bolt cutters, but I think it would be well worth it for the reader to pick up their own copy of Class.]
-Gentleman Jack
