Word: modernize
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Circus Minimus. Bill's clients, mainly young English, Australian and American couples, listen while he reminisces about how he introduced the late Sultan of Johore to the sweet mysteries of bourbon whisky, nod politely when Bill pontificates about modern pop music. Rock 'n' roll and all that jazz, he says, are "just a rehash of the old stuff, what used to be the Texas Tommy, the Bunny Hug and the Grizzly Bear...
...garret, and maybe finding a wealthy patron or two. Nowadays, what with foundation grants, teaching jobs, formal contests and informal cocktail party juries, the business is a lot more complicated. In the A.C.A. (American Composers Alliance) Bulletin, Iowa-born Composer Lockrem Johnson (A Letter to Emily) offers a sardonic, modern-day guide to musical success. Excerpts: ¶ "Learn to balance teacups. Naturally, this applies only to the beginning stages of your career. By the time of your first major symphonic work you will graduate to balancing martini glasses. Meanwhile remember that more than one promising career has been nipped...
...Modern Politics. To capture the secret, cargo cults usually contain some ritual imitation of European customs which may hold the clue to the white man's magic. Sometimes believers dress in European clothes and sit around tables with bottles of flowers on them, sometimes they pretend to write on pieces of paper. Many of the cults seek to bring on the new by destroying the old; they deliberately violate the ancient taboos of their people, kill their livestock, stop cultivating their fields. "Sometimes they spend days sitting gazing at the horizon for a glimpse of the long-awaited ship...
...cargo never comes. Then, instead of abandoning the cult, they tend to form splinter groups, organized around a "purer" faith. As long as the islanders' social situation remains unchanged, says Worsley. the cargo cults persist, but with the development of modern political forms, they begin to wither away. "In Melanesia, ordinary political bodies, trade unions, and native councils are becoming the normal media through which the islanders express their aspirations ... It now seems unlikely that any major movement along cargo-cult lines will recur...
Nevertheless, the book achieved bestseller status only eleven days after publication, and has received deferential critical attention as a serious sociological study. Actually, most of it is a rehash of what other academic private eyes have reported on the behavior of Americans, the modern world's most relentlessly observed and observing people. None of it is new; some of it is highly intriguing; and all of it is dedicated to the dubious proposition that such "status symbols" as gold-plated bathroom fixtures and air-conditioned doghouses threaten the American dream...