Jes Grew's a-Brewin: The Flapper

As I started reading Mumbo Jumbo and gradually realized what Jes Grew really was, I was constantly reminded of what I learned in Race Class Gender class last semester with Mr. Leff. For one unit, we talked about the Roarin’ Twenties, specifically the cultural conflict of Old vs New. We discussed challenges toward the old, criticisms against the new, and what came out of these perspectives. For this blog post, I wanted to share Mr. Leff’s wise teachings and apply them to what we’ve seen in Mumbo Jumbo thus far.

First, modernity - a mixture of the growth in mass production, mass consumption, and urbanization - revealed two ideologies of cultural consumption in the 1920s. The old prevailing ideology glorified thrift, deferred gratitude, and hard work. Now, the new ascendant ideology idealized desire, gratification, and spending. With this new ascendant ideology came challenges toward “the elders’ way of life”, including Freudianism (freeing of sexual desire) and cultural relativism (the idea that all cultures are equal). Along with these came new trends in popular culture, such as the increase in drinking, smoking and dancing within the youth culture. This evoked the flapper archetype - more on this in the next paragraphs. Jazz was quite obviously the most prominent aspect of popular culture of this time as an African American style of music, full of improvisation and syncopation.

Now, I want to touch on the idea of Old vs New, specifically with women of the 1900s - 1920s. There were two archetypes: the Flapper and the Gibson Girl. The Flapper, as we have been introduced to in the novel, has a boyish figure, shows skin with non-constricting clothes, usually has short hair, and is carefree. She spends nights smoking cigarettes, drinking, and dancing. The Gibson Girl, on the other hand, is often seen with constricting pieces of clothing such as a corset, covers her skin with long dresses, has her hair up with ornate hats, and is always prim, refined, and has upright posture. The drastic difference between these two archetypes reveals how easy it was for devoted traditionalists to reject the Flapper, seeing her as a disgrace to American society.

Chapter 9 of Mumbo Jumbo really reveals these perspectives of the New Woman with lines such as “Limbering is the way the youngsters recreate themselves while their elders declaim they cease and desist from this lascivious “sinful” Bunny-Hugging, this suggestive bumping and grinding, this wild abandoned spooning”, commenting on the new forms of dance that challenged the old-fashioned Waltz. Additionally, on page 23, the broker is about to call Jarkson’s date “a ‘hotsy totsy’”, right before the mass car homicide occurs. The act of labeling and objectifying a girl is, first of all, not new to this day in age (do you ever hate society bc me), but also shows that the older men saw these Flappers as sexualized objects/jokes, not taken seriously. Additionally, in chapter 12, Labas calls Abdul out for calling him “crazy” while he was actually the one who cane-whipped flappers for having short dresses. He does not show any sympathy for them, saying they deserved it because they’re “sluts”. Old men didn’t see these young, passionate Flappers as women who challenged authority, searching for their new place in the world as they strayed farther from prim and proper old traditions. Instead, they saw them as sexualizing themselves as a mere hobby, which is troublesome to Flappers as their message of living their own culture within the inescapable system becomes a joke. I’m interested in seeing how the Flapper archetype will show up more frequently in this book, and how Reed will portray them - if he will take the old traditionalist perspective, or the new ascendant perspective. For now, though, props to the Flappers for living their lives and defying the system. Girl power!