From a Los Angeles Times article on the extravagance of Persian weddings in LA:
Shahbal Shabpareh and his band Black Cats — a premier Iranian American pop group — have performed American hits with a Persian twist at upper-crust Iranian celebrations almost weekly for years.
They've seen lots of lavish weddings, but one stands out as the most over-the-top.
As guests enjoyed hors d'oeuvres outside the banquet hall, the bride was placed in a glass coffin. The groom fitted on a white half-mask. Then, the carefully planned Phantom of the Opera theme devolved into chaos.
Condensation formed inside the coffin as guests delayed filtering in. When the groom finally took his cue to present the bride, the lid wouldn't budge. Before long, he was slamming the glass trying to break through as the bride wailed inside, her makeup running down her face. It would be an hour before she was finally freed.
For Shabpareh, the night crystallized the breakneck rise in ostentation at weddings hosted in recent years by L.A.'s wealthiest Iranian Americans. For some, party hosting can be a competitive sport, with spending used as a yardstick for status. Weddings boasting guest lists almost a thousand deep with price tags nearing half a million dollars are not unheard of.
Status-striving among the kind of white people featured in Stuff White People Like comes in for some ribbing around here now and then, but I've got to admit that it has its upsides versus the kind of status-striving that's increasingly common in LA.
If wealthy Portlanders obsessively compete over who has, say, the kayak with the latest high tech innovations, the world eventually gets better kayaks. In contrast, when Beverly Hills Persians compete over who can throw the most garish wedding, the world just gets more garish Persian weddings.
I suspect the Beverly Hills Persians are behaving closer to the human default mode. The SWPL mode of status competition goes back to, I suspect, 17th Century England, and is a rarer and more productive form of behavior, one that might not last all that many more generations in the U.S.
I suspect we'll miss it when it's gone.
Steve, many of us reading this blog are at least partially SWPL. Sure, we criticize SWPL excesses mercilessly, but we tend to like a lot of the same things SWPL like, and do many of the same things SWPL do; just look at how many of us are fond of quoting The Simpsons, for instance (yes, Steve, you and I and many of us are guilty of this). Basically, we're SWPL with the exception that we've had our eyes opened on the race question.
ReplyDeleteSWPL remind me a bit of the analysis done by Mendacious Goldbug (or whatever his pen name is over at Unqualified Reservations), the prolix SJPL who has pointed out the links between modern day Anglo-American liberalism and older English protestant dissenting sects (Puritans, Quakers, etc) who helped found the USA and dominated its politics until the SJPL took over. This is hardly a novel discovery (Mendacious Goldbug likes to think he is an original thinker, but he ain't), others have been pointing it out for a century or more, but it is helpful to have people today rediscover it themselves.
The Protestant sects (I mean the ones who took their religion seriously as a personal matter, not those who went along with it because it was the state religion) inculcated a strong habit of introspection, self-denial, delayed gratification, and investment in the future. The economic benefits in the long term were enormous. SWPL are simply a secularized remnant of those deeply ingrained habits.
Your Persian Jew = "bad taste and ostentatious excess" reminds me a bit of South Park mocking Persian tastes ("cheesy blue carpeting, white statues and gold curtain rods"). Or some Anthony Bourdain No Reservations episodes from Russian nighclubs in central asia or in (mostly Russian Jewish sections of) New York City, where BAD TASTE was on display in all its gaudiness.
At least the SWPL/Protestant dissenter types avoid/ed displaying their wealth in excessive and useless gestures of bad taste. Less, is more. Reinvest that need to show off into productive outlets, create the virtuous circle, and reap the benefits for centuries to come.
If wealthy Portlanders obsessively compete over who has, say, the kayak with the latest high tech innovations, the world eventually gets better kayaks. In contrast, when Beverly Hills Persians compete over who can throw the most garish wedding, the world just gets more garish Persian weddings.
ReplyDeleteGreat insight. The other day I was reading a history of mountain biking. It turns out that the mountain bike developed from modified cruiser type bikes, and that it developed from 4-5 guys up in Marin that were just looking to have faster downhill rides. Real classic American stuff. These American born guys created a whole industry with zero fan fare, zero federal subsidies, zero H1-Bs. Just because they wanted better equipment.
Not even Chelsea Clinton can compete:
ReplyDeletehttp://news.myjoyonline.com/entertainment/201008/50181.asp
Another important difference between SWPL and more ethnic/tribal status seeking:
ReplyDeleteEthnic/tribal status seeking often leads spectacles that unite and strengthen their tribe whereas SWPL status seeking leads to division that weaken the theirs.
For example, a higher status SWPL tends to disparage and dislike a fellow SWPL of lesser status with a visceral hatred. Think of anti-racist or environmental SWPL nuts who despise slightly lesser SWPL nuts while completely ignoring non-SWPL racists, polluters and over-reproducers.
Despite the failed Phantom of the Opera prop, how many future business partners and spouses met each other at that failed Persian wedding? Plus, such status displays only reinforces the competitive tendencies to continue the tribal tradition of wasteful, garish but unifying ritual.
Steve Sailer said..."If wealthy Portlanders obsessively compete over who has, say, the kayak with the latest high tech innovations, the world eventually gets better kayaks. In contrast, when Beverly Hills Persians compete over who can throw the most garish wedding, the world just gets more garish Persian weddings.
ReplyDeleteI suspect the Beverly Hills Persians are behaving closer to the human default mode. The SWPL mode of status competition goes back to, I suspect, 17th Century England, and is a rarer and more productive form of behavior, one that might not last all that many more generations in the U.S.
I suspect we'll miss it when it's gone."
I might miss the better kayaks. But I certainly won't miss the excessive tolerance that led to a bunch of kayak-lovers letting a horde of garish non-kayak lovers overrun their country.
With all due respect, I think you miss the point that the formers' tolerance of the latters' leads to garish excess just the same.
You can't maintain both an open door policy and your home's value, no matter how high-tech your kayak is.
Culture matters. Big time.
ReplyDeleteThis article is mostly talking about the Persian Jewish community (which is a very small subset of Persian culture)though they never bother to clarify that in the article.
ReplyDeleteThis behavior is very "new money". I suspect as the Persian Jewish community matures we will see an adoption of WASP values. Most of these wedding couples are giving in to parental pressure. Perhaps when they become parents, they will throw less ostentatious parties.
Derek Smalls did that years ago.
ReplyDeleteThe SWPLs get a ribbing not because of their interests etc but because they, as a group, are the biggest cheerleaders for the demographic changes which will destroy them and our society. Or those most adept at ignoring the importance of those changes. Given that hv, theoretially the wealth and politial clout to change things.
ReplyDeleteToo bad the Persians aren't more like the old WASP's. I remember seeing Sandy Tatum, then Vice-President of the USGA, at the San Francisco Golf Club in 1981. He'd just bought a new car. It was a VW Rabbit convertible.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot special about the English, why is that? What is it about the English that the Nordics (equally white) or the Spanish (equally imperial) don't have?
ReplyDeleteWhenever I read books like 48 laws of power, it often seems like I'm reading a description of British culture. In spite of the fact people like to be around open and friendly people, quiet and reserved people are respected more. The British are reserved.
Did the island attract the best people from Europe, or did the island and it's distance from the continent mold average Celts, Saxons, and Normans into a special people?
The thought occurred to me as well. The main characteristics of SWPLs as I see them are:
ReplyDelete* conscientiousness
* perfectionism
* aversion to ostentation
From these 3 basic traits derive such typical SWPL behaviorisms as apologizing,
self-improvement, and resort to off-beat, understated humor.
All things considered, our Founding Fathers were a bunch of SWPLs too. It is right there at the beginning, from the "toward a more perfect union" clause in the Constitution to the Perfectionist strain in American spirituality and politics (Quakers -> Shakers -> Oneida Community -> Abolitionists -> Progressive Party -> Sierra Club/Ford Foundation/Habitat for Humanity).
Two things happened that have made SWPLs noisome, though. #1 is diminishing marginal returns. Representative government and universal education turned out to be big windfalls when first adopted (by Northern European peoples). As for the beneficiaries of our Invite the World/Uplift the World immigration policy? Not so much.
#2 is that SWPL "men" have become infantilized and feminized. Playing their ironic kickball games while wearing their oversized scarves and knit beanies, they look nothing so much as overgrown children wearing grandma's latest hand-mades as they leave the midnight screening of Where the Wild Things Are. Put simply they have abdicated being men and all that goes along with it (i.e. defending one's land and the legacy of one's forefathers). The whole SWPL male mode is custom-built to ensure you never have to stand up and fight for ANYTHING EVER.
I have observed ia male/female and racial divide on status displays with regard to form v function. The crowning male symbol, the Rolex is a superb machine, and it's mechanics are never cheaply immitated. Women have no such correlary, the bags they prize are easily immitated and quickly out of style. Expensive women's clothes don't have pockets, while expensive men's suits have more than moat of us need.
ReplyDeleteEast Asians engage in a technological arms race with one another for status, while black men share with women a love of shoes and bling. You might also note that black men often keep their cars looking very good, but often don't
maintain them as well as other men. Blacks regularly spend
more on rims then they do on the car, whereas the prototypical redneck has a suped up truck that doesn't look that great. The Mexican low-rider which robs all utility from a truck as well as the hydrolics cause me to worry that Mexicans are form oriented, but they mostly seem to care about the function of their cars.
I imagine that there is a hardwired object orientation/people orientation that is driving these differences. Object oriented brains see the status of an object as connected to its intrinsic form, while people oriented brains see the status of the object as connected to it emotional value and social capital.
Garish tastes in architecture, partying, etc.? That was precisely an impression the cultured Europeans had of the Americans around the turn of the 20th century, plus or minus 20-30 years. You know, during the high watermark of the WASP culture.
ReplyDeleteSteve, I found this via Foseti.
ReplyDeleteOne way to look at this is that SWPL is the new aristocratic culture, in the sense that elite culture is never de-classe or subversive.
Elites always look down on the nouveau riche, not least because the nouveau sometimes displace them.
Extra credit for analysis of the reaction to Sarah Palin ...
"There is a lot special about the English, why is that?"
ReplyDeleteI think land invasions - or the lack thereof may be part of it.
Not quite sure how.
"This behavior is very "new money". I suspect as the Persian Jewish community matures we will see an adoption of WASP values. Most of these wedding couples are giving in to parental pressure. Perhaps when they become parents, they will throw less ostentatious parties."
ReplyDeleteOnly if they don't have the money.
Why should anyone adopt WASP values? WASPs don't run the country anymore, and they are constantly vilified and devalued in the popular media.
Jews have been here over a century and you still see huge amounts of money spent on expensive bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs by wealthy Jewish New Yorkers, every bit as ludicrous as the aforementioned Persian weddings.
I really don't see why they would change; they certainly have no reason to adopt WASP culture - or even pretend to do so.
Did the island attract the best people from Europe, or did the island and it's distance from the continent mold average Celts, Saxons, and Normans into a special people?
ReplyDeleteOh, good god! British history is one long story of decline since the days of Camelot.
This will be a moot question pretty soon, since the swpls are dying out due to their low birthrate.
ReplyDeleteAnd while the swpls are descended from the old English Puritans and still have some of their traits, the swpls have become degenerate in some ways. As an earlier comment said, they have become pussified. They are unmanly. This probably has something to do with the rise of feminism. Not sure which is cause and which is effect. Probably some of both.
It's a vicious circle: feminism disempowers men and makes them weak; weaker men allow feminism to gain more power. The result is that the once dominant class has been emasculated, which is why it has allowed the takeover of this society by hostile elements, and allowed itself to wither away due
to lack of reproduction.
The result is that the swpls will soon be gone, and America is changing into a very different place than what it was.