Beyond Narcissism in American Culture of the 1980s

Author(s): Steve Barnett and JoAnn Magdoff

Source: Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Nov., 1986), pp. 413-424
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/656379
Accessed: 09-11-2019 11:29 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

American Anthropological Association, Wiley are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,

preserve and extend access to Cultural Anthropology

This content downloaded from 152.32.100.24 on Sat, 09 Nov 2019 11:29:54 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Beyond Narcissism in American Culture
of the 1980s
Steve Barnett
Chairman, Research and Forecasts, Inc
A Division of Ruder, Finn, and Rotman: New York, NY

JoAnn Magdoff
Psychotherapist
41 Central Park West, New York, NY

Consider these:

An experienced writer on computers says he lost his sense of reality and location
while experimenting with a new computer program.

A woman is much sought after in New York fashionable circles precisely because
she changes her presentation so frequently and so drastically that she never looks the
same.

A New York Times op ed page writer no longer wears Brooks Brot

rather newer men's styles, which represent, in his words, "fa
ness . . . where stripes can be worn with checks . . . no rules ap

In each, reality, either as a fixed Aristotelian point or as an

"me generation" quest for narcissistic perfection, diminishes
tinuous sequence of alternate substitutions, with each momen
but as a temporary respite in a series of substitutions of self-pre
contextualization. This stance of equivalent, alternate perspect
stitution, is a powerful feature of contemporary United States cu
to become more significant in the proximate future.' Reality
ually reconfigured through consumption and display of high te
and drugs, all compelling symbols of contemporary econo
these alternate images of self and reality are presented for imm
and consumption. In the words of an old Tina Turner song, "
what you get."2
Of course, not all Americans are involved in serial substitut
least two other significant cultural and socioeconomic frames
standing where the society is going: the new fundamentalism, im
return to something called "traditional values"; and those peop

413

This content downloaded from 152.32.100.24 on Sat, 09 Nov 2019 11:29:54 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
414 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

bypassed by the ongoing economic restructuring within the Unite

urban, and increasingly rural, population, the poor, many blacks, an
ple who are simply dropping out in frustration. The obviously confl
tations of those who participate in serial substitution, the new fundam
entrenched poverty, suggest a complex social future for the United
likely struggle over these conflicting basic values (as opposed to the
mutually exclusive co-existence) in an increasingly competitive and
nomic context can quickly turn overtly violent and/or involve cove
repression and constraint. In this article, however, we will focus on
tution, recognizing that this is only part of a more problematic and tr
ican future.

Serial Substitution

Serial substitution occurs on the surface-it is immediately visible, but there

is nothing beneath that surface. To search for a hypothesized "deeper meaning"
is to miss the point, as we learn from such recent films about contemporary life
as Repo Man and Liquid Sky. Once again, academic styles of social analysis fol-
low popular cultural trends: in the 60's, structural analysis was a la mode; now
deconstruction has become the social science avant-garde style of the 80s. (A kind
of "trickster" deconstructionist social character, the entrepreneur who breaks
down the order and rules of the large corporation, has become, for a brief Andy
Warhol 15 minutes, a hero to college students.)
The perspective of the surface changes with the subject in Repo Man. Liquid
Sky, more tapestried as a film, but less visually of a piece than Repo Man, gives
us a glimpse, from time to time, of New York's downtown life from the cinematic
vantage of an alien spaceship. Its theme of contemporary androgyny, entailing an
elusive uncertainty of perspective, makes our point. While the surface glitters,
the male/female hero at once in and out of character assures us, "androgyny is al
the rage." Point of view, visuals, and context change rapidly in these and similar
films: no perspective is privileged, no point of view lays claim to being more
"real" than any other-here, to paraphrase, "What you see is what you see."
As Jean Baudrillard similarly argues in De la Seduction (1979), present
Western society creates images of change by altering the surface; to alter anything
else is not relevant. Brett Ellis, in the best-selling, barely fictionalized account of
his own environment, Less Than Zero (1985), has his college characters stoned,
drunk, murderous, seductive, gay, and straight, all as equivalent serial substitu-
tions for themselves. While A Clockwork Orange (Burgess 1963) was brilliantly
prophetic for a previous generation, new science fiction novels, exemplified by
William Gibson's Neuromancer (1985), focus on the kaleidoscope of substitu-
tions possible when enough high technology, fashion options, and new drugs in-
teract synergistically to produce a cubist landscape of multiple perspectives.
We are trying to capture the feel of an elusive moment in American culture:
the transition to a rapidly changing sense of, and presentation of, self that is re-
lated to demographic shifts, world economic developments, and the juxtaposition

This content downloaded from 152.32.100.24 on Sat, 09 Nov 2019 11:29:54 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 BEYOND NARCISSISM 415

of emergent technology and newly synthesized drugs (such

"Adam," and "crack"). This transition includes presentational
which were only recently felt to be incompatible:3

* "Drugged preppies"-high school students, college students,

business executives who regularly use a range of drugs including
phetamine, and Quaalude, while dressing in conservative preppy

* "Punk Reaganites"-young adults who explicitly support

administration and its positions, but who dress in punk, "rude b
wave styles.

We can observe not only oxymoronic combinations at any one time, but also fre-
netic sequences over time:

* In clothing styles-from punk to preppy to retro to Japanese new wave,

so rapidly that all styles can share one closet.

* In activities-from skiing to skydiving to flying one's own plane to jog-

ging to rowing machines to muscle-bulking exercises, again so rapidly that the
body has not time to adjust along the way.

The odyssey of Jerry Rubin, from hippie to yippie to dabbler in every trendy self-
improvement system to businessman to "networker," pinpoints archetypes of
this rapid sequencing of substitutions for many baby boom adults.
Serial substitution (combinations and sequences), going beyond the narrow
focus of the "me generation" characterized by C. Lasch in The Culture of Nar-
cissism (1978), and modified in The Minimal Self (1984), can be understood,
though not properly analyzed, by looking at contemporary patterns of consump-
tion as they illustrate:

* new possibilities for the alteration of reality-as changes in the external

world, or as changes in the self, via drugs or created environments such as
immersion tanks.

* psychologically based insights into the self and contemporary interac-

tions, through notions available from Kohut's (1984) selfpsychology, high-
lighted by Winnicott (1965) and Fairbairn's (1952) object relations, and H.
Deutsch's (1942) "as-if" personality.

Contemporary consumption

According to a New York Times Magazine article (11/17/85), even Lower

East Side artists in New York are caught up in "a bohemia that is instantly co-
opted and exploited for commercial purposes . . . the material mood is hard to
resist, even for purists. John Alexander, a 40-year old artist from Texas who has
a studio on lower Broadway, recently caught himself talking tax shelters to a mu-

This content downloaded from 152.32.100.24 on Sat, 09 Nov 2019 11:29:54 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
416 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

seum curator from Boston. 'I just wanted to kill myself,' he said, winci
other artist] worries that she will succumb, perhaps subliminally, and
designs to suit the mass market. 'There's so much pressure to make mo
says."
Middle- and upper-class consumption patterns have changed importantly
over the past ten years, in part due to:

* Demographic shifts-more singles vs. marrieds and households, fewer

children, the postwar generation moving to wage-earner status, resulting in
more discretionary income and budget flexibility; that is, more money available
to be spent on presentation.

* Continuous and accelerating change in high-tech applications to personal

consumption-developments in home computers, VCRs, stereos, "smart"
buildings, automobiles, home gymnasiums and so on, all leading to a demand
for the newest in technology with the awareness that the "newest" will quickly
lose its bloom.

* Continuous change in clothing fashions and home furnishings (for exam-

ple, Memphis/Milano) so that consumption for appearance occurs constantly,
and shopping becomes an acceptable arena for pleasure and recreation. (Like
current eating patterns of almost continuous nibbling called "grazing," shop-
ping becomes grazing for the next substitution.)

* Development of a "world economy," with increasing fragility of the in-

ternational monetary system and of debtor nations, surging competition, pres-
sure from new technology from abroad, and fashion innovations outside of
Western society, especially from Japan, resulting in more personal consump-
tion products, competitively priced. Within the U.S., economic restructuring
(away from manufacturing, toward service and high-technology applications)
implies that most new workers can anticipate multiple "careers" over their
working life, another instance of substitution.

All lifestyles now require money. A bohemian or radical, self-chosen poverty has
vanished as a countercultural alternative.

Alterations of reality

Reality is perceived as malleable by Americans living lives of serial substi-

tution, with the culturally acceptable premise that consciously manipulating or
altering "reality" is a reasonable, if not desirable, option. Recent developments
encouraging acceptance of alternate realities include:

* Expansion of advertising hype. Advertising has always thrived on fantasy

projections; now these projections directly focus on the potential for creating
new realities through continuous and sustained consumption (for example, re-
cent Calvin Klein and Buick ads that never present the product, but rather focus

This content downloaded from 152.32.100.24 on Sat, 09 Nov 2019 11:29:54 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 BEYOND NARCISSISM 417

on people with desirable images for whom purchasing a car or clothes

another aspect of their "lifestyle"). A TV program, Lifestyles of the
Famous, attracts large audiences, week after week. Anything go
"cheese food" means "not cheese," where "juice drink" means "n
and reliance on an objective correlative diminishes. A new margarine
ing EDTA, potassium sorbate, calcium disodium, and artificial flavor,
with unintended irony, "Country Crock."

* A postwar generation that was involved with, or generally accept

experimentation during the 60s. This generation has continued drug
experimentation off, and to some extent, on the job in the late 70s an

* The postwar generation feels more "in-system" now, as middle

ior managers in business and as government officials vs. the "out-s
protesters (anti-Vietnam War, civil rights, and so on) of the 60s and e
Either stance-in-system or out-system-is an acceptable, and substit
option: there need not be value consistency between on-the-job acts a
the-job acts. Or, job and home become daily substitutions and self-pre
can drastically shift between 9 to 5, and after 5. This is an important br
the 50s notion of the man in the grey flannel suit for whom one set
covered all contexts. An illustration of on-the-job substitution is the
lack of company "loyalty" felt by baby boom employees-other, mo
sonal and pragmatic loyalties have replaced company identification. B
is also a moment for potential substitution, as fanatic loyalty to smal
entrepreneurial companies can quickly replace indifference.

* Proliferation of alternate images of reality in the media. MTV is t

obvious user of new media techniques (often computer-driven) that i
increased use of primary colors (seen in TV perfume and auto ads), r
and tape editing (for example, in the recent film, The Terminator), an
uation of plot in favor of sequences of immediately arresting images
ample, To Live and Die in L.A. and Miami Vice). Narrative structure
fairy tale cops and robbers; that is, bad guys/good guys, where "ba
"good" do not connote moral distinctions, but merely indicate differ
acter types that keep things moving. (In another film, Mad Max, the he
to leave the police force, telling his superior officer he is "beginning
the violence that comes with the job. His moral reticence is short-l
suals, fast-paced sequences which succeed one another with astoundi
idity, become the driving force, dominating the story line to motivat
Narrative, already substitutable in the predictable, hackneyed plots o
ries, is superseded by a series of visual impressions ("hits") of style
ity, violence, etc. In this kind of substitution, we see a contemporary
illustration of content as form, where viewers' attentions are main
through ocular shock, not plot development or complexity.

* Legitimation of temporary fantasy enactments. Club Med early on

vacations in elaborate fantasy settings. The increasing popularity of

This content downloaded from 152.32.100.24 on Sat, 09 Nov 2019 11:29:54 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
418 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

exercises (where players dress in camouflage, go on maneuvers, and

other with dye) as paid weekend outings updates fantasy possiblities
est development is a game, franchised at shopping malls across th
called Photon Warriors, in which space-suited participants use ray
each other in a futurist "Star Wars" environment. Drastically impr
puter chip memories in the near future will stimulate the creation of
realistic surroundings than in the failed (because of impoverished g
trivialized game structures) computer games of the recent past. F
through sensory deprivation, stimulate fantasied speculations con
mental projections and stream of consciousness metonyms. Soon, h
puterized shopping programs will allow the shopper to appear
"wearing" clothes that might be purchased. Computerized "intera
tion" is becoming more popular:

Infocom is an industry leader in the text-only branch of computer gamin

teractive fiction." The player is the central character in each story, and
extent determines how the action unfolds. At the start of Zork I, for ex
are in a field near a house. What next? Choose your own path. You ma
explore a bit first ("Go east," "Climb the tree") or go straight into the h
the window," "Enter the house"). After each move the game answers
detailed explanation of where you are and what you can "see." Over th
days or weeks (play time per game can run to 100 hours) you'll explor
derground cavern, solving puzzles and accumulating booty along th
trying to avoid electronic death. . . . The seductive power of Infocom
spread. People began to lose sleep. Conversations like this were overhe
computer owners: "1 went to the garden and got the key. Then I went to
Room, and southwest to the Cobwebby Corridor. But I couldn't get past
and unlock the door. What do 1 do now?" Says Joel Berez, Infocom presi
originally thought these games would just appeal to cultists, fanatics. Tha
But the cult following got a whole lot larger than we expected." Last
topped $10 million. [Newsweek, December 23, 1985]

* Changing boundaries between private and public domains. The

personal stereo phenomenon allows people to create a private cocoon
in public places, and even to hum, sing, or whistle, usually off-key
one were listening. Increasingly, portable computers are used to tak
public meetings, even though the clackety-clack of the keys is dist
others. And, many people now are comfortable wearing watches (
day, and even at concerts) that beep loudly on the hour, or, in some c
15 minutes.

* The perceived lack of relevance and malleability of history. History, es-

pecially recent history, is barely discussed in high school and college. Teen-
agers and young people today are confused about what happened in the recent
past, for example, the civil rights era or the Vietnam War, in part because films
like Rambo absolutely distort that recent past. Rambo knows jungle ecology
better than the Vietnamese; Rambo successfully escapes from the Vietnamese
and Soviets through brilliant use of a helicopter. In fact, the NLF were masters

This content downloaded from 152.32.100.24 on Sat, 09 Nov 2019 11:29:54 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 BEYOND NARCISSISM 419

of ecological tactics, and helicopters were not successfully used d

tual war in Vietnam. Since history is itself perceived as just another
and/or context (Levi-Strauss trickles down to mass culture), the
sense of a present lived as a continually fresh experience.

* Increased perception of choice. With an explosion of styles a

ogy, there develops the sense of individuating choice and the n
"smart shopper." The smart shopper notion claims that consumer
more informed choices about the quality of goods and services.
watch manufacturers were able to rebound from the Japanese m
quartz watch threat by producing much higher priced Swiss watch
tical Japanese quartz movements, with higher prices justified by goo
marketing. Despite manufacturer-encouraged perceptions of ind
choice, strong trends in consumption remain; there may be mo
within these trends, but, as usual, most people easily fit within a
mavericks are as rare as ever.

Psychological Structures of Serial Substitution

Psychologically, serial substitution is manifested in serial presentations of

the individual's self, and in interactions with others. In interactions, serial sub-
stitution involves moving among a sequence of relationships, without seeing any
relationship as privileged or investing any one relationship with significant affect.
Lack of stable, affective relationships correlates with amoral behavior-values
float, shifting with changes in (public) context and (private) emotions. Engaged
in serially substitutable relationships, people cannot, and so do not, justify mak-
ing value choices. As a consequence, behavioral components of particular moral
stances become irrelevant.

When perspectives shift, a moral order, or even a coherent sense of right and
wrong, clustering around fixed underpinnings, becomes implausible. If context is
king, morality is a ward of the court. The lack of a developed moral code is a
lacuna in the lives of some deeply narcissistic personalities, since without a co-
hesive self, morality lacks psychological "sense."
Serial substitutions of the self parallel the form of the deeply rooted narcis-
sistic personality disorder we call "New Wave" narcissism. "New Wave" nar-
cissism is replacing its predecessor, the "me generation" (described in The Cul-
ture of Narcissism (1979), and The Minimal Self( 1984), by C. Lasch, and others).
The present generation's concern with serial substitution is narcissism with
a twist-problems with the self where schizoid and "as-if" features appear with
underlying narcissistic disorders. In his last book, How Does Analysis Cure?
(1984:53), H. Kohut suggests "selfpsychology is now attempting to demon-
strate . . . that all forms of psychopathology are based either on defects in the
structure of the self, on distortions of the self, or on weakness of the self.'
Looking at severe self disorders from the framework of selfpsychology, B.
Brandschaft and R. Stolorow (1984:109) suggest that "symptoms of narcissistic
and borderline disorders derived from precariously consolidated and brittle self

This content downloaded from 152.32.100.24 on Sat, 09 Nov 2019 11:29:54 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
420 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

structures appear. Such symptoms include fragmentation and depleti

ena . . . rigid defensive postures, schizoid or paranoid, erected to prot
derlying vulnerability. The predominant anxiety . . . is the terror of
tion."

In the psychological context of threat of loss of self-through dissolution,

fragmentation, or disintegration-"New Wave" narcissism emerges, sharing
features with what W. R. D. Fairbairn (1952) calls the schizoid personality: "(1)
an attitude of omnipotence, (2) an attitude of isolation and detachment, and (3) a
preoccupation with inner reality." According to Fairbairn, "inner reality may be
substituted for outer reality, identified with outer reality, or superimposed on
outer reality." Take this recent example of clothes purchasing: "At the New York
outlet of Japan's Descente, where the slogan is 'technology you can wear,' David
V. Ross recently bought a gray and blue ski-racing sweater with specially padded
arms. The price tag: $235. Mr. Ross used to race on his college ski team in un-
derstated 'Vermont woolies' and a pair of suspenders. 'I used to truly live it, so I
didn't need to show it,' he explains. But the 28-year old stockbroker has begun
to don power clothes as a way of reliving his past. 'Now that I'm getting older
and no longer race competitively, I miss that image,' Mr. Ross says. 'I want it
back. I want to look meaner.' " (Wall Street Journal, 12/10/85).
Relevant for "New Wave" narcissism is H. Deutsch's description of the
"as-if" personality, in which "all the expressions of emotion are formal," and
"the individual's emotional relationship to the outside world and to his own ego
appears impoverished or absent" (1942). In Neuromancer, for example, charac-
ters often misread each other precisely because relations have so little affect.
Both Deutsch (1942) and Fairbairn (1952) talk of serial identifications and
the amoral, (quasi-) psychopathic behavior of "as-if" schizoid personalities,
which we have noted as amorality among New Wave narcissists. We suggest that
the prevalence of serial substitution implies a social grounding of, and cultural
acceptance of, previously marginal personality types.
For New Wave narcissists at their most extreme, any claim to the solidity of
selfhood (what Winnicott (1965) has called, in another context, the "true self,")
is replaced by alternating presentations, where a blurred oscillation, whether the
androgyny of Liquid Sky or the daily costumes of New York Magazine's woman,
is the self. The surface shimmers; unmasked, it reveals only another, changing
surface. Read this way, the clothes, costumes, changes in presentation and styles
of the former Brooks Brothers man, and New York woman, may be external ob-
jects that feel like part of the self-what Kohut calls "selfobjects," completing
and making the self feel whole. These nonhuman selfobjects are controllable in a
way that other people seldom are. Inanimate selfobjects can be experienced as
safe, psychologically nonintrusive, and may have the self-soothing function of
transitional objects, as Winnicott (1958) so aptly glossed the Linus blankets and
mouthed thumbs of infancy.
Relative coldness, amorality, and serial identifications of a narcissistic na-
ture are related to serial substitution. In the substituted self, and in serial inter-

This content downloaded from 152.32.100.24 on Sat, 09 Nov 2019 11:29:54 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 BEYOND NARCISSISM 421

actions, we see psychological correlates which resonate with c

terns and alterations of reality present in contemporary Americ
Amoralism, socially manifested as a lack of empathy for th
advantaged, was heightened by the very partial successes of the
ment. That movement fell far short of its goals of equality in e
and jobs, and lost its unique moral imperative to the extent tha
tion" legislation created a set of substitutable, morally equivalen
ing women, the handicapped, the aging and so on. While these
claims to have inequalities redressed, the cultural effect of af
blunted sensibility by allowing many Americans to see th
groups." "Interest groups" imply a multiplicity of equivalent
peting for a piece of the action. Given equivalence, one should i
lobby for, one's "own" (however self-characterized) group. Ma
voted for Reagan, substituting this political identification for ear
claiming that he represented their newly discovered (self-) inte
terest group equivalent to any other.
The implications of an "interest group" framework can be se
bestseller, Megatrends (Naisbet, 1984:273-278), a perfect ex
lyzed substitutions. Using newspapers as a key data source, Nai
ing importance of women's issues, handicapped people's co
rights, etc., but he innocently celebrates this as healthy Ameri
bothering to examine its sinister implications (more people fig
for a piece of a smaller pie).
Serial subsitution embodies the range of alternate realities a
tations available today: any fixed reality (ideal or pragmatic) re
proached, like the egg in Through the Looking Glass. In Ameri
sumption has been linked with self-image and self-presentation
I, and increasingly since World War II. American culture, more
other on the supposedly autonomous self4 (given a relatively b
verse population, and a ramified development of consumption t
becomes an international testing ground for new links among s
realities, and the purchase of goods and services.
Serial substitution, as the current symbolic goad of personal
a further development of what H. Lefebvre in Everyday Life in t
(1971) has called "forced choice"-the ideologically constitu
self enacted through a sequence of presentations, each made pos
cific acts of consumption, where the choice of what to consum
tary, but is, in fact, ordered by a self-reinforcing feedback betw
U.S. culture and a system of products and services keyed to tha
and service life cycles grow shorter, as fashion and technolog
quickly. Benetton clothing stores, for example, capture the rap
change with a computer-based system for instantly changing
color, shape, and pattern, based on yesterday's sales in every b
world. This fall (1985), trompe l'oeil is the rage, with obvious
creating alternate realities-fake metal, jewelry, and fur are "

This content downloaded from 152.32.100.24 on Sat, 09 Nov 2019 11:29:54 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
422 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

tutes for "the real thing." Skilled corporate planners now anticipate th
of currently successful products and services (Hegelian dialectics in th
room). While we have focused on cultural and psychological forms, the
between serial substitution and marketing and manufacturing methods i
to understanding why substitution is so basic to contemporary U.S. cult
Rather than conclude by summarizing, we will expand the brief e
offered at the outset-a computer expert who loses reality while partici
an experimental program, a man who changes from Brooks Brothers to
where no rules apply, and a woman who becomes famous for constantly
her physical appearance. Their own statements are evocative illustration
scope of serial substitution.

The computer expert: "In a recent demonstration [of a new and experiment
puter program], my image appeared on the screen as a creature resembling o
cartoon characters called Shmoos, created by Al Capp, whose limbs mirr
actions. The Shmoo did not look like me, but the actions were undeniably m
it responded continuously, albeit slowly and crudely, to my every move. A
called Paint allowed me to draw on the televised screen by moving my finge
air as I stood by the backlit screen. A modification of the program creates a
eral color image of one's moving body on the screen, which can be joined b
through another program, allowing one to compose sounds as well as visu
technics by merely moving the body. At one point in the demonstration, I was
joined-that is, my screen silhouette was joined-by a 'critter,' another crude little
gnome-like blob that landed on my outstretched hand, then jumped away when I tried
to catch it. For a moment, as I chased the critter about, I was not sure whether I was
standing in front of the camera, or, mentally at least, in the world of the screen. As
eye-opening as this experience may be, it is only a crude harbinger of the manipu-
lations to come . . . the ultimate achievement may be an artifice so perfect that a
person entering it would witness his image stepping into a totally new world, one
created solely from computer graphics and video clips. " [New York Times Magazine,
Home Design Section, 9/22/851

Brooks Brothers to New Wave: "When I was ten years old and for some reason in
need of my first suit, my father took me to Brooks Brothers. We selected a three-
piece grey flannel. In the next twenty-three years, virtually everything I wore, from
shoes to sunglasses, came from Brooks Brothers . . . the Brooks system of dress,
like geometry, has rules and a unifying logic that I easily grasped . . . then one night
last spring, my clothes sense collided head-on with a television show. I tuned into
Miami Vice just to reaffirm my dislike for TV cop shows. Instead of hating it, I was
enchanted. The show touched what was left of childlike impressionability in me, and
suddenly I was drawn to the program's clothes, of all things. .... I now advocate the
conversion of the tried and true to the hip and whimsical . . . visit as many stores as
possible and flip through some men's fashion magazines to get an idea of how the
stuff can be thrown together. Don't be too studious, though; recklessness is part of
this game. Avoid advice and shop alone to get the excitement of full reliance on your
new, unsteady fashion sensibility. Why not wear stripes with checks? Or even stripes
with other stripes? No rules apply. The gravity that held your old wardrobe in place
will be felt no more. You'll hit fashion weightlessness, feel as though you're doing
effortless somersaults in thinner air and will occasionally gaze back at those clinging
to your old look and wonder why they can't see that your new way is the way." [New
York Times, op ed page, 11/16/85]

This content downloaded from 152.32.100.24 on Sat, 09 Nov 2019 11:29:54 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 BEYOND NARCISSISM 423

Constantly changing appearance: "Sally Randall is the Sally Bowles o

She is infinitely charming, hopelessly ambitious, and devastat
vogue . . . constantly concocting new images from her collection of
tumes, she survives in the . . . competitive world by reinventing herse
night she is an ethereal blonde. The next day she is a buxom redhead. B
is something out of a fairy tale, with long flowing hair the color of cotto
arrived on New York's downtown scene as a plain young woman who
an artist, and she still dabbles in painting and says . . . 'I get this image
this very plain, conservative, very New England face . . . I can't figure
look like.' She dipped her electric-blue fingernails into a jar of green s
applied a thin film of the lotion around her eyes and nose. Then she co
with a death-pale mask of Chanel Alabaster foundation. She rimmed he
black liquid liner. The quarter-inch thick lines narrowed to delicate, ca
at each corer. She added a touch of powder blush to her cheeks. 'I alwa
to look real,' she says. . . . With unrelenting chutzpah, Sally Randall ha
self known as a fashion designer, gossip columnist, actress, party prom
model, music-video extra, cabaret performer, and nightclub doorman.
has also thought about becoming a pop recording star. At the doors to t
fashionable clubs, people murmur and stand aside as she steps throug
ropes without paying. Photographers constantly agitate to get her pictu
young avant-garde fashion designers ply her with their latest creations. N
people attended her birthday party. 'People never know how to describ
am,' she says. 'They say, you have to see it.' " [New York Magazine, I

Notes

Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank Napier Collyns for comments on an
earlier version of this paper.

'See also Barnett and Silverman (1979).

2The next line, "What you don't see is better yet," is precisely what is inappropriate now.

3See also Magdoff and Barnett (1985), and Barnett (1984).

4See C. B. Macpherson (1962).

References Cited

Barnett, S.
1984 Selling the New Wave Generation. Harper's. March. Pp. 26-27.
Barnett, S., and M. G. Silverman
1979 Ideology and Everyday Life: Anthropology, Neomarxist Thought, and the Prob-
lem of Ideology and the Social Whole. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Baudrillard, J.
1979 De la Seduction: L'Horizon Sacre de Apparences. Paris: Editions Galilee.
Brandschaft, B., and R. Stolorow
1984 A Current Perspective on Difficult Patients. In Kohut's Legacy. P. Stepansky
and A. Goldberg, eds. London: Analytic Press.
Burgess, A.
1963 A Clockwork Orange. New York: Simon and Schuster.

This content downloaded from 152.32.100.24 on Sat, 09 Nov 2019 11:29:54 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
424 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Deutsch, H.
1942 Some Forms of Emotional Disturbances and Their Relationship to Sc
nia. In Neurosis and Character Types. New York: International Universities
Ellis, B. B.
1985 Less than Zero. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Fairbairn, W. R. D.
1952 Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality. Boston and London: Routledge an
Kegan Paul.
Gibson, W.
1985 Neuromancer. New York: Ace/Berkeley Publishing.
Kohut, H.
1984 How Does Analysis Cure? A. Goldberg with P. Stepansky, eds. Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press.
Lasch, C.
1978 The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expecta-
tions. New York: W. W. Norton and Co.

1984 The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times. New York: W. W. Nor-
ton and Co.
Lefebvre, H.
1971 Everyday Life in the Modern World. S. Rabinovitch, trans. New York: Harper
and Row.

Macpherson, C. B.
1962 The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. London: Oxford University
Press.

Magdoff, J., and S. Barnett

1985 Helpless in the Eighties? Treatment Strategies for New Wave Youth: Integrating
Selfpsychology and a Systems Approach. Paper presented at the Orthopsychiatric As-
sociation 63rd Annual Meeting. New York. April.
Naisbet, J.
1984 Megatrends. New York: Warner Books.
New York Magazine
1985 Desperately Seeking Sally. November 4. Pp. 44-50.
New York Times
1985 A True Confession of How I Became Unbuttoned. November 16. P. 27.
New York Times Magazine
1985 A Different Bohemia. November 17. Pp. 26-33, 36-42, 87-89, 100.
New York Times Magazine, Pt. 2.
1985 A Future for Home Computers. September 22. Pp. 76-79.
Newsweek

1985 Zorked Again. December 23. P. 70.

Wall Street Journal

1985 Technology You Can Wear. December 10.

Winnicott, D. W.
1958 Collected Papers: Through Pediatrics to Psycho-Analysis. New York: Basic
Books.

1965 The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the The-
ory of Emotional Development. New York: International Universities Press.

This content downloaded from 152.32.100.24 on Sat, 09 Nov 2019 11:29:54 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms