Book Review: If it Ain’t Got That Swing: the Rebirth of Grown-Up Culture

In a recent issue of our school newspaper, “Logos,” a student commented on our annual Catholic school fundraiser called “Alpine Holiday.” The student editorial stated that overall this year’s Alpine Holiday was a great success. The author had especially good things to say about the great variety of entertainment. However, he also had one complaint. His complaint was that there was no place for teenagers to hang out. His request was to put a bunch of couches, chairs, and cushions in one corner of the entertainment area (our gymnasium) to give teens a place to clump together. It’s not a bad suggestion, and it actually has a good chance of being considered for next year. However, the request is also indicative of a cultural trend that I find disturbing: the division between the lives of teenagers and the lives of adults. The issue here is one often debated between proponents and opponents of home schooling. The issue is what constitutes true socialization.

This issue is the topic of the book If it Ain’t Got That Swing: the Rebirth of Grown-Up Culture by Mark Cauvreau Judge. Reading this book was one of those experiences of holding a belief and then finding an author that articulates your belief better than you had articulated it even to yourself. While his thesis is not blatent, Judge offers an incredibly insightful sociological analysis to explain why teenagers today are having so much trouble socializing. Why are drugs, gangs, and premarital sex so rampant? For Judge, the answer lies in the loss of a “sense of place” – a loss of community.

In order to help us understand his thesis, Judge reviews a bit of psychology with us, specifically the theory of Christopher Lasch. Lasch is not a psychologist usually taught in high school or introductory-level college psychology courses. However, he bases his theory on the psychosexual theory of Sigmund Freud. Most people familiar with Freud roll their eyes at the mention of his name. However, the Neo-Freudian who have adjusted Freud’s theory have done some great work. Lasch is one of these insightful psychologists. According to his theory, children have trouble differentiating between themselves and the world around them. This lack of discernment leads to a sense of omnipotence and a sense of egocentrism – “the world exists to serve me and I control the world.” Parents are the first counter indicator for this worldview, and children deal with the dissonance created by parental authority with a mixture of hero worship and primal rage. As children mature into adulthood, they come to recognize that the world does not flow according to their omnipotent whim. This realization leads to a more realistic view of parents, of the self, and of the relationship between the self and the world. The process of sublimating the powerful childhood feelings of omnipotence, hero worship, and rage is called displacement. If displacement does not happen, the child grows into a neurotic adult. Judge quotes George Schialabba, who wrote about Lasch’s theory in Dissent magazine in 1995:

Neurotic, Lasch asserted, in specific and predictable ways: wary of intimate, permanent relationships, which entail dependence and thus may trigger infantile rage; beset by feelings of inner emptiness and unease, and therefore ravenous for admiration and emotional and sexual conquest; preoccupied with personal “growth” and the consumption of novel sensations; prone to alternating self-images of grandiosity and abjection; liable to feel toward everyone in authority the same combination of rage and terror that the infant feels for those it depends on; unable to identify emotionally with past and future generations and therefore unable to accept the prospect of aging, decay, and death (21).

The sociological connection is that displacement requires, not only good parenting, but also transitional objects and communities. Transitional objects are objects that a child can exercise his will on and learn that his will may not always be done. Transitional communities are social situations that require an individual to conform to certain expectations and roles in order for the community to function in a healthy way. Historically, the most important transitional communities have been what Judge calls “Third Places.” These are places of adult entertainment (in the innocent sense of the term – the sexual connotation of this phrase is an indication of the problem Judge is showcasing in this book) and social connection, such as cafés, dance halls and theaters. In these places, children and adults mixed, socialized, and entertained together. However, the places belonged to adults, and adults wrote the rules. On page 41 of If it Ain’t Got That Swing, Judge says,

Perhaps the third place’s greatest attribute is its ability to foster basic human decency. According to Oldenburg, in third places ‘whatever hint of hierarchy exists is predicated upon human decency’ rather wealth or fame, and a kind of natural restraint holds sway. Boisterous or political talk is welcome, but not someone who brags or hogs the floor. Young and old interact, making it difficult for the young to speak and act the way they might at a keg party or in a rock club. As Oldenburg notes, this decency often spills into the larger community: ‘Promotion of decency in the third place is not limited to it. The regulars are not likely to do any of those things roundly disapproved at the coffee counter.’

Third places offered a training ground for teenagers to learn what it means to be an adult. Children learned to socialize by socializing with adults in adult environments under adult supervision and regulated by adult rules of conduct. Furthermore, teenagers experienced adults having fun, engaging in meaningful social interaction, and treating each other with respect and dignity. Teenagers looked forward to becoming adults, not just because of the pipe dream of adult freedom, but because they realized that becoming an adult meant maturing toward full human life. Being an adult was a good thing!

Everyone seems to have a theory about that one change that caused all of America’s ills, and Judge is no different. According to his theory, “moral deregulation of the public space” caused a breakdown of third places. Ownership of public spaces fell out of the hands of the community and into the hands of commercial interests. As a result of being governed by people without vested interest in the community, public spaces became overrun by gangs, drug dealers, prostitutes, and vagrants. “The main reason so many Americans and their kids are irritable, uncultured, and solipsistic is not television or politics. We have destroyed all sense of place and life on a human scale.” Without the help of third places, and I would add with the changes in parenting theory and practice, the psychological process of displacement is impeded and our culture is becoming more narcissistic as a result. Judge offers quite a few examples of this change, but the most emblematic is the change in entertainment. Our culture has shifted from adult forms of culture, entertainment, and fashion to adolescent (and increasingly childish) forms. Judge uses Swing music as his main illustration. In the Swing era, the main social function of music was to get people to dance. Swing dancers followed social etiquette that respected the rights of everyone to have a good dancing exper
ience. Swing dancing allowed males and females to touch each other frequently in non-sexual ways. In total, Swing dancing created a healthy atmosphere of adult interaction and fun in which everyone was respected and relationships could be forged without the juggernaut of sexual expectation. Swing was replaced by Be-Bop, which did not have the dancer as its main consideration but rather the egocentric desire of the artist to show off his skill. I love Be-Bop music, but I have to agree with Judge here – you can’t dance to it. Be-Bop gave way to rock, which began (with Elvis, at least) as a return to dancing but still had a narcissistic bent to it, mixed with the sense of social rebellion of the 1960s. Narcissism eventually won out as the rock of Elvis Presley was transformed by Punk and then by Grunge. These dance forms are rebellious, obnoxious, and shocking. Furthermore, you can’t dance to them (unless you really call mosh pits dancing). Punk and Grunge are not meant to be social forms of music. In contrast to Swing’s culture of social etiquette, rock’s culture is one of social rebellion and freedom. In contrast to Swing’s culture of frequent non-sexual touch and respect for individual dignity (especially of women), rock’s culture is one saturated with sex and the objectification of people (especially women) for personal gratification. “These days, people aren’t trapped by poverty, but by a culture that sells the tyranny of rebellion and dressing-down as liberation itself” (100). The rock culture does not allow for displacement. In fact, it consciously resists maturation. Filled with 1960s rebellion, our current culture sees being an adult as a sad necessity (consider the movie “Peter Pan” with Robin Williams, for example). Judge comments, “Unlike previous generations, the boomers didn’t graduate from the Beatles to Bach or Ella Fitzgerald, form little league to community volleyball, from the twist to the waltz. […] [Instead they] delved into self-help, therapy, and career, never filling the adult civic and pop culture voids they had created” (111). This lifestyle is inherently unfulfilling, creating an insatiable hunger that our culture tries to fill with sex and extreme forms of stimulation.

Today, the ‘revolutionary’ changes wrought in the 1960s have become the status quo, the rituals of rock boring and predictable. When a young misanthrope smashes his guitar on stage at a punk show, it’s about as shocking as a saxophone solo during the big band era. Rebellion and alienation are the common stances – so common they have all but run out of targets for their rage (90).

Judge’s social analysis is not couched in dry polemics. While he does pull some harsh jabs at political liberals, most of his analysis is embedded in a delightful collection of reminiscenses about the “good old days” in Shaw, a neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and descriptions of dance events. The book offers a fun look at history, a fresh perspective on the Civil Rights years, and a thought provoking sociological theory.

What is true socialization for teenagers? Is it really healthy for teenagers to get their social and cultural cues from each other? Would it not be better for them to learn from those who have reached maturity, and who truly know how to enjoy life’s goodness? Perhaps the student’s recommendation in the Log to have “something for teenagers” at Alpine Holiday should be answered with a concerted effort to involve them in the adult activity. Not only should teenagers not be isolated from the music, they should not be isolated from the community either.

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