the Puritans, work was a way of praising God; for Ben Franklin, work became a virtue in itself; for Horatio Alger, it became a way of making money; and for the modern American it seems a way to accumulate material possessions. The manifestations of this drive for success and goods are everywhere: Dagwood occupies his time thinking of new ways to ask for a raise; Blondie spends her time thinking of ways to translate that raise into hats and dresses. Material accumulation, the public is led to believe, represents the sign of success.

Advertising strongly and perhaps subconsciously urges the consumer to "keep up with the Joneses" be it with big cars or electric toothbrushes. Liquor companies, for example, are often wont to chip away at the security of one's social status. The trappings in the liquor advertisement are always glittery, the people beautiful, and the booze acknowledgedly expensive. But, say the ads implicitly, one has not really made it unless he drinks the proper brand of liquor. The result, of course, is half a nation of people who choose their liquor not for its taste, nor even for show, but rather out of fear of seeming gauche and low class.

Big car salesmen have a cunning way of pushing big car glamor. The "West," they imply, may be adequate for blue-collar honchos, but if one really has taste, he must look to Europe for satisfaction. Thus the "Europeanized" American car becomes de riguer (1). The Continental, the Riviera, the Le Mans, the Regent, the Grand Prix, the Granada, the L'etoile, the Volar6, the Coup de Ville, and the Torino among others all are named and advertised to evoke some mystical European essence. In truth, none of them have anything to do with Europe, but truth is about as popular in Detroit as safety or economy. What matters is that these cars all ooze that certain je ne sais quoi (2), that look of money misspent.

A key to the paradoxical nature of American materialism is Playboy magazine. The true Playboy male drinks the right liquor, listens to the right jazz on the right stereo, wears the right clothes, drives the right car, and consumes the right women. All of these goods are, of course, irration- ally expensive. The irony is that Playboy also supports the right causes. One article might bemoan the plight of the hungry and unclothed while the next insists on fourteen sets of color-coordinated silk underwear for the fall wardrobe. But materialism and egalitarianism have always co- existed in America, however uneasily.

Another strong mythic force abounding in the land might better be called an anti-force, and that is the distrust and resentment of anything intellectual. One is forced, for example, to wonder why Spock, an intellect and a genius, remains second in command to Kirk, an everyday Joe, on . . . [more]

(1) French for indispensable or obligatory. (eds.)

(2) French idiom for "indescribable something." (eds.)

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