[On May
20, 1873 dry goods retailer Levi Strauss and tailor Jacob Davis received
a patent for work pants reinforced with metal rivets, and blue jeans were
born. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Strauss and a few other contexts for
those uniquely American articles of clothing!]
On how blue
jeans help us understand the iconic American actor, and what’s missing from the
image.
The opening lines
of Lana Del Rey’s song
“Blue Jeans” (from her 2012 album Born
to Die) compare the speaker’s lost lover to a very famous American look:
“Blue jeans, white shirt/Walked into the room you know you made my eyes burn/It
was like James Dean, for sure.” Inspired by that evocative opening description
and simile, there are (as of the mid-March moment in which I’m writing this
post, anyway) at least a dozen James
Dean tribute videos on YouTube that set images of the actor to Del Rey’s
song. Which makes sense, not just because Dean was so well known for that
particular ensemble, but also because the tragically
early death of this beautiful young man makes Del Rey’s nostalgic lament
for lost love especially pointed for such multimedia tributes. Nostalgia,
after all, is as much (if not entirely) about an image in our mind in the
present as about any actual past reality, and that can be said for both a lost
love and a legendary pop culture figure in equal measure.
Even in his own
era, of course, James Dean was one of those pop culture figures who came to be
associated with—indeed I would argue largely defined by—images
(in both the literal sense and the idea of constructed narratives). That’s a
phenomenon that has become quite common, if not ubiquitous, in our 21st
century moment of social media and reality TV and, yes, these here intertubes;
but such prominent pop culture images were more unique and striking in the
early 1950s period of Dean’s
rapid ascendancy to film stardom. And with more of an emphasis on still
images than in our fully multimedia internet age, particular articles of
clothing or accessories became central to many of those pop culture iconic
images: Brando’s t-shirt, Marilyn’s billowing dress, Elvis with his guitar
strung across his hips, and James Dean in those blue jeans. The contexts for
each of those images were distinct and specific, and would of course evolve and
shift over time; but each also seemed to capture a particular element of the
famous figure’s image and appeal. And in Dean’s case, that element could be
described as a complex combination of fashionable beauty and rebellious
roughness, of a pretty face that we could still believe as a rebel without a cause.
Such iconic
images are always partial and/or over-simplified, though, and in Dean’s case
his tragically brief life only amplifies those qualities. Dean’s
larger-than-life persona can make this difficult to remember, but he really became
famous for two films, both released in the same year (1955) as his auto
accident and death: East of Eden (1955)
and Rebel without a Cause
(1955). (He also appeared posthumously in 1956’s Giant.) And while he did wear those famous jeans in both films,
he did so in two quite distinct contexts: the rural setting for which they were
initially invented in East (also largely
the case with Giant); and as part of the
new, suburban rock ‘n roll vibe for which jeans were being adapted in Rebel. So even in these two films from a
single year, Dean’s iconic attire and image would have to be analyzed differently—and
when we factor in his theatrical and television work from the prior few years,
the picture gets even more multi-layered (to say nothing of where his career
might have gone post-1955). He might well have continued to wear those blue jeans—once
an image gets established it can be very difficult to shake, as aforementioned
contemporary figures like Marilyn Monroe knew all too well—but if our
narratives of them had remained static they would have become increasingly
inaccurate. Dean’s tragic death shouldn’t keep us from complicating and
extending the image.
Next blue jean
studying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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