If we wish to be entertained by books, plays, films, or songs, we automatically subject ourselves to this procedure. It is the very essence of the process we call dramatization. Everyday actions performed as they happen in real life would not be exciting enough. They have to be exaggerated. The operation of the stimulus extremism principle ensures that irrelevant detail is suppressed and relevant detail is heightened and made more extravagant. Even in the most realistic schools of acting, or, for that matter, in non-fiction writing and documentary filming, the negative process still operates. Irrelevancies are pared away, thus producing an indirect form of exaggeration. In the more stylized performances, such as opera and melodrama, the direct forms of exaggeration are more important and it is remarkable to see how far the voices, the costumes, the gestures, the actions and the plot can stray away from reality and yet still make a powerful impact on the human brain. If this seems strange, it is worth recalling the case of the experimental birds. The gull chicks were prepared to respond to a substitute for their parents that consisted of something as remote from an adult gull as a stick with three red spots on it. Our reactions to the highly stylized rituals of an opera are no more outlandish.
Children’s toys, dolls and puppets illustrate the same principle very vividly. A rag doll’s face, for example, has certain important features magnified and others omitted. The eyes become huge black spots, while the eyebrows disappear. The mouth is shown in a vast grin, while the nose is reduced to two small dots. Enter a toyshop and you enter a world of contrasting super-normal and sub-normal stimuli. Only the toys for the older children become less contrasted and more realistic.
The same is true of the children’s own drawings. In portrayals of the human body, those features that are important to them are enlarged; those that are unimportant are reduced or omitted. Usually the head, eyes and mouth receive the most disproportionate magnification. These are the parts of the body that have most meaning for a young child, because they form the area of visual expression and communication. The external ears of our species are inexpressive and comparatively unimportant and they are therefore frequently left out altogether.
Visual extremism of this kind is also prevalent in the arts of primitive peoples. The size of heads, eyes and mouths is usually super-normal in relation to the dimensions of the body and, as with children’s drawings, other features are reduced. The stimuli selected for magnification do vary from case to case, however. If a figure is shown running, then its legs become super-normally large. If a figure is simply standing and is doing nothing with either its arms or its legs, they may become mere stumps or disappear altogether. If a prehistoric figurine is concerned with representing fertility, its reproductive features may become super-normalized to the exclusion of all else. Such a figure may boast a huge pregnant belly, enormous protruding buttocks, wide hips and vast breasts, but have no legs, arms, neck or head.
Graphic manipulations of subject-matter in this way have often been referred to as the creation of ugly deformities, as if the beauty of the human form were somehow being subjected to malicious damage and insult. The irony is that if such critics examined their own bodily adornments they would find that their own appearance was not exactly ‘as nature intended’. Like the children and the primitive artists they are no doubt laden with ‘deforming’ super-normal and sub-normal elements.
The fascination of stimulus extremism in the arts lies in the way these exaggerations vary from case to case and place to place, and in the way the modifications develop new forms of harmony and balance. In the modern world, animated cartoon films have become major purveyors of this type of visual exaggeration, and a specialized form of it is to be found in the art of caricature. The expert caricaturist picks out the naturally exaggerated features of his victim’s face and deftly super-normalizes these already existing exaggerations. At the same time he reduces the more inconspicuous features. The magnification of a large nose, for example, can become so extreme that it ends up with its dimensions doubled or even tripled, without rendering the face unrecognizable. Indeed, it makes it even more recognizable. The point is that we all identify individual faces by comparing them in our minds with an idealized ‘typical’ human face. If a particular face has certain features that are stronger or weaker, bigger or smaller, longer or shorter, darker or fairer, than our ‘typical’ face, these are the items that we remember. In drawing a successful caricature, the artist has to know intuitively which features we have selected in this way, and he then has to super-normalize the strong points and sub-normalize the weak ones. The process is fundamentally the same as that employed in the drawings of children and primitive peoples, except that the caricaturist is concerned primarily with individual differences.
The visual arts, throughout much of their history, have been pervaded by this device of stimulus extremism. Super-normal and sub-normal modifications abound in almost all the earlier art forms. As the centuries passed, however, realism came more and more to dominate European art. The painter and the sculptor became burdened with the task of recording the external world as precisely as possible. It was not until the last century, when science took over this formidable duty (with the development of photography), that artists were able to return to a freer manipulation of their subject-matter. They were slow to react at first, and although the chains were broken in the nineteenth century, it was not until the twentieth century that they were fully shaken off. During the past sixty years wave after wave of rebellion has occurred as stimulus extremism has reasserted itself more and more powerfully. The rule once again has become: magnify selected elements and eliminate others.
When paintings of the human face began to be manipulated in this way by modern artists, there was an outcry. The pictures were scorned as decadent lunacies, as if they reflected some new disease of twentieth-century life, instead of a return to art’s more basic business of pursuing the Stimulus Struggle. The melodramatic exaggerations of human behaviour in theatrical productions, ballets and operas, and the extreme magnifications of human emotions expressed in songs and poems, were happily accepted, but it took some rime to adjust to similar stimulus extremisms in the visual arts. When totally abstract paintings began to appear they were attacked as meaningless by people who were perfectly willing to enjoy the total abstraction of any musical performance. But music had never been forced into the aesthetic strait-jacket of portraying natural sounds.
I have defined a super-normal stimulus as an artificial exaggeration of a natural stimulus, but the concept can also be applied in a special way to an invented stimulus. Let me take two clear-cut cases. The pink lips of a beautiful girl are, without any question, a perfectly natural, biological stimulus. If she exaggerates them by painting them a brighter pink> she is obviously converting them into a super-normal stimulus. There the issue is simple, and it is this sort of example I have been concentrating on up to now. But what about the sight of a shiny new motor car? This can be very stimulating, too, but it is an entirely artificial, invented stimulus. There is no natural, biological model against which we can compare it to find out if it has been supernormalized. And yet, as we look around at various motor cars, we can easily pick out some that seem to have the quality of being super-normal. They are bigger and more dramatic than most of the others. Manufacturers of motor cars are, in fact, just as concerned with producing super-normal stimuli as manufacturers of lipsticks. The situation is more fluid, because there is no natural, biological base-line against which to work; but the process is essentially the same. Once a new stimulus has been invented, it develops a base-line of its own. At any point in the history of motor cars it would be possible to produce a sketch of the typical, common and therefore ‘normal’ car of the period. It would also be possible to produce a sketch of the outstanding luxury motor car of the period which, at that time, was the super-normal vehicle. The only difference between this and the lipstick example is that the ‘normal base-line’ of the motor car changes with technical progress, whereas the natur
al pink lips stay the same.
The application of the super-normal principle is therefore widespread and penetrates almost all of our endeavours in one way or another. Freed from the demands of crude survival, we wring the last drop of stimulation out of anything we can lay our hands or eyes on. The result is that we sometimes get stimulus indigestion. The snag with making stimuli more powerful is that we run the risk of exhausting ourselves by the strength of our response. We become jaded. We begin to agree with the Shakespearean comment that
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet...
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
But at the same time we are forced to admit, with Wilde, that ‘Nothing succeeds like excess.’ So what do we do? The answer is that we bring into operation yet another subsidiary principle of the Stimulus Struggle:
This states that because super-normal stimuli are so powerful and our response to them can become exhausted, we must from time to time vary the elements that are selected for magnification. In other words, we ring the changes. When a switch of this sort occurs it is usually dramatic, because a whole trend is reversed. It does not, however, stop a particular branch of the Stimulus Struggle from being pursued, it merely shifts the points of supernormal emphasis. Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than in the world of fashionable clothing and body adornment.
In female costumes, where sexual display is paramount, this has given rise to what fashion experts refer to as the Law of Shifting Erogenous Zones. Technically, an erogenous zone is an area of the body that is particularly well supplied with nerve endings responsive to touch, direct stimulation of which is sexually arousing. The main areas are the genital region, the breasts, the mouth, the ear-lobes, the buttocks and the thighs. The neck, the arm-pits and the navel are sometimes added to the list. Female fashions are not, of course, concerned with tactile stimulation, but with the visual display (or concealment) of these sensitive areas. In extreme cases all these areas may be displayed at once, or, as in female Arab costumes, all may be concealed. In the vast majority of super-tribal communities, however, some are displayed and other simultaneously concealed. Alternatively, some may be emphasized, although covered, while others are obliterated.
The Law of Shifting Erogenous zones is concerned with the way in which concentration on one area gives way to concentration on another as time passes and fashions change. If the modern female emphasizes one zone for too long, the attraction wears off and a new super-normal shock is required to re-awaken interest.
In recent times the two main zones, the breasts and the pelvis, have remained largely concealed, but have been emphasized in various ways. One is by padding or tightening the clothing to exaggerate the shapes of these regions. The other is by approaching them as closely as possible with areas of exposed flesh. When this exposure creeps up on the breast region, with exceptionally low-cut costumes, it usually creeps away from the pelvic region, the dresses becoming longer. When the zone of interest shifts and the skirts become shorter, the neck-line rises, On occasions when bare midriffs have been popular, exposing the navel, the other zones have usually been rather well covered, often to the extent of the legs being concealed with some sort of trousers.
The great problem for fashion designers is that their super-normal stimuli are related to basic biological features. As there are only a few vital zones, this creates a strict limitation and forces the designers into a series of dangerously repetitive cycles. Only with great ingenuity can they overcome this difficulty. But there is always the head region to play with. Ear-lobes can be emphasized with ear-rings, necks with necklaces, the face with make-up. The Law of Shifting Erogenous Zones applies here too, and it is noticeable that when eye make-up becomes particularly striking and heavy, the lips usually become paler and less distinct.
Male fashion cycles follow a rather different course. The male in recent times has been more concerned with displaying his status than his sexual features. High status means access to leisure, and the most characteristic costumes of leisure are sporting clothes. Students of fashion history have unearthed the revealing fact that practically everything men wear today can be classified as ‘ex-sports clothes’. Even our most formal attire can be shown to have these origins.
The system works like this. At any particular moment in recent history there has always been a highly functional costume to go with the high-status sport of the day. To wear such a costume indicates that you can afford the time and money to indulge in such a sport. This status display can be super-normalized by wearing the costume as ordinary day clothes, even when not pursuing the particular sport in question, thus magnifying the display by spreading it. The signals emanating from the sports clothes say, ‘I am very leisured,’ and they can say this almost as well for a non-sporting man who cannot afford to participate in the sport itself. After a while, when they have become completely accepted as everyday wear, they lose their impact. Then a new sport has to be raided for its unusual costume.
Back in the eighteenth century, English country gentlemen were exhibiting their status by taking to the hunting field. They adopted a sensible manner of dress for the occasion, wearing a coat that was cut away in the front, giving it the appearance of having tails at the back. They abandoned big floppy hats and began to wear stiff top hats, like prototype crash helmets. Once this costume was fully established as a high-status-sport outfit, it began to spread. At first it was the young bloods (the young swingers of the day) who started using a modified hunting costume as everyday wear. This was considered the height of daring, if not downright scandalous. But little by little the trend spread (young swingers get older), and by the middle of the nineteenth century the costume of top hat and tails had become normal everyday wear.
Having become so accepted and traditional, the top hat and tails had to be replaced with something new by the more daring members of society who wished to display their super-normal leisure signals. Other high-status sports available for raiding were shooting, fishing and golf. Billycock hats became bowlers and shooting tweeds became check lounge suits. The softer sporting hats became trilby hats. As the present century has advanced, the lounge suit has become more accepted as formal day wear and has become more sombre in the process. ‘Morning dress’, with top hat and tails, has been shifted one step further towards formality, being reserved now for special occasions such as weddings. It also survives as evening dress, but there the lounge suit has already caught up with it and stripped it of its tails to create a dinner-jacket suit.
Once the lounge suit had lost its daring, it had to be replaced, in its turn, by something more obviously sporting. Hunting may have dropped out of favour, but horse-riding in general still retained a high-status value, so here we go again. This time it was the hacking jacket that soon became known asi ‘sports jacket’. Ironically it only acquired this name when it lost its true sporting function. It became the new casual wear for everyday use and still holds this position at the present time. Already, however, it is creeping into the more formal world of the business executive. Amongst the most daring dressers, it has even invaded that holy of holies, the formal evening occasion, in the guise of a patterned dinner jacket.
As the sports jacket spread into everyday life, the polo-necked sweater spread with it. Polo was another very high-status sport, and wearing the typical round-necked sweater of the game imparted instant status to the lucky wearer. But already this characteristic garment has lost its daring charm. A silk version of it was recently worn for the first time with a formal dinner jacket. Instantly shops were bombarded by young males clamouring for this latest sports attack on formality. It may have lost its impact as day wear, but as evening wear it was still able to shock, and its range spread accordingly.
Other similar trends have occurred during the last fifty years. Yachting blazers with brass buttons have been worn by men who have never stepped off dry land. Skiing suits have been worn by men (and women) who have never seen
a snow-capped mountain. Just so long as a particular sport is exclusive and costly, it will be robbed for its costume signals. During the present century, leisure sports have been replaced to a certain extent by the habit of taking off for the sea-shores of warmer climates. This began with a craze for the French Riviera. Visitors there began copying the sweaters and shirts of the local fishermen. They were able to show that they had indulged in this expensive new status holiday by wearing modified versions of these shirts and sweaters back home. Immediately, a whole new range of casual clothes burst on to the market. In America, it became fashionable for wealthy, high-status males to own a ranch in the country, where they would dress in modified cowboy clothes. In no time at all, many a young ranchless city-dweller was striding along in his (further) modified cowboy suit. It could be argued that he took it straight from the Western movies, but this is unlikely. It would still have been fancy dress. However, once real, contemporary, high-status males are wearing it when they take their leisure, then all is well and a new take-over bid is on its way.
None of this, you may feel, explains the bizarre clothing of the way-out male teenager, who wears cravats, long hair, necklaces, coloured scarves, bracelets, buckled shoes, flared trousers and lace-cuffed shirts.
What kind of sport is he modifying? There is nothing mysterious about the micro-skirted female teenager. All she has done, apart from shifting her erogenous zone to her thighs, is to take an emancipated leaf out of the male’s fashion book, and steal a sports costume for everyday wear. The tennis skirt of the 1930s and the ice-skating skirt of the 1940s were already full-blooded micro-skirts. It only remained for some daring designer to modify them for everyday wear. But the flamboyant young male, what on earth is he doing? The answer seems to be that, with the recent setting up of a ‘sub-culture of youth', it became necessary to develop an entirely new costume to go with it, one that owed as little as possible to the variations of the hated ‘adult sub-culture’. Status in the ‘youth sub-culture’ has less to do with money and much more to do with sex appeal and virility. This has meant that the young males have begun to dress more like females, not because they are effeminate (a popular jibe of the older group), but because they are more concerned with sex attraction displays. In the recent past these have been largely the concern of the females, but now both sexes are involved. It is, in fact, a return to an earlier (pre-eighteenth century) condition of male dressing, and we should not be too surprised if the codpiece makes its reappearance any minute now. We may also see the return of elaborate male make-up. It is hard to say how long this phase will last because it will gradually be copied by older males who are already feeling disgruntled by the overt sex displays of their juniors. In returning to a peacock display, the young males of the ‘youth sub-culture’ have hit where it hurts most. The human male is in his sexually most potent condition at the age of sixteen to seventeen. By abandoning leisure status dress and replacing it with sex status dress, they have chosen the ideal weapon. However, as I said earlier, young bloods and young swingers grow older. It will be interesting to see what happens in twenty years’ time, when there are bald Beatles in the board-room, and a new sub-culture of youth has arisen.
The Human Zoo: A Zoologist's Study of the Urban Animal Page 20
