Re: [TANGO-L] Is today's tango a dance of the middle classes?

[Jeff Gaynor <jjg @JQHOME.NET>]

Lucia wrote:

> --- Derik Rawson <rawsonweb  @YAHOO.COM> escribis:
>
>
>
> Let's face the truth: most people dancing the Tango
> belong to the middle classes.
[Just gotta delurk on this one.] Yes, because that's the vast majority
of the population, which is a good thing. Exports (tango is an export)
tend to show up as fads and status symbols for this class. Some have
more sticking power than others. Doesn't make it any less fun or
enjoyable, does it? A lot of imports get popular precisely because they
are so wonderful.

> Europeans and Latin
> Americans who belong show their "class" without
> compunction.  Middle class American naives subscribe
> to the American mythology's fiction that it is a
> classless society,

It is classless vis-a-vis the European sense of inherited nobility: Tell
us you are the Duke of X and we'll shrug you off.  Not so in other
countries where you are nobility no matter how wretched your finances.
What we are actually taught is that one's class is determined by money.
High class = rich, low class = poor. This works because by and large
Americans have a very homogeneous (mass) culture and the totally boorish
Texas oil baron is every bit as high class as the weirdo pop megastar,
neither of whom are "classy" in any reasonable sense. Odd, but it has
worked well for a largely immigrant country with no historical cultural
base. The mythology pertains to how easily one may move upwards and
great stock is put on the self-made millionaire even though this is a
vanishingly small percentage of the population.

> their taste being taught by
> marketing drives....
Sure and they all know it, too. That is the function of companies in
most folk's estimate, to supply us with new fashions and toys. If we all
buy into it, then what? Enunciating a truth is not a criticism. The
criticism is that it is wasteful and invents wants, causing the less
fortunate to squander their monies.

Cheers,

Jeff

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