Dressing Down: Costume, Disguise and the Performance of Ordinariness

CC 1 (1) pp. 45–57 Intellect Limited 2014 Clothing Cultures Volume 1 Number 1 © 2014 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/cc.1.1.45_1 Barbara Brownie University of Hertfordshire Dressing down: Costume, disguise and the performance of ordinariness Abstract Keywords Disguise – the substitution of one identity for another – is a deliberate act of disguise construction and an elimination of self. Through costume, signs of self are concealed ordinariness and erased, and in their place appears an apparently complete alternative identity. performance Although dress is typically aspirational, reflecting a desire to imitate those of higher film socio-economic status, this article observes that there are occasions on which it is Superman desirable to use costume to reduce status, and to escape the perceived pressures Coming to America and responsibilities of social or economic power. In trans-status disguise, it is The Saint necessary to abandon all outward indicators of individuality and status: to perform ordinariness. Performance of ordinariness is a means to an end: a tool to enable behaviour that would otherwise be inappropriate or impossible. Inspired by Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives, nineteenth-century journalists used costume to experience life in the poorest sections of society with the aim of increasing trans-status empathy. In screen-based narratives, a disguise can often be pivotal to a plot, particularly since, in these primarily visual media, costume is a key identifying feature of any character. Taking as examples, Coming to America, Superman and The Saint, this article observes how costume permits a perceived lowering of status, which in turn enables liberation. In particular, it will propose that there are parallels between the social experiments of nineteenth-century journalists and the fictional narratives of twentieth-century television and cinema. 45 CC_1.1_ Brownie_45-57.indd 45 9/12/13 9:22:47 PM Barbara Brownie 1. Underpinning fashion Performing ordinariness is the desire to imitate ‘social elites by their So often in real life, clothes are aspirational. They reflect the ambition to be more social inferiors’ (Crane attractive, more wealthy or more sophisticated than we really are. Indeed, the 2000: 6). whole fashion cycle relies on consumers’ desires to achieve or emulate a higher 2. Zeus took the form of socio-economic status than we really have (Crane 2000: 6).1� Films and television Alkmene’s husband in order to go to bed shows that present trans-status disguise typically introduce a character who has with her. Although he a special status to which many aspire. He or she may be royalty, aristocracy, a later confessed his true identity to Semele, he celebrity or a business tycoon. It soon becomes apparent in these narratives that initially approached high socio-economic status comes hand in hand with certain responsibilities. her as a mortal man. Wealth can be oppressive as much as it is liberating. In their haute-couture 3. Throughout the dresses and tailored suits, these characters have privilege, but not freedom. In Bible, angels appear order to taste reality they must discard their designer garb and disguise them- in human form so as not to frighten the selves in a wardrobe of normalcy. Through costume, audiences are shown the recipients of their contrast between the lives of the privileged and the deprived. As a privileged messages. The Devil is character learns the freedoms and restraints of ordinariness, audiences are invited also known to present himself as human to reassess their assumptions about people at both ends of the social scale. so that he may offer Those with power often find that it limits their opportunities to engage in temptation without arousing suspicion everyday activities or socialize and empathize with ordinary people. Power, from his victim. be it social or physical, can be isolating. It is for this reason that so many Japanese folklore Greek gods and goddesses have felt the desire to present themselves as mere tells of foxes who transform themselves mortals. Zeus, in particular, had a habit of presenting himself in mortal form into humans, typically so that he could seduce mortal women.2� His sister, Demeter, goddess of the as attractive young harvest who disguised herself as an elderly woman in order that she could women. walk among men in search of her lost child, was considered to be one of the few Greek deities who was truly able to empathize with human suffer- ing (Radford 2007: 126; Passman 1993: 59). The theme of heavenly creatures presenting themselves in a human form – a form of which their human audience may be unafraid – continue in folklore and religious tales throughout the world.3� They are also reflected in popular culture, in comic books, film and television, particularly in tales of superheroes who pose under a secret identity. These disguises grant intimacy with an audience that would otherwise be wary of their presence, and may treat them with hostility. These characters’ disguises invite trust and provide reassurance that their actions will be just as mundane as their appearance. It is common for something ‘regarded as familiar’ to be ‘beyond question’ and ‘thus taken for granted’ (Mollering 2006: 368). While we may be suspicious of an outsider, or anyone who presents themselves as socially or physically superior, someone who is our equal or inferior is rarely considered a threat, and it is for this reason that closed social groups are unlikely to accept interlopers unless they have the appearance of one of their own (Blumer 1982: 252). The substitution of one identity for another is a deliberate act of construction. In disguising himself, a player constructs one of his two identities, carefully layering and combining signifiers to ensure that his appearance is appropriate for his role. All of us perform this same task of identity construction when we dress: As social beings, we express ourselves through our clothes […] identity is not a property of the person, but is enacted through dress in the multiple selves people can try on and display in their everyday lives. Identity is not fixed; it is an evolving, constructive process. (Strashnaya 2012: 52) 46 CC_1.1_ Brownie_45-57.indd 46 9/12/13 9:22:47 PM Dressing down We dress for occasion – for work or for play – and take care to choose an outfit that communicates suitable messages for each role. At work, we dress sombrely, signifying our willingness to bow to authority and perform serious tasks; and out on the town we dress either more casually or more vibrantly, signifying that we expect to relax or to have fun. In essence, work clothes demonstrate commitment to a boss or a task, while casual clothes suggest commitment to oneself. While we all partake in identity construction for our various roles, for those in disguise the task involves a more extreme act of differentiation. The two costumes must differentiate between two vastly different personas: one genuine, and one false. The player must invent a role entirely different from any that are natural to his or her own (but that seems natural to observers), and must interpret that invented persona in a combination of mannerisms, gestures, behaviours, accents and, crucially, costume. In disguise, the player experiences liberation through the acceptance of others. Trans-status disguise and self-objectification Anyone who must inhabit different identities – actors, spies, con-men, superheroes – must have ‘an undeniably complex relationship with self’. The act of dressing in costume ‘gives him a heightened awareness of the methods by which we create and recreate selves [through] the act of clothing and re-clothing’ (Walter 2011). By differentiating his two alter egos through costume, the player acknowledges the power that clothes have in expressing identity, and so embraces the idea that he can be judged according to his wardrobe. As Lucy Collins (2011) observes, the act of dress in identity construction is an acknowledgement of objectification. The player makes the conscious choice to have two different wardrobes because he understands that audiences will assess him according to his appearance. Audiences will readily objectify him and his alter ego, and this is something that he is able to exploit. Indeed, it is in the player’s interest to invite objectification – to be judged according to his appearance – as the secret of his true identity does not lie far from the costumed surface. Dressing down, and inviting objectification, is core to experiments in ‘trans-status disguise’ (Hyland 2002), a practice that flourished in the late nineteenth-century social experiments. In 1890, Jacob Riis published How the Other Half Lives, a taxonomy of class structure which included notes on ‘bodily signifiers’ of class, most notably, costume. In his text, Riis invited readers to covertly ‘be with and among [the] people [of lower socio-economic status] until you understand their ways’ with the aim of encouraging greater trans- status empathy (Schocket 1998: 112–18). There then began a trend for articles in British and American periodicals that featured the observations of ‘middle- class [reporters] who briefly lived “working-class” lives’. The accounts of these writers reveal dress as core in the construction of a trans-status disguise. In 1903, Jack London expressed surprise at how remarkably attitudes towards him changed when he donned a frayed jacket. The jacket, he noted, became a ‘badge and advertisement of [his perceived] class’. By ‘vesting [him]self in class-specific apparel’ he invited observers to make assumptions about his socio-economic status, and in so doing created opportunities to ‘move freely’ among social groups that had formerly viewed him as an outsider (London 1903, cited in Schocket 1998: 119). These practices did not die out at the turn of the century.

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