Armed Glances: the History and Culture of Sunglasses & Cool
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Armed Glances: the history and culture of sunglasses & cool Vanessa Gill-Brown A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Nottingham Trent University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2010 Contents Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Introduction p1-16 1. Sunglasses are everywhere, and they are cool P17-26 2. Writing about sunglasses p27-31 3. Defining cool p32-48 4. Cool forerunners p49-68 5. Modernity, the eye and the city as a state of mind p69-85 6. Modern speed and sight; cool as ‘industrialised consciousness’ P86-108 7. Modern technology and the eye: warrior, alien, cyborg p109-123 8. Life in the light: success and ‘insider cool’ p124-163 9. Life in the dark: ‘outsider cool’ p164-191 10. Head for the shade: the spread of cool p192-210 11. Neither/both: ‘ecliptic’ cool p211-228 Conclusions p229-235 Appendix 1 – sunglasses timeline p236- 242 Bibliography p243-259 List of illustrations p260-266 i Acknowledgements I must acknowledge the debt I owe to Neil Handley, curator of the British Optical Association museum, whose knowledge and willingness to help explore the archives has informed and supported the development of this study significantly. I would also like to acknowledge my director of studies, Professor Chris Rojek, who inspired me throughout and continued to support the project in difficult circumstances. Finally, while there are many colleagues, friends and family who have supported me, I would like to dedicate this work to my father, Kenneth George Brown, who died towards the end of the work for this thesis. He encouraged me to view the world with curiosity and respect, and his own ‘cool composure’ remains legendary among those who knew him. ii Abstract The thesis sets out to explore the enduring and widespread appeal of sunglasses in western popular culture as evident in the fields of fashion, film and advertising. The emergence of sunglasses as a fashion accessory is established through evidence from UK and US fashion magazines of the early Twentieth century, optical trade and professional journals and the collection of sunglasses and tinted spectacles held by the British Optical Association. The strong association in popular culture between sunglasses and contemporary notions of ‘cool’ is explored through analysis of images of sunglasses, consideration of their function as a ‘material agent’, existing histories and theories of ‘cool’, modernity and attendant changes to emotional culture, behaviour and personality. The relationship between sunglasses, vision and the gaze is also considered as the study explores the potential meanings of the shaded eye in these contexts. The study contributes to knowledge by providing a more detailed history of sunglasses emergence and transition to the status of fashion accessory than exists elsewhere and by using sunglasses as an object study (or fragment) from which the phenomenon of ‘cool’ can be examined. Existing perspectives on cool are shown to lack the usefully broad understanding of the appeal of ‘cool’ that sunglasses can provide, in so far as they draw together a number of aspects of cool in one object. The study concludes that this allows us to see both cool and sunglasses as demonstrative of a superior adaptation to the conditions of modernity – a value so desirable and broadly applicable as to help to explain not only the enduring appeal of sunglasses but the increasing significance of cool in western culture. iii Introduction foreword What prompted this study was a single incident quite a few years ago, when I thoughtlessly reached for my sunglasses on the dashboard of my car, for a short hurried walk from my car to the supermarket entrance. (I was out of milk). As I slipped them on, I wondered to myself why I had bothered, and I quickly answered my own question with the rationale that since I was in the middle of doing some decorating, I was looking somewhat dishevelled, and that the sunglasses had made me look more presentable, and feel less embarrassed. As I approached the entrance, my reflection in the glass façade of the supermarket confirmed to me that, not only did I feel better; I actually looked ‘quite cool’. This idea amused me because I had wondered since being a teenager what made one person ‘cool’ and another ‘uncool’. It was a quality that seemed elusive, and the idea that I could fool myself that I had it by simply and absent-mindedly putting on my sunglasses was curious. I had recently completed a multidisciplinary study about Tupperware (Gill-Brown, 2001), which I had used as a focus from which to explore attitudes to domestic work and domesticated femininity, and in the context of the emergence of visual cultural studies/material culture studies, I believed that detailed analysis of the connotations of seemingly trivial images and objects could reveal a rich complex of associative meanings which inform the popular imagination in a profound and powerful way. That the way we use signs and signifiers in visual culture might tell us more about the concerns, fears and aspirations of a culture than what any of its inhabitants might consciously utter. Without a doubt, objects… serve as monuments of collective memory, as indices of cultural value, as foci for the observation of ritual, and satisfy communal as well as personal needs. (Moxey, 2008:132) Bearing this in mind, I began to think about the connections between sunglasses and fashion, popular culture and cool. Working as a lecturer in a fashion department, I could see sunglasses were remarkably resilient. They seemed to be part of fashionable looks on every level, every season, every year, from subcultures and street fashion, to couture, and luxury branding, from Vogue to ID to the British punk fanzine sniffin' glue as well as numerous blogs and online articles. In fact, it seemed sunglasses were almost synonymous with fashion. I quickly realised that sunglasses were similarly ubiquitous in film; not merely as an aid to realism within costume design, but in iconic images from the films 1 which would frequently be used for film promotion in the form of posters and video/dvd packaging. As I considered music, they seemed to be an essential part of the rock star look, the rapper, then in pop culture, the celebrity, the gangster… the tourist, the American. The connotations became ever broader. One object so meaningful across so many different visual cultural discourses seemed likely to have a good story to tell. Ultimately, I wondered whether there might be something about the shared conditions of modern existence that could be making shaded eyes so attractive, so evocative. * * * * * * * * * So, in this study I set out to explore the range of sunglasses’ potential significance, hoping to establish how they became associated with cool. Equally I hope that studying images of sunglasses might reflect back on the elusive qualities of cool. If sunglasses have such a privileged relationship with cool in the semiotic realm, perhaps they can tell us something about what it is. At this point, I must make it clear that I am not assuming that there is necessarily ‘one cool’, nor – as is already apparent – that there is one singular meaning for sunglasses. Meaning is not fixed, it does not ‘inhere’. However, given the assumption that the meanings of sunglasses will be multiple, unstable and reconfigured in different cultural places and times, a seemingly enduring and robust connection is all the more remarkable. Of course, the connection is variously nuanced, but it is also meaningful and generally applicable enough that a shaded eye can be a critical part of thousands and thousands of aspirational images, used endlessly in marketing to the widest of audiences, crossing boundaries of race, class, gender, sexuality and even to some extent, age. The life of a signifier of cool in particular, rarely makes it from one generation another – and even more rarely makes it into widespread circulation without losing its ‘edge’ for those who originally adopted it; but in spite of making it into supermarkets, mass produced greeting cards, and kids TV; in short, in spite of becoming a cliché, sunglasses are still seen in just about every successive trend and youth cultural style, no matter how far from ‘the mainstream’ or how ‘different’ that new group may wish to appear to be. Methodology I knew from the beginning that a methodology for studying sunglasses would be multi- and cross- disciplinary. Since my initial observations were based on the proliferations of context and nuance of meaning for sunglasses, the drive to explore both how this was possible and what if anything might connect these differing instances I knew must inevitably take me into diverse territories. Hebdige’s assertion that to study the significance of a designed object needs to take account of the spheres of ‘production, mediation and use’ (1987:80) was an initial guide, to which I knew, from the beginning, I 2 would wish to add a further layer of ‘representation’. These considerations require the examination of the object in terms of its aesthetic and physical properties (what has been produced, materials, forms, relationship with other objects - these might require engagement with material culture, design history and theory), the way it has been promoted and sold (packaging, representation within its advertising, marketing, and merchandising – again, visual culture, semiotics), and how it has been used by those into whose hands the object falls (consumers of different kinds – opening up a need for some kind of ethnography, anthropology). This category of use could be broadened as I already stated was my intent, to include use by artists and designers within further representations; film costumiers, stylists, advertisers, graphic designers, photo editors and so on.