The Monsieur Jourdains of Today

Three and a half centuries ago the French playwright Moliere satirized the obsession of the bourgeois with the imitation of and desire to be raised into the ranks of their aristocratic "betters" in Les Bourgeois Gentilhomme. In a society where the aristocracy still had power and privilege one could see in the satirizing of this striving a conservative and snobbish sneer at "social-climbing" rather than "knowing one's place." However, reading or seeing the play it is undeniable that the aristocracy itself was the butt of many a joke as Moliere took on such matters as the superficial character of the leisure class "graces" that so impress the gullible, and the ways in which admiration for such things, and the parasitic classes that make so much of so things, enables their exploitation of the credulous, from instructors in the relevant arts looking for a paying customer for what may well be their highly questionable services, to deadbeat aristocrats seeing a chance to line their pockets at the expense of the son of a merchant who would consider being allowed to lend their money to such an Exalted One a favor.

Alas, three and a half centuries of profound social change on it seems that those things Moliere satirized in Monsieur Jourdain remain very much with us--not least the bourgeois being dazzled by leisure class superficialities, and indeed the very same ones. Thus, just as in Moliere's time pop cultural crapola of, by and for idiots still conveys upper classness with images of by-the-way musical proficiency and familiarity with fencing foils in an age in which everyone has become much, much less likely to ever use a blade that way than they were in the days of Dumas' Musketeers in the expectation that us grubby villeins in the audience will be impressed.