The Man of Fear

by CONSTANTINE FITZ GIBBON

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THE man of fear is well known to the reading public of America. He is patronized by the advertising agencies, who believe that he reads the cheaper family magazines, the ones with the big circulations of which Collier’s and the Saturday Evening Post are typical. Not only do he and his wife read the stories and the short editorials; they also glance through the advertisements and on occasion spend part of their small income according to what they read.

The man of whom I write is a matter of deep and costly speculation to those who spend so much money in their attempts to influence his purchases. They have made it their business to find out how he feels towards his wife and his car; they know of his ambitions, and above all they know of his fears. They have in fact made him as he is, and now they talk to him. He, a modern but polite Frankenstein monster, returns the compliment by making their businesses profitable. What he purchases he uses. He is the man for whom and on whom the whole of our mercantile society exists. Uncle Sam was run over by a train, shortly after Appomattox. Babbitt lost his money in the depression and now spends a disgraced old age in Mid-West seclusion. Their successor, who may or may not be their heir, has inherited a few of their traits, but in essentials he is a very different man.

He belongs, to use a quaint old phrase, to the lower middle class, the class that makes magazine circulation run into the millions. Such social distinctions, however, have long been almost meaningless in this country, and he can better be described as being educated to a point slightly below that at which intelligent criticism begins. Frankly, he is rather stupid. What is worse, he suspects that he is not too bright, for his salary shows him what society thinks of him. Let us follow his curious career.

He springs to light, in the advertisements, like Pallas Athene, fully clothed and aged about sixteen. Thus deprived of the joys of childhood, he is confronted immediately with the problem of securing a mate, a problem which appears to be almost insoluble. His first girl turns him down — even though she has described him as a fine hunk of American manhood — because he uses a mouthwash of which she does not approve. His next flame, a callous little number, cannot stand a man with dirty shoes. Still hopeful, he hurries off to the approved drugstore, that dear old symbol of His Way of Life, where he buys the recommended shoe soap.

But he has been looking at his feet too long. He has absent-mindedly bought a hair tonic which makes him look “sappy,” and his next girl, a nasty-minded creature, suspects him of unnatural vice. He realizes now that it is high time he pulled himself together. With clean shoes and the proper sort of collar, his hair neither on end nor flattened down, perfectly shaven and smelling slightly of peppermint, ready, as he thinks, for anything, he invites the girl of his choice for a ride in his automobile. Surely now, when she is about to embark for Cythera — surely, at last? But no. He has forgotten to clean his car with the correct car cleaner.

You may think these minxes cruel and thought less. You must, in charity, realize that they are being continually exacerbated by irritating personal problems of their own. For one thing, they sweat all the time. They need laxatives, but do not know how to buy them until a friend offers a helpful suggestion. Before they discover the restorative qualities of a certain type of fruit juice, they are frequently so tired that they cannot even play tennis, let alone accept a mate. And, once a month, they are confronted with an intimate problem so embarrassing to their pure minds that many a tear-soaked pillow bears witness to the misery endured at the previous evening’s dance.

It may seem remarkable that such people manage to procreate at all. Yet somehow it is done, and the sweet-smelling bride, her blushes hidden by thick layers of approved cosmetics, is led by the handsome, unconstipated groom to the altar in the dear little church on the hill. At this point the stories for which the magazine is ostensibly published usually come to an end, the wife preparing her little secret, the husband puffing contentedly at his pipe. But in those advertisements which surround the later and less accessible parts of the stories, their troubles have only just begun. There is no contentment for them.

For one thing, the husband lives in imminent terror of losing his job. He is tired, cannot make those important snap decisions. His wife saves the family fortunes in the nick of time by changing to a new breakfast food. But he is still frightened. His thoughts begin to wander from his ledger, particularly in hot weather, and although she fills him as full of bran as a prize-winning hog, it is only iced coffee, of all things, that can save him now. Luckily he happens to come across a glass of the delicious, nourishing beverage; immediately he can face a whole room of pink-faced executives without even bothering to consult his notes. This is just as well, since he has no brief case and, as usual, has left his notes on the streetcar. It is really more by luck than good management that he succeeds in feeding his family at all.

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BUT there is one ray of sunshine in his life. His wife, you will be pleased to hear, is a good wife to him. It is never even suggested that she might run off with a devil-may-care he-man or a vice-president of General Motors who smells like a Gloire de Dijon rose. She loves her husband. She is thoughtful. Because she buys him the sort of underwear men like, he loves her more and more. That she should continue to be so kind to him, in spite of her own not inconsiderable worries, shows what she has learned since those nervous prenuptial days.

In the first place there are the children. The difficulties she has had in bringing up those two unattractive brats are appalling. Getting the right jars for the baby food was not easy. Then Junior, at the age of four, nearly died of a blister on his thumb. His little sister would more than once have been mangled into sausage meat had her mother-in-law not recommended a safe wringer. And eat! The greedy little things have snacks at all hours of the day, with vitamins. Her worries are never over. If Junior, at midnight, decides that he wants a glass of doubleenriched milk and a lump of cheese the size of a football, then Junior gets just that. But Mother makes sure that the cheese is wrapped in a type of cellophane which is sanitary and which keeps the tasty food from contamination.

They dote on their children, do these two. The only sign of domestic horror which ever appears is implied, not stated. It is an allusion to the way the dear little things behave on trains. Father, afterwards, finds it easier to travel with the family by plane, and mother is delighted when she hears that it is no more expensive that way.

So much for their home life. Their pleasures, I regret to say, are sad and few, and forever influenced by worry. Motoring, just driving in a car, seems to be their main form of relaxation, their only other being an occasional stuffy bridge party. They are both frightened of their motorcar. Each new one fills them with delight, but soon the well-known symptoms reappear. The tires are likely to blow out; the windshield wiper does not guarantee safety; the whole thing is likely to burst into flames when Father forgets to put in fresh brake fluid. One awful night, when Father was changing tires in the middle of a snowstorm, it was only the fact that he possessed a new-type flashlight that saved him from being run over. It is odd that two Americans should be so frightened when traveling by car today.

Then, of course, there are the questions of the neighbors, peeping and sneering from behind their lace curtains. Naturally Father and Mother want to appear richer than they are. This is achieved quite simply. The floors are covered with linoleum and the house is filled with glass. A long mirror is installed opposite the front door, the place where father usually ties his tie. But soon a sort of social schizophrenia appears, a quandary of snobberies which is difficult to resolve.

On the one hand, they want to be different from other people. They become interested in gracious living. Mother prides herself on her discriminating taste and buys a Chippendale radio-phonograph. They cease to use their attic as an attic. It is turned into a showpiece, which the neighbors admire with suitable gasps of astonishment.

So far so good. But it is difficult to mix such ostentation with their other social ambition, a heritage from Babbitt, a desire to be exactly like everybody else. In general, it may be said, they achieve an uneasy compromise. They alternate between drinks of distinction and whiskey which fairly reeks of the corner saloon. And when Mother says, with a smile, that a certain railroad makes her feel like a princess, Father chucks her under the chin and tells her that he has bought some insurance, because millions do.

Father and Mother become less clear-cut as they approach middle age. Old age merely exists as they visualize it when young. They do not look forward to it with pleasure. Can you blame them, after all they have been through? There is the overhanging threat that something may happen to Father. It is surprising that he is not more cheered at the prospect, for he must realize the horrors of old age. He has only to observe the spectacle of Grandma being laughed at by Junior because she does not wear a modern hearing aid.

And this interminable business about insurance. Father, as we know, carries some on social grounds, but hardly enough. His father-in-law, to whom he refers as “the old gentleman,” has had to come and live with them because of his lack of enlightenment when young, and that sort of thing leads to awkward questions from the children. Now Mother’s eyesight begins to fail. She is missing things. This, for some reason, depresses her. Then Father discovers that, because of his neglect in not buying metal supports, the whole floor is in danger of falling through int o the cellar. On this ominous note, and to the accompaniment of a distant rattle of dental plates, they disappear into an old age which will doubtless be as miserable as their frustrated youth and insecure maturity. One wonders whether they will even be able to afford a decent funeral.

There is only one more word to be said about them, and that deals with the faith which has supported them through their hard lives. Though we are led to understand that they belong to some church or another — at least they were married in one — their real belief is in witchcraft. Not the cheerful witchcraft of Walpurgisnacht and the sticking of pins into wax figures, but an open-mouthed acceptance of anything bearing a resemblance to the “science” which they were taught to worship at school. A few examples will suffice. Father buys a tobacco because it has been “proved in a laboratory” that it can be inhaled. When they were first married, Mother chose the bedsprings because they had been tested at the Pittsburgh Testing Laboratory, although for what they were tested she never knew. Their eye lotion is a scientific blend of seven ingredients; the ingredients are not specified. Their food and their medicines are covered with abracadabra, incantations to their cold divinity. Father, in his nervous manner, can recite percentages by the hour. Even their dog nearly died of a “new malady only recently discovered by science.”

All this is somewhat unfair. I have ignored the considerable number (29 per cent) of advertisements which are more, rather than less, straightforward — the type which claims that the thing advertised is good, cheap, or desirable, and nothing more. It should be noted that such advertisements usually occupy very little space and deal in general with useful items such as carpenters’ tools or playing cards. To sell such articles must, in any case, be comparatively simple. It is the selling of the unnecessary commodities on which the ingenuity of the advertising agencies is most lavishly expended.

The fear advertisements constitute the biggest proportion (34 per cent), with fear of death leading the field, followed closely by fear of social disgrace, and with sexual fear running a good third. To frighten a mother about her children also appears to be good salesmanship.

Sex in a positive aspect, as opposed to the negative one of sexual fear, has a surprisingly low place in this type of family magazine. The deformed pin-up girl is there, but she manages only to effect a statistical tie with gracious-living snobbery (again, the reverse side of social fear) at 10 per cent.

What I have called witchcraft gets 8 per cent. Gluttony, with its multicolored plates of enormous meals flanked by passages of purple prose, gets 3 per cent. The Get Rich Quick appeal (correspondence courses; flashier clothes for the more successful salesman) tics with the Progress Myth (“this year’s car is entirely different from last year’s”) at a surprisingly low 2 per cent.

Finally there are the miscellaneous advertisements, of which the greater proportion are based on rather weak jokes. They run to 10 per cent of the total.

It may be noticed that the percentage total is 108. This is accounted for by the fact that some advertisers are not content with one bullet. Thus a character who uses a greasy hair tonic gets knocked down by a passing he-man. Later he switches to the approved scalp dressing and wins himself a girl with watermelon breasts.

There can be no doubt that in the minds of the bigger advertisers the best emotion for encouraging the buying of useless goods is fear. There can also be no doubt that such advertisers know their public. Their formula appears to be simple: Get them frightened and keep them down.