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What Happened to the Gentlemen Drunk?
declaredemer
Member Posts: 2,698
Perhaps it is fitting that the Italian word, fiasco, really means bottle. Or perhaps not. While in Paris, I attended a French Wine and Cheese tasting, and I recall what the sommelier said about Dom Perignon upon developing champagne by accident, "I am drinking the stars." After several Black Velvets (guinness and champagne), it came to me how we lost the gentlemen drunk.
Are the days of the "gentlemen drunk" over?
Christopher Hitchens, writing the Introduction for Everyday Drinking (NY TIMES Bestseller), wrote that alcohol "makes other people, and indeed life itself, a good deal less boring." He also disputes the notion that alcohol is a good servant and a bad master. Interesting. Alcohol is really more of a friend than an enemy when imbibed responsibly.
Recently discovered, one of my favorites
What about Bond? James Bond. His instructions, which seem fussy to some, simply tell the barman that he knows what he is really doing and knows what he really wants. If you do not give clear and confident instructions, your drink can vary from the abysmal to the exotic: whatever the barman wants.
Has your interest in alcohol transcended the merely casual?
EDIT: Did you know that the Pilgrim Fathers, headed for Virginia, landed on Plymouth Rock because of the lack of beer?
Comments
The gentleman drunk went away when people started getting arrested for driving with a blood alcohol level of .01, the smell of stale alcohol oozing through a drunk's pores that you couldn't smell on the cinema screen or through an author's novel hit your nostrils, and totally lost its charm with the morning after hangover.
It's a bygone social model of the 50s
just like acid was of the 60s
just as marijuana was from the 70's
just like cocaine was for the 80s
just like heroin and meth was for the 90s
and oxycontin and "prescription drugs" were for 2000 and present.
You are romanticizing a drug as if its a magical elixir and some key to enlightenment that framed a period. It's nothing more than any of the other delivery devices that tickle neurons, fire up endorphins and stimulate or relax the central nervous system.
The reason why "gentleman drunks" don't exist anymore is because it's a broken social model that no longer exists and those willing to participate in it no longer exist to any real degree. At least in America they don't because the demographic has changed dramatically and that "era" is no longer attractive.
Perhaps it's fitting that you rediscovered this in Europe, where the drinking model in America gained its origins as you noted with Plymouth Rock. After WW2 Americans wanted to be more "sophisticated" because we had everything (wealth, power, influence) except culture. We were industrialized suburban automatons pressed into cookie cut tract houses all the same with nothing to distinguish us because WW2 had forged that mentality. Americans needed a splash of personality to go with our new found wealth.
Americans were the "Nouveau Riche Kids on the Block" in the late 40s- early 1950s. We had to relearn everything about culture and we took cues from Europe's steeped alcoholic culture (England, Germany, France, etc) and intermeshed it with our business industry, pushing cigarettes and liquor.
It only became glamourous because millions of Americans were told about "happy hour", highballs and Lucky Strikes and how sophisticated they'd be smoking and drinking them.
If you're not American it could be that you just love that period in American history (Brat Pack) and alcohol is the most direct link to it still remaining. America did later influence the world with alcohol, but with much less "cosmopolitan and cultivated" fare such as (Budweiser and Jack Daniels), which represent the coarse, crude ruggedness that was uniquely American.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Wow! Genius. You had me laughing out loud with the series of images. Well done. Ha, ha! ha!
While a student in U.K., I would sometimes have a beer with lunch in between classes. It was perfectly normal, and I actually think it helped me focus. I am a jogger, and I have read that having a beer before jogging because of chromium.
Alcohol, though, has been romanticized for ages. Lord Byron, e.g., said:
Wine cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires the young, makes weariness forget his toil.
You know the very interesting thing you said about James Bond got me thinking and you were right, it was about confidence but there was more to it.
I am not sure if you saw the Casino Royale remake with Daniel Craig as Bond, but there was a scene that showed the entire origin of the "shaken not stirred" explicit directions and why he said it that way.
If you remember, Bond was losing and had just lost a hand to the villian and in a clear position of vulnerability. I'm pretty sure he had just lost a decent size hand (folded) when the waiter asked him for his drink order. Bond orders it quickly and dismisses the waiter because he was still mulling over the loss hand.
Then before the waiter leaves, he calls the guy (or grabs him) and says "No, make that a martini with..." then he went on with these elaborate instructions to the waiter for the drink. After he ordered it, a few other people at the table says "Hmm.. you know... that sounds good. I'll have one of those." Someone else said "me too".
He didn't do it for the waiter's benefit so he would be clearly understood; he did it as a ploy to show the villian that he wasn't rattled and still could think straight enough to order an impeccable drink after dropping a crapload of cash.
Later Bond goes to the bar and talks to the chick he came with and then he drinks the drink. Bond then says surprised... "You know, that isn't half bad."
So his drink order really was more about establishing dominance and exuding confidence and less to do with knowing what he really wanted to drink. It was a show, but when you look at it in the older Bonds with Connery, it's simply a given that he's always known what he wanted.
"TO MICHAEL!"
I think it went out of style around the same time it became illegal to beat your wife.
Nothing worse than a sober wife.
I prefer a good double if I have a lot of ground to cover fast, helps break the pain barrier.