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You Can't Put A Price Tag On The American Dream
Prostitution Whore
A million dollars doesn’t buy you what it once did. But at the time of the Great Depression, it would have certainly spared you from a lot of worries and troubles that most of the American population suffered from. Nathaniel West’s A Cool Million starts off with this old saying, “John D. Rockefeller would give a cool million to have a stomach like yours.” What kind of stomach does he mean? It seems that from reading the novel, West's hero has no street smarts at all. He is persecuted, robbed, lied to, and hideously mutilated from head to foot. And he takes it all in stride. Apparently his stomach was strong enough to endure him through all this ridiculous series of events, or is it his extreme naivety? Scene after scene, Pitkin is dismantmantled, much like that of the American Dream. At what price will people pay to realize there is no authentic, optimistic American Dream anymore? Betty’s life epitomizes that the dream is nothing more than a commodity of capitalism. From being raped by the drunkard Bill Baxter, the death of both her parents, raped by Tom Baxter, kidnapped by Italians, to being sold to a Chinaman who runs a whorehouse with girls of all nation. Although her room is American colonial with ships in bottles, carved whalebone, and hooked rugs, it’s just a cloak that conceals the underlying issue.
In the early 1930s before the advent of the New Deal, many Americans believed that the economic crisis might lead to social and sexual chaos. Unable to comprehend the vastness of the nation's economic troubles, they often translated them into problems of gender instead. Thus, images of fallen women populate the Depression-era cultural landscape. Such images directly influenced state policy and action, shaping employment and welfare options not only for prostitutes but also for a much broader group of women. A committee of prominent New Yorkers, known as the Seabury Committee, found in 1931 that prostitution was on the increase in their city. They claimed that women were becoming prostitutes because more legitimate jobs were unavailable. Places such as the Chicken Ranch in Fayette County, Texas became wildly popular. Although this old brothel is no longer opened, it accepted chickens as payment during the Great Depression. Over time the place became overrun with chickens.
Prostitution can be seen as symbolizing the rottenness of all capitalist, property-based societies. Althought Betty was far from embracing a true prostitution whore, West’s A Cool Million made it apparent how American society is more supportive achieving the dream through unrespectable means rather than through merit.
I can definitely see the
I can definitely see the logic and explanation behind the Seabury Committee's statement that women became prostitutes out of the lack of better or more respectable jobs. Prostitution in a way can be seen as the antithesis of the American dream. It can stand against everything American stands for, hard work, pride, etc.
We've talked a bit about prostitution, along with exotic dancing and women in porn in my Censorship in American Culture class. In today's culture it seems to be a widespread idea, particularly at NYU, that these women who go into these professions or jobs, do so out of their own free will. While some of them may feel pressured into getting money quickly, many of them still have the freedom to make a choice. They can be agents rather than victims. But, during the era of the Great Depression, in order to further one's own political agenda, it is an interesting thought that committees and groups would blame the prostitution rate solely on the dreaded state of the economy. I think that was a really interesting post.