Baby, It’s Always Been Cold Outside

By David Little and Nathan Chang

Somewhere along the way the 1960s were vilified as the crucial upheaval in American mores, a decade of disintegration where sex was liberated and the family crumbled. This has been the dominant narrative cast by conservatives for the past thirty years. But the storytellers of our time, whether Matthew Warner of Mad Men or Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg of The Pacific have asked us to question our Leave it to Beaver view of history by presenting us with the sexual exploits, broken relationships, and social fragmentation of our “greatest generation.” I must admit that I too am as Horace put it, a praiser of time past, but the past received another blow when I came to the realization that the Christmas pop standard, “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” is from 1944.

The playful duet features what the original score calls a “mouse” and “wolf” dialogue between a girl and a boy in the boy’s apartment, as he tries to convince his date to stay the night. She is reluctant throughout, offering reservation after reservation, and he counters at every turn. First, he uses the “cold outside,” then alcohol, and then his wounded pride as his sexual advances are repeatedly denied. Her parents, her siblings, and her aunt will worry, and her neighbors will “faint” since there’ll be “plenty implied.” She knows she should say no, and yet in the end she consoles herself with the fact that she tried. In the resolution to the song, they both agree that it really is cold outside, and his pride overcomes her honor. The song is not unlike the crass t-shirt slogan that you might hear today in a soberingly half-joking tone, “No means yes.”

Let’s fast forward sixty years to Tom Wolfe being slammed by the critics for painting what has been declared by some, a wildly unrealistic picture of American hook-up culture. Though Wolfe’s setting is back seats and dorm rooms, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” could be I am Charlotte Simmons set to music. There’s cold. There’s alcohol. There’s a boy’s pride. And, there’s Charlotte constantly thinking of what her family will think, even though in this case they’re hundreds of miles away, tucked away in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Much has been said about the changes of this past century that have revolutionized human relationships. Leon Kass details the end of courtship, a practice that was virtually as old as civilization. Beth Bailey explains how our relationships have gone from front porches to back seats, and while I sense rosy-eyed nostalgia in this, I think it’s fair to draw a line between the anonymity made possible by modernity and the sexual liberation of this past century. The reality of our generation is that more so than ever before, our family isn’t on the other side of the screen door, and our neighbors probably don’t even know our names. And because of this we have lost an important check on our appetites and a crucial encouragement toward virtue. The presence of community connected us to the wisdom of generations past and checked our eros until it could be safely channeled within the confines of marriage. We were concerned with our reputations, or in a more robust sense, our honor.

To peg these changes in society on the 1960s, however, isn't enough, and it isn't sufficient to blame the 20^th century either. Even when St. Augustine was writing his Confessions, the pervasiveness with which individual passion won out over virtue was painfully felt. He too lived in a time of social fragmentation, where a “caldron of shameful loves seethed and sounded about [him] on every side.” In the case of young Augustine, not even his family cared much about the development of his virtue, instead being preoccupied with his progress in schooling. Certainly, it is not hard to see the relevance of the topic at hand.

And yet this is not cause to jettison our nostalgic sentiments and beliefs in cynical upheaval. In fact, we should take a certain comfort in readjusting our understanding of the relationship between the past and the present. The social fabric may be in disrepair, but this is not cause for despair because they were not perfect either. Nostalgia has a tendency to blind us to the faults of other eras, but we are still drawn to the past because we seek what was good about it. If we are careful to thoroughly understand history in the fullness of its best and worst moments, and in light of the ever-presence of human limitation, nostalgia can be incredibly helpful. To borrow the words of Aristotle, what we seek in the past is “not the ancestral but the good.”

Warner and Spielberg are right to remind us that eros is much older than Leave It To Beaver, that cultural change is much bigger than any one factor, but I don’t think our response to Mad Men should be a jaded realism about the world. There is a place for shattering rosy misconceptions of the past, but if it all leads to despair, there is something wrong. Instead, we should take our disillusionment as a call to confront the present age with the wisdom of our forebears. Human folly is a perennial problem, but culture and its ability to shape how we interact in society are not. Perhaps we can learn something from the time of front porches and old-fashioned courtship rituals. With the wisdom of their age we can work to build tightly knit families, strong communities, and a flourishing culture that is not naïve to the weaknesses of human nature. In doing so we may well restore limits that will protect us from the cauldron of shameful loves that tempt Charlotte, the boy and girl of the song, and ourselves.


This piece was subsequently published over at The Washington Institute. 

A Reflection on The Shallows

The piece that follows is a reflection on Nicholas Carr's book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, which began as an Atlantic article entitled, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

As I struggled to concentrate on this book about how we can no longer concentrate on books, it was hard to disagree. Here is a man who has watched firsthand his ability to read and think deeply decline since the advent of the computer. I, on the other hand, have grown up with the computer. Indeed, it was at the feet of “Reader Rabbit” that I learned to read, and as I moved on to more substantive reading, the computers came with me. SparkNotes, Wikipedia, and now Google Books have all been my companions along the way. I find it hard to fathom how my predecessors had the patience to use card catalogues or to read whole books in search of a single idea. Certainly, “the Net,” as Carr calls it, has changed the way we interact with the written word. It teaches us to scan; it tempts us to “Jet Ski” through material, barely breaking the surface. My attention span is short, and it is definitely difficult to sit down and read for an extended period of time.

Still, Carr’s analysis seems a little dire to my computer-tutored mind. Somehow, despite Reader Rabbit and the Internet, I have developed a love for books - not text message books, not news abstracts - just books. And though most books don’t deserve a full reading, I’ve found that the greatest books can be read again and again. I’m rather nostalgic by disposition, so it seems I’ve faired the advance of technology a bit better than Carr. I still read those books made of paper and ink. And I print out articles of any length, so I can give them the same attention. For anything requiring real thought, I use a ruler to track the words and a pencil or ink pen to underline significant passages. If I am to do any serious editing, I print out the document and mark it up with my pen. It may not be green; it may not be efficient. But when it comes to books, efficiency gets in the way of a slow and careful reading.

One of Carr’s greatest insights is the mathematical nature of the Net and its tendency to keep us from deep reading and deep thinking. But this suggests that Carr cares about more than paper and ink in large quantities. Books are more importantly the repositories of ideas. The best things that have been thought and said simply cannot be contained in a blog post because the complexities of the great questions do not admit of such brevity. Even Nietzsche, who wrote mainly in aphorisms, published collections of them together as a unified whole so as to say something coherent about reality. Socrates, who along with Jesus never wrote a book, somewhere said,

Just as others are pleased by a good horse or dog or bird, I myself am pleased to an even higher degree by good friends. . . And the treasures of the wise men of old which they left behind by writing them in books, I unfold and go through them together with my friends, and if we see something good, we pick it out and regard it as a great gain if we thus become useful to one another.

Books are how we encounter the best that has been thought and said. They provide us with the means of putting great minds in conversation with one another about the most important questions. Reading and thinking deeply has never been easy. The focus and attention required for reading great books does not come naturally. Indeed, liberal education was originally to teach students how to read books. In his concluding lines Carr suggests that the Net might be cutting us off from our humanity, and yet he offers no solution to this predicament. He consoles himself by buying the latest Blue Ray player. Liberal education is, I think, the road back to reading books and to reflection on eternal things. It is a vital counterbalance to the transitory world of technology.

Thoughts on "An Education"

He studied Latin like the violin, because he liked it. – Robert Frost, “The Death of the Hired Man”

My thoughts this summer have been on education. I have reached a milestone in mine, and my sister and her friends have reached one in theirs. And being lovers of learning, neither my sister nor I are very likely at the end. In fact, we are probably only at the commencement.

In addition to our commencements, I was recently struck by one portrayed in last year’s film, An Education. I could say something of this film’s beautiful aesthetic or its swank soundtrack. I could speak of Carey Mulligan’s magnificent performance and of her similarity to Audrey Hepburn, but this has been done by more qualified critics. What I wish to consider is the film’s questions of education.

Jenny, played by Carey Mulligan, is a 16-year-old Oxford-bound schoolgirl. Though she is set on Oxford and doing what it takes to get there, it seems that she secretly enjoys playing her cello and translating Latin. She stands out in the classroom with her enthusiasm and intelligence, and discusses Camus with her friends in their free-time. She wishes she could go to classical concerts, and she dreams of going to Paris. And while Jenny seems to legitimately love what she does, her father, Jack, encourages her endeavors for purely pragmatic reasons. She should, in his view, do everything for the sake of getting into Oxford, which will in turn promise financial security.

Enter David, a 35-year-old with deep pockets. He takes her to classical concerts, art auctions, and eventually to Paris. She is mesmerized by his sophistication and eloquence. The progress of the seduction is smooth and seemingly innocuous, such that she willingly gives herself to him. More surprisingly, her well-intentioned but dimwitted parents do not see through his chicanery and offer only minimal resistance as their daughter throws aside her Oxford dreams and gives herself to an older man.

Indeed, her father heroically stays true to his principles, admitting that David is a more than adequate substitute for Oxford, since he promises “connections” and safety. In a rather humorous moment, he avers that it is better to know great authors than actually be one. It is being well-connected that matters. And in a more sober moment, he confesses, “All my life, I’ve been scared, and I didn’t want you to be scared.” Jack, it seems, expresses a real human concern, and despite his naivety, compels us to sympathize with him.

Most surprisingly, her headmistress offers little more guidance. Though she condemns Jenny’s behavior and tells her that she must get a degree to do “anything worth doing,” her defense stays practical, and she admits that studying and teaching are “hard and boring.” To which Jenny responds, “So my choice is to do something hard and boring, or to marry my…my Jew, and go to Paris and Rome and listen to jazz and read and eat good food in nice restaurants and have fun. It’s not enough to educate us any more, Mrs. Walters. You’ve got to tell us why you’re doing it.” The headmistress feebly (and comically) replies that there is also the civil service, but this misses the point. She can give no apology for what she does.

Miss Stubbs, Jenny’s favorite professor, who has chosen a life of teaching, is the only character who comes close to conveying “the point of it all.” She tries to explain that university is also a path to “beautiful things, books and music and conversation.” And she tries to explain that exemplary students, like Jenny, make reading essays about ponies worth it. But, Jenny isn’t convinced. The unmarried Miss Stubbs must do things that are hard and boring, and she probably can’t afford many orchestral concerts or trips to Paris.

On one level, this film is an education in the fact that life is oftentimes hard and boring and is never simply fun. As a banner over my high school’s entrance read, “There are no shortcuts.” David’s way of life turns out to be too good to be true. This is a fairly simple lesson and one that is overtly taught by the film. But I think this film asks and largely leaves unanswered a deeper question of education. Jenny’s father and headmistress see education as inexorably practical. It is a way to achieve material freedom and security. Indeed, it promises to free us from being afraid.

Miss Stubbs and Jenny before she is seduced seem to know that there is something more to education. Though they cannot articulate it, their apparent love of learning betrays an understanding that knowledge is intrinsically good and that truth should be pursued for its own sake. The Jenny of the film’s beginning knows that cello and Latin, while hard, are also fun. Miss Stubbs, who does not eat good food in nice restaurants, still insists that education is a path to beautiful things. And indeed, it is somewhere said that education provides us with experience in things beautiful.

Not many of us will be seduced by 35-year-old men, but I dare say that all of us students question the meaning of it all. And I would even venture to say that some of us feel the allure of Paris and Rome, listening to jazz and eating good food in nice restaurants. While reading books does not provide us with the means to experience such things, they do ironically give us a taste for them. And so, even those that are drawn to the life of the mind are pulled in different directions. Though nothing in this life can escape being hard and boring, we are still faced with difficult choices. And though wealth can provide us with experience in things beautiful, we must recognize that it has the power to seduce us away from our love of learning and our pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty.