The uniform

The extreme form of conventional dress is the costume totally determined by others: the uniform. No matter what sort of uniform it is - military, civil or religious; the outfit of a general, a postman, a nun, a butler, a football player or a waitress - to put on such livery is to give up one's right to act as an individual - in terms of speech, to be partially or wholly censored. What one does, as well as what one wears, will be determined by external authorities - to a greater or lesser degree, depending upon wheth­er one is, for example, a Trappist monk or a boy scout. The uni­form acts as a sign that we should not or need not treat someone as a human being, and that they need not and should not treat us as one. It is no accident that people in uniform, rather than speak­ing to us honestly and straightforwardly, often repeat mechani­cal lies. "It was a pleasure having you on board," they say; "I cannot give you that information"; or "The doctor will see you shortly."

Constant wearing of official costume сап so transform someone that it becomes difficult or impossible for him or her to react normally. Dr. Grantly, the archdeacon in Anthony Trollope's The Warden (1855), is pious and solemn even when alone with his wife: " 'Tis only when he has exchanged that ever-new shovel hat for a tasseled nightcap, and those shining black habiliments for his accustomed robe de nuit, thatDr. Grantly talks, and looks, and thinks like an ordinary man."

To take off a uniform is usually a relief, just as it is a relief to abandon official speech; sometimes it is also a sign of defiance. When the schoolgirls in Flannery O'Connor's story "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" come home on holiday, she writes that "They came in the brown convent uniforms they had to wear at Mount St. Scholastica but as soon as they opened their suitcases, they took off the uniforms and put on red skirts and loud blouses. They put on lipstick and their Sunday shoes and walked around in the high heels all over the house."

In certain circumstances, however, putting on a uniform may be a relief, or even an agreeable experience. It can ease the transi­tion from one role to another, as Anthony Powell points out in Faces in My Time when he describes joining the British Army in 1939: “Complete forgetfulness was needed of all that had constituted one's life only a few weeks before. This condition of mind was helped by the anonymity of uniform, something which has to be experienced to be appreciated; in one sense more noticeable off duty in such environments as railway carriages or bars.”

It is also true that both physical and psychological disadvantage can be concealed by a uniform, or even canceled out; the robes of a judge or a surgeon may successfully hide a scrawny physique or fears of incompetence, giving him or her both dignity and confidence.

Unlike most civilian clothing, the uniform is often consciously and deliberately symbolic. It identifies its wearer as a member of some group and often locates him or her within a hierarchy; sometimes it gives information about his or her achievements, as do the merit badges of a scout and the battle ribbons of a general. Even when some details of an official costume are not dictated from above, they may by custom come to have a definite meaning. James Laver remarks that in Britain “until quite recently it was still possible to deduce a clergyman's religious opinions from his neckwear. If you wore an ordinary collar with a white tie you were probably Low Church and Evangelical. If you wore any version of the Roman collar you displayed your sympathy with the... Oxford Movement.”

It is likely that when they were first designed, all uniforms made symbolic sense and were as easy to “read” as the outfit of a Play­boy Bunny today. But official costume tends to freeze the styles of the time in which it was invented, and today the sixteenth-century uniforms of the guards at the Tower of London or the late-Edwardian morning dress of the butler may merely seem old-fashioned to us. Military uniforms, as James Laver points out, were originally intended “to impress and even to terrify the enemy” in hand-to-hand combat (just like the war whoops and battle cries that accompanied them), and warriors accordingly disguised themselves as devils, skeletons and wild beasts. Even after gunpowder made this style of fighting rare, the desire to terrify “survived into modern times in such vestigial forms as the death's head on the hussar's headgear and the bare ribs of the skeleton originally painted on the warrior's body and later trans­formed into the froggings of his tunic.”

The wearing of a uniform by people who are obviously not carrying out the duties it involves has often suggested personal laxity - as in the case of drunken soldiers carousing in the streets.

In this century, however, it has been adopted as a form of political protest, and both men and women have appeared at rallies and marches in their Army, Navy, or police uniforms, the implied statement being “I'm a soldier, but I support disarmament / open housing / gay rights,” etc. A related development in the 1960s was the American hippie custom of wearing parts of old Army uniforms - Civil War, World War I and World War II. This military garb puzzled many observers, especially when it appeared in anti-Vietnam demonstrations. Others understood the implicit message, which was that the longhaired kid in the Con­federate tunic or the Eisenhower jacket was not some kind of coward or sissy; that he was not against all wars – just against the cruel and unnecessary one he was in danger of being drafted into.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-24