A Cultural History of the Zoot Suit

A Cultural History of the Zoot Suit In the 1944 Tom and Jerry short The Zoot Cat- only the thirteenth cartoon ever made starring that famous duo- Toms would-be girlfriend lays it on him straight:  Boy, are you corny!  You act like a square at the fair, a goon from  Saskatoon.  You come on like a broken arm.  Youre a sad apple, a long hair, a cornhusker.  In other words, you dont send me! The sad cat goes out and buys himself some new duds from Smiling Sam, the Zoot Suit Man, prompting his wide-eyed gal pal to do a one-eighty.  Youre really a sharp character! A mellow little fellow. Now you collar my jive! Around the same time on the American scene- but, culturally speaking, light-years away- a young Malcom X, then known as Detroit Red, also sang the praises of the Zoot Suit, a killer-diller coat with a drape shape, reet-pleats, and shoulders padded like a lunatics cell. (Apparently, people in the 1940s liked to rhyme more than they do today.) In his widely read autobiography, Malcolm X describes his first Zoot Suit almost in religious terms: Sky-blue pants thirty inches in the knee and angle narrowed down to twelve inches at the bottom, and a long coat that pinched my waist and flared out below my knees... hat angled, knees drawn close together, feet wide apart, both index fingers jabbed toward the floor. (We wont even mention Cesar Chavez, the famous Mexican-American labor activist who wore Zoot Suits as a teen.) What was it about Zoot Suits that united such disparate cultural icons as Malcom X, Cesar Chavez, and  Tom and Jerry? The origins of the Zoot Suit, characterized by its wide lapels, padded shoulders, and baggy pants tapering down to narrow cuffs- and usually accessorized with a feathered hat and a dangling pocket watch- are shrouded in mystery, but the style seems to have coalesced in Harlem nightclubs in the mid-1930s and then worked its way out into the wider urban culture. Essentially, Zoot Suits were the pre-war equivalent of the sagging, low-hipped pants sported by some African-American youths in the 1990s or the huge Afro hairstyles popular in the 1970s. Fashion choices can be a powerful statement, especially if youre denied more mainstream modes of expression because of your race or economic status. Zoot Suits Move Into the Mainstream By the time they  were referenced by Tom and Jerry, Zoot Suits were well-ensconced in mainstream culture; you can bet that the studio execs at MGM would never have green-lighted  this cartoon if the style were still restricted to Harlem nightclubs. The apostles of Zoot, you might say, were early 1940s jazz musicians like Cab Calloway who played in front of white and black audiences and were emulated in their dress by youths of all races, though not necessarily their elders. (Before and during World War II, jazz was the dominant cultural musical idiom in the U.S., much like hip-hop still is today, albeit in vastly mutated form.) At this point, you may be wondering from whence the zoot in Zoot Suit derives. Most likely, it was yet another token of the vogue for rhyming in wartime America; zoot simply seems to have been  a jazzy repetition of suit. The young people who donned Zoot Suits as a mild form of rebellion surely enjoyed mystifying their parents with their snappy language and the strange names they assigned to household objects, the same way kids who spend all day texting like to throw out random, impenetrable acronyms. Zoot Suits Get Political: The Zoot Suit Riots In late 1930s Los Angeles, no ethnic group adopted Zoot Suits with more enthusiasm than Mexican-American teenagers, some of them low-level gang members known as pachucos. Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, however, the U.S. government instituted strict wartime rationing of wool and other textiles meaning Zoot Suits, with their wide lapels and copious folds, were technically off-limits. Even still, many Angelenos- not only Mexican-Americans- continued to wear their old Zoot Suits, and obtained new ones from the black market. Around the same time, L.A. was convulsed by the Sleepy Lagoon trial, in which nine Mexican-American pachucos were accused of murdering an innocent civilian (also Mexican). In the summer of 1943, these explosive circumstances detonated when a group of white servicemen stationed in Los Angeles viciously attacked random pachucos (and other ethnic minorities) wearing Zoot Suits in the so-called Zoot Suit Riots. Ostensibly, the aggressors were incensed by the waste of fabric entailed by Zoot Suits, as well as the flaunting of rationing laws by the youths wearing them. The anti-Mexican feeling stirred up by the Sleepy Lagoon trial, combined with the unabashed racism of small-town soldiers stationed in a big city, were more likely explanations. Amusingly, after the smoke had cleared, a California state senator alleged that the riots had been instigated by Nazi spies trying to estrange the U.S. from its Latin American allies! The Afterlife of the Zoot Suit In the U.S., no fashion trend ever goes truly extinct- even if there are no more 1920s flappers sporting bangs and curls or pachucos dressed in Zoot Suits, these fads have been preserved in novels, newsreels, magazines, and are occasionally resurrected as fashion statements (either seriously or ironically). The Cherry Poppin Daddies landed their only Billboard hit in 1997 with the song Zoot Suit Riot, and in 1975, Zoot Suit was a cut from The Whos ambitious rock opera Quadrophenia. In 1979, a play called Zoot Suit- based on the Sleepy Lagoon murder case and the Zoot Suit Riots- lasted for 41 performances on Broadway. Whats more, the outlandish garb sported by inner-city pimps in countless exploitation movies is based on the Zoot Suit. And, of course, you can always watch The Zoot Cat on YouTube, not to mention various electrifying performances by Cab Calloway in full Zoot Suit regalia.

Bullets, Silver and Magical

Bullets, Silver and Magical Bullets, Silver and Magical Bullets, Silver and Magical By Maeve Maddox A reader remarked on the use of â€Å"silver bullet† in this quotation: â€Å"The answer is to find a silver bullet that will wean us from fossil fuels.† Suggests the reader, â€Å"The reference should be ‘magic bullet’ from the polio vaccine. ‘Silver bullet’ belongs to the lone ranger.† The expression â€Å"magic bullet† may have originated in a medical context, but it is now used interchangeably with â€Å"silver bullet† to refer to â€Å"something providing an effective solution to a difficult or previously unsolvable problem.† According to a note in M-W, â€Å"magic bullet† is a translation of German zauberkugel and its â€Å"first known use† in English was in 1924. Earlier than that (1907) a medical writer used the expression â€Å"charmed bullet† to mean â€Å"an idealized therapeutic agent that is highly specific for the pathogen or disorder concerned†: â€Å"Antitoxins and antibacterial substances are, so to speak, charmed bullets which strike only those objects for whose destruction they have been produced by the organism.† The OED includes a 1992 citation for â€Å"magic bullet† that shows its use outside a medical context: â€Å"No one has yet found a magic bullet for quickly cutting Milwaukees crime rate.† The phrase â€Å"magic bullet† appears on the Ngram Viewer as early as 1858, but doesn’t make much of a showing until 1920. The phrase â€Å"silver bullet† precedes both â€Å"magic bullet† and the Lone Ranger. The Lone Ranger stories originated on US radio in 1933. The Ngram Viewer shows â€Å"silver bullet† on the graph as early as 1800, and the OED cites the phrase as early as 1648. Magical properties have been ascribed to silver since ancient times. A silver bullet is supposed to be able to kill supernatural beings- such as witches and werewolves- that are impervious to ordinary weapons. In the Grimm story â€Å"The Two Brothers,† (published 1812), one of the brothers kills a witch with a silver bullet. An OED citation dated 1856 refers to â€Å"a belief in bullet-proof men† that caused some soldiers â€Å"to put in a silver coin with their bullets.† The Lone Ranger’s use of a silver bullet as a talisman has nothing to do with supposed magical properties. This is the explanation given in a Lone Ranger FAQ at Weird Science-Fantasy: Silver bullets are the Lone Ranger’s calling card. Silver is a symbol of purity. On the television show the Lone Ranger says he uses silver bullets as a symbol of justice, but more importantly, silver bullets serve to remind the Ranger of just how heavy a price firing a gun can be. Digression Although it has nothing to do with silver bullets, I cannot resist mentioning another bit of Lone Ranger lore. The guidelines prepared by the series’ producers include the following directive: The Lone Ranger at all times uses precise speech, without slang or dialect. His grammar must be pure. He must make proper use of â€Å"who† and â€Å"whom,† â€Å"shall† and â€Å"will,† â€Å"I† and â€Å"me,† etc. Be still, my heart. An early use of â€Å"silver bullet† was as a metaphor for â€Å"money used to achieve military aims,† as illustrated in these OED citations: We have won with the silver bullets before.- D. Lloyd George Speech Treasury, Times, 1914. Invest the savings in buying ‘Silver Bullets’ in the form most suitable and convenient- Exchequer bonds, scrip, or through the Post Office Savings Bank.- Times, 1916.   Ã‚   Liberty Bond slogans, the appeal of young America to their elders for ‘silver bullets’ to fight the battle of liberty, will be prominently displayed. - Oakland (Calif.) Tribune, 1917. As for present usage, Google search shows â€Å"magic bullet† and â€Å"silver bullet† about equally frequent: â€Å"magic bullet†: 7, 290,000 results â€Å"silver bullet†: 7, 220,000 results Bottom line: Both expressions are used with the same meaning: something- substance or action- that provides an all-encompassing solution to a long-standing problem. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Expressions category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:85 Synonyms for â€Å"Help†What to Do When Words Appear Twice in a RowHyphenation in Compound Nouns