| |
In the 1850s, Americans began using the term "Confidence Man" to describe someone who made a career of fooling people. There had always been swindlers; what made the confidence man different was his ability to play on the commercial aspirations of a booming capitalist economy. People talked about such swindlers in a new way because they expressed some of the society's basic dilemnas. Why were people fascinated with celebrity trials of people like Kobe Bryant? Perhaps because it brought into focus one of the central questions of this media ridden age--are people on TV and movies really who they appear to be? What is the "real person" behind the camera image really like? Historians treat the confidence man's appearance as an example of how commerce had blurred the line between the legitimate speculator and the dishonest fraud. All new commercial enterprises depend on confidence--indeed, commerce itself depends on confidence, confidence in both the potential of people and markets and in the stability of the nation itself. "Confidence," buttressed by law, makes capitalism work. But how could you have confidence? How could you separate the dishonest from the respectable? Americans rushed to buy ettiquette manuals, guides to good conduct, and sensational exposes of urban crime and fraud. And they began to look for more substantial guides to character.
For example, in the 19th century Americans were strongly drawn to theories of racial character. Samuel Morton, the most famous American anthropologist of his day, collected thousands of skulls from across the New World. He measured the size of the brain cavity and imagined that this gave him a measure of basic intelligence. He published the result in a book, Crania Americana (1839). An illustration from the book appears here.
Partly Morton's work supported slavery, since not surprisingly it ranked the "Teutonic Family" of skulls highest, and the "Negro Group" lowest. But the book also helped support the claim that you could judge people's character by their physical makeup. The relationship between body and character reached its height in the decades before the Civil War, with the study of Phrenology, or skull shape. Phrenologists claimed that skull shape revealed character development--certain bumps indicated creativity, certain shapes represented leadership faculties; a slight swelling in one part of the skull suggested a tendency to crime. The Phrenological skull represented here was used to study head shape for practitioners, who would offer "readings" that helped people figure out their aptitudes and their basic character.
None of this stuff reallyt worked as claimed. One thing it tells us, however, is how anxious Americans were to stabilize character, to pin identity down. The same desire appeared in other ways. Take a closer look
|
