Excerpts from The Mechanical Bride, with a foreword by Linda M. Scott

Abstract

power which imparts motion to “the line” and the dynamo of abstract finance and engineering which moves the passions of the tired businessman idolatrously seated in front of that line. "The line" is not carnal or sexy in the way in which the hoofers of burlesque aim to be. “The revue,” wrote Gilbert Seldes in The Seven Lively Arts, “corresponds to those de luxe railway trains which are always exactly on time, to the millions of spare parts that always fit, to the ease of commerce when there is a fixed price; jazz or symphony may sound from the orchestra pit, but underneath is the real tone of the review, the steady incorruptible purr of the dynamo.” Mr. Seldes finds this wedding of the painted dolls to the "Super Chief" by the priestly dynamo most satisfactory. In the same way, austere Henry Adams, nostalgic for the twelfth-century Virgin of Chartres, unexpectedly found her at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. There, faced with a huge electric dynamo, he removed his hat and pronounced the dynamo the twentieth-century equivalent of the twelfth-century “cult of the Virgin.” There may be no point whatever in trying to understand these matters. But for those who suppose that there is something intelligible in such things, the present ads, “the line,” as well as the testimony of Mr. Seldes and Henry Adams, are data of importance. They form a pattern which recurs in our world with regularity. Thus, one answer to the ad's query: “What makes a gal a good number?” is simply “looking like a number of other gals”; to the query “What's the trick that makes her click?” the answer is “being a replaceable part.” Just as success and personality know-how consist of recipes and formulas for reducing everybody to the same pattern, we seem to demand, in harmony with this principle, that love-goddesses be all alike. Perhaps the impulse behind this self-defeating process is the craving for a power thrill that comes from identity with a huge, anonymous crowd. The craving for intense individuality and attention merges with the opposite extreme of security through uniformity. There is intoxication in numbers and also release from personal responsibility. Crowds are intoxicating. Statistics and production charts are part of the dithyrambic poetry of industrial man. Telephone numbers of girls who are good numbers, smooth numbers, hot numbers, slick numbers, Maxfactorized, streamlined, synthetic blondes —these are at once abstract and exciting. Girls become intoxicating “dates” when they are recognizable parts of a vast machine. To be seen in public with these numbers is a sure sign that you are clicking on all cylinders. Any interest that they have in themselves is incidental. The tendency of a minority to react against this situation merely underlines its prevalence. Frederic Wakeman's hero in The Hucksters gets a thrill from falling off the “good number”