It is in cities and metropolises that entertainment is born. It is there and only there that people have the leisure and wherewithal to indulge their fantasies and to observe the polarization of the sexes over them.
Music Hath Charms… and the Elvis Effect
One does not need to be an ornithologist to know that male birds essentially have one of three paths to the females: Songs, plumage, and construction or provider skills. Perhaps the reason that human males feel intimidated is because human females can theoretically demand all three while the avian inhabitants of this planet are limited to one per species.
Male musicians have understood this ever since the beginning of city life in ancient times. Pindar and Ovid don’t tell us how Orpheus dressed, but the Urban Anthropologist is certain that his chitons were of the finest available fabrics, with gold trim and purple embroidery. The bards of the ancient world and well into the 18th century sought patronage from the wealthy in order to fit in with them and acquire their kind of plumage. If we buy into the theory that male creative geniuses do their best work when they are single in order to impress females we therefore can understand why talent agents want their male clients to be single. The illusion of their availability then becomes a bonus that works in their favor.
Movies and television have served to push the standard higher and higher. We can call this the Elvis Effect. It is no longer sufficient for an opera singer to merely have a beautiful voice; he must now also be matinee-idol handsome. The best current example is Juan Diego Florez, the Peruvian tenor who drew standing ovations last season at the Met in Il Barbieri di Siviglia. Vocally and physically he resembles the young Placido Domingo who at 66 is still handsome and in excellent voice. Both are appearing at the Met this season and the performances are mostly sold out. Ladies dressed to the nines will stand up and applaud discreetly in front of male escorts and friends, most of them of the mind that they are there solely for the music.
That has never been true, and we can prove it historically. The 19th-century composer and piano virtuoso Franz Liszt was the originator of turning the piano sideways so that the open lid faced the audience, enabling them to better hear the music. Cynics of the day wondered whether this wasn’t motivated by the other benefit Liszt gained: Enabling the females to see his incredibly handsome profile. Other musicians criticized the groupie behavior of these women who would steal his gloves and handkerchiefs, describing it as inappropriate and vulgar. More likely, they were envious. Liszt never married, by the way; he womanized well into old age through prolific years of musical innovation. As a post-script to his story, his daughter Cosima eventually married Richard Wagner, whose music is perhaps the most erotic in the entire classical repertoire.
The parents of the generation that crowned Elvis Presley King of Rock ‘n’ Roll were in abject shock at the frenzied behavior of females in his audience. The screaming, fainting, and approaches to the apron of the stage were incomprehensible to them. Of course, most would not have read biographies of the great composers and therefore would not have known about Franz Liszt’s groupies.
The Urban Anthropologist is too young to have been present at an Elvis concert, but sees parallels in the Latin music world. In Mexico the Elvis Effect probably began with Vicente Fernandez, who is El Rey in the world of ranchera music. He first recorded in the 1960s and, like Elvis, had a long string of successful films. At 67 years of age he’s still going strong, like Señor Domingo, and still photogenic. The next generation after him carries on this tradition and leading that group is his own superbly gifted middle son.
The charro singers of past generations were men of superior vocal ability and often affable personality. However, most of them pale in comparison to current ones of the Elvis Effect. Submitted for your consideration is the description of the latter-day Orpheus: Tallish, fair-complexioned, mostly European in appearance, with thick dark hair and strong masculine features. While the backup band’s uniforms are often cream-colored or light brown, Orpheus wears black. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that he is the supreme alpha male in that room. To be an ordinary male in the audience of Alejandro Fernandez or Pablo Montero is to be almost invisible.
As an advertising professional, the Urban Anthropologist loves to quantify things. While no math genius, it was not difficult to estimate that audiences of either of these modern Orpheuses are usually at least 75% female. Mexican ancestry is not required to appreciate their voices, best described as a blend of heroic, romantic, and sexy. They are best displayed in small to medium venues that make it possible to have the up-close-and-personal experience. One of the legends about Fernandez the Younger is about women throwing their bras onstage at his feet. This is a fact. Here the Urban Anthropologist must express pride at being a New Yorker, as New York women are more nervy than that. At the former Felt Forum they were handing them to him over the security rail, with notes attached to them. He read them all and one of those notes made him blush. One wonders what any woman could write that would bring a blush to the face of an international playboy whose sex appeal is so dangerous one wants to compose an opera about Dracula in order to cast him in it.
At a smaller venue more recently 93.1 Amor held an event starring Pablo Montero. In his black traje de charro, Señor Montero is a fairy-tale prince, graciously accepting felicitations and kisses from ladies who approach the stage. Some had flowers; an elegantly-dressed blonde of indeterminate age bestowed a huge bouquet of red roses for which she received a kiss from this handsome prince … and a hostile reaction from another female, one not bearing a floral tribute. Señor Montero’s voice is that ageless range that identifies him as the romantic hero from movies and the pages of novels. He may have become famous singing sad love songs but a man so gifted by the Muses will never need to be lonely.
The Body Politic
It is an entertainment truism that every murder investigation must involve at least one visit to a strip club. While this is clearly pandering to the prurient interests of the audience, the Urban Anthropologist sees a connexion. It is the same mindset that allowed prostitution to flourish in the shadow of the Roman Coliseum, where some men became sexually aroused by the sight of violence.
In the modern world strippers and “exotic dancers”, by the nature of their work, appear to be the ultimate available females. Many of them are surgically enhanced, courtesy of earlier patrons who pay for lap dances. Between them and the airbrushed images in the pornography some are addicted to, their images and expectations of women cannot be commensurate with reality. Mostly naked and blatantly coming on to their patrons, they make no pretense at interest in their hearts. The mostly insecure males who enter these establishments pay expensively for the illusion of sexual congress with these distant heiresses of Gypsy Rose Lee. Unlike Tony Soprano and Paulie Walnuts, however, most of these men have no real access to the full sexual favors of these women. Yet, to observe their behaviors one would think that all they need do is crook a finger and flash their cash.
Ah, there’s the rub. For while a picture of General Grant or Benjamin Franklin can buy them temporary company, it takes a great deal more of a different asset for long-term devotion which, most of the time, these men are not aware is what they truly want. The mental compartmentalization many of these men do degrades these women rather than admiring their sense of rhythm or athleticism; pole dancing isn’t easy, nor does it even look it. But how many men who patronize these establishments are bachelor partiers and how many do so for dissatisfaction with the women in their personal lives? We will never know, because we can never expect any of them to admit such a thing.
Thus, while women wonder and complain about and attempt to understand why the men in their lives turn to strippers or internet porn for sexual satisfaction, they are missing a very important point: Men pay these women to take away the power of other women to judge them. They fear the rejection of the women whose favors are bought with music or charisma. The Urban Anthropologist therefore advises all women not to fear the strippers and porn images, for they serve as the winnowing process in the mating game.
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