ANGLOPHILIA HITS THE CAMPUS

Student Viewpoint 1966

THE floodgates are open. Slowly and insiduously during the past several years, creeping Anglophilia has engulfed America in a cultural upheaval of Beatles, James Bond, Liverpool togs, actors, and Oxonian-syllabled secretaries, feverishly exported from the Mother Country. "Anything English is good," a hipster explained simply. If the flood has soaked every American hamlet, no matter how small and isolated, then something must be going on.

This is exactly what has happened in Hanover. One has only to remember the Halcyon Fifties to realize the change. Gone are those days of sporty crewcut guys who drove chrome-finned Buick Roadmasters and hotrods; when HaveGun, Will Travel was the biggest thing on the tube, and the big beat was Elvis Presley singing "Jailhouse Rock." If they were the Silent Generation, that was well and good - nobody gave much thought to England, and everybody had a good time.

But something happened to change all this. Maybe it was Sputnik, maybe the Recession - maybe tailfins just got too big. At any rate, the light of collegiate enthusiasm began to fade on the American campus. Universities were no longer Fitzgerald temples of learning, and the multiversity began to rear its ugly head. Booking, incidentally, became a lot tougher, and "a generation of technocrats" tramped the wet college walks, books under their arms, heads downcast full of Weltschmerz. Those days were bleak for the American college student, and his idols - the American heroes of fact and fiction - seemed no longer adequate. They were square.

But suddenly, no bigger than a man's hand, the Word began to spread up and down the night-time dormitory halls. There were books, it was whispered - spy stories, full of intrigue and sudden death. James Bond (hubbub-hubbub)... girls... license to kill... Lan Fleming... (hubbub-hubbub)... girls... SMERSH ... London... girls... Girls! The world came alive again. The paperbacks were read, passed on, and reread until they fell into tatters. It was learned that President Kennedy himself was a fan. Booking was forgotten; Bond-punting became an institution. And a small "B" film was spliced together in the Caribbean, starring an obscure actor named Sean Connery.

The rest, to put it mildly, is history. Bond-mania spread like a fungus across the civilized world, and eventually came to Hanover, where the ivy had wilted on the vine like everywhere else. The postSputnik age had set in, and while deeds of collegiate heroism (eleventh-hour term papers, thousand-mile road trips) were never more in evidence, heroes them- selves had just gone out of style. Nobody felt like a hero in Hanover anymore.

After all, how can you be a hero in Hanover? Most of the local heroism takes place on the Nugget screen, where hun- dreds of students - all cheers, shouts, and paper airplanes — take part in the new mythology of the age - the Movies. So the Nugget astutely booked DoctorNo. The reaction was enthusiastic, and From Russia With Love followed soon after, and did boom business. And then, in an almost unprecedented move, the Nugget booked Goldfinger for a sevenday run.

"... Now inside this Aston-Martin gearshift," says Q Branch, "there is a small red button. Whatever you do, don't touch this button, Double-0 Seven."

"Why not?" asks Bond, as he looks boredly at the sleek car.

"Because, Double-O Seven," snaps Q, "this button explodes the ejection seat that hurls the passenger out through the detachable sunroof."

"Why, you're joking!"

"Certainly not, Mr. Bond; I never joke about my work."

A shock of recognition ran through the darkened theater, and rose up in a joyful, derisive "Hah!" It was one of the great moments in Hanover history; the Hero (Bond), the Car (the Aston-Martin), and the British worldview (Q) were unveiled at last in their true grandeur. The British invasion had become a rout.

Bond is not only a ladykiller, he has brought about a new chivalry, if you can call it that. He has not only disposed of Her Majesty's enemies, he has also managed to kill off his competition. Waterloo - Helen of Troy - the Arab Revolt - you name it, and Bond could have handled it. The Impossible takes no time at all, when, like Bond, you have a gadget hidden in your hinged shoe-heel; Bond is "the first of the joke supermen" and the Hero - "one who does extraordinary deeds" - has reached his apotheosis and the end of the line.

But there's more - the Englishness, because Bond's superiority would be .unthinkable without his nationality. He has Class: a uniquely English invention compounded from swaggersticks, brass escutcheons, and the smell of leather, and gloriously symbolized by that fabulous Aston-Martin with all the gadgets. What Bond has done is to make Class heroic again, as it was in the days of Empire, and now everyone wants a piece of it.

Students don't drive hot-rods anymore - they pilot suave, pseudo-sportscars with plastic "walnut" and imitation leather veneer plastered inside and out - and crammed with switches, dials, instruments fit for a bomber. Despite the demise of tailfins, motoring has never been more studly. Heads turn to watch the low-slung English image go blasting by.

BOND opened the way for Englishness, and there was another great moment in Hanover history when everyone crowded around the tube to watch the Ed Sullivan Show. The curtain went up, and four leprechaun-sized men began to play "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." Ringo Starr's hair began to jig up and down. The girls in the TV audience began to scream, the shock of recognition spread through the student-crowded tube room.

There was pandemonium; the British Empire had been reborn. One last "Hah!!" came out, and then the flood closed over their heads forever.

These days, "the English Haircut" is the despair of Main Street's barbers, who complain that nobody gets haircuts the way they used to in the old days. Liverpool caps show up here and there. Razorthin jackets and trousers are taking over with the Establishment crowd, where the Ivy suit left off, while the Non-U class affects tough denim clothes with copper rivets, and hangs around looking lean and hungry.

To be sure, the Dartmouth Man of old is still dominant, but his days seem to be numbered. Already, American song groups starve in the streets while English performers monopolize the airwaves with tinkling Cockney accents. Some radio stations have acquired English disc-jockeys to give their shows class. Words like "Guv'nor," "Soho," "that's a pip," are being subtly drummed into the American teenager's innocent mind.

Is it all a fad? If it is, it stands as the most persistent, intense, long-lived fad of modern times. It is a case of the tail wagging the dog. To date, the Beatles' enterprises have grossed half a billion dollars. The famous people today - Julie Christie and Jean Shrimpton; Richard Burton and John Maynard Keynes; Peter Sellers, Mike Jagger, and Peter O'Toole - these colossi of comedy, style, economy, and beauty, have only one thing in common: they are English.

Meanwhile multitudes of English scientists emigrate in the celebrated "brain drain" over here to greener grass. English secretaries are in desperate demand, simply because they sound so nice to New Jersey ears. Two '66 Ford models are called the Ford 7-Litre, and the Ford LTD, presumably to give them instant class. Time magazine tells us that London is the place to go, and anthropologists who have done research in Appalachian Virginia report that the people there have been speaking Elizabethan English allalong.

So, as the sun sets in the West, the New Dartmouth Man climbs out of his low-slung sports-car, and casts a keen Sean-Connery eye up and down Mass Row. (It's been a long day, Guv'nor.) Then, he turns and stomps into his dorm, a blaze of glory in Liverpool boots, tweed coat flying, Beatle locks waving in the breeze. Ten years ago, students would have said "Hah!" Today they don't say anything. And ten years from now they will probably be saying "Hear! Hear!"

Art Haupt '67, from McLean, Va., is Reviews Editor of The Dartmouth. A National Merit finalist from Wakefield HighSchool, he has taken part in the Dartmouth in Mexico project.

Sketches by Michael Chu '68