Astral Codex Ten

rhododendrons

4 min read

rhododendrons

Article

rhododendrons is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between February 24, 2021 and March 05, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as “Upper-middle-class flowers are rhododendrons”; “A quick diversion on rhododendrons - The comedian who observed that it doesn’t sound like a flower, it sounds like a siege engine”. It most often appears alongside Donald Trump, Fussell, Jeff Bezos.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: February 24, 2021
  • Last seen: March 05, 2021

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: Fussell On Class
February 24, 2021 · Original source
Anyone imagining that just any sort of flowers can be presented in the front of a house without status jeopardy would be wrong. Upper-middle-class flowers are rhododendrons, tiger lilies, amaryllis, columbine, clematis, and roses, except for bright-red ones. One way to learn which flowers are vulgar is to notice the varieties favored on Sunday-morning TV religious programs like Rex Humbard's or Robert Schuller's. There you will see primarily geraniums (red are lower than pink), poinsettias, and chrysanthemums, and you will know instantly, without even attending to the quality of the discourse, that you are looking at a high-prole setup. Other prole flowers include anything too vividly red, like red tulips. Declassed also are phlox, zinnias, salvia, gladioli, begonias, dahlias, fuchsias, and petunias. Members of the middle class will sometimes hope to mitigate the vulgarity of bright-red flowers by planting them in a rotting wheelbarrow or rowboat displayed on the front lawn, but seldom with success.
Many of these didn't make sense to me (full disclosure: by birth and profession I'm probably what the book considers middle-to-upper-middle class, but by nature I'm not a very classy person). That's fine. I don't think Fussell claims that people actually think "being upper class, I will make sure to plant rhododendrons but not chrysanthemums". I think the claim is that those are the flowers people will end up planting, using reasoning that doesn't seem to refer to class at any point. This was where the book started to get spooky.
For example, apparently Super Bowl parties are a working-class custom. And apparently it's an middle-to-upper-middle-class custom to make fun of Super Bowl parties, either throwing them ironically or not at all. Even in 1983, Fussell describes "the satiric anti-Super Bowl party" among the middle class, where people deliberately get together on Super Bowl Sunday to conspicuously not watch sports and feel superior. This hits a little closer to home than the rhododendrons. Or: contempt for clothing with obvious brand names on it (eg a jacket that says ADIDAS in big letters) is apparently a middle-class reaction to a working-class preference for this sort of product. Or: your list of "grammatical pet peeves" is a suspiciously good match for the differences between the upper-middle-class dialect and the working class dialect (whether you keep a distinction between "less" and "fewer", for example). Also, I regret to inform you that the dead hand of Paul Fussell is reaching out all the way from 1983 to tell you that your contempt for people who overuse apostrophes is a class signaling game.
Inline links: your contempt for people who overuse apostrophes
Highlights From The Comments On Class
March 05, 2021 · Original source
A quick diversion on rhododendrons - The comedian who observed that it doesn’t sound like a flower, it sounds like a siege engine. "My liege, they have rhododendrons! All is lost!"