I just came across this small and not-prominently-placed 1920 news item while reading Neil Gabler’s An Empire of Thier Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood: Charlie Chaplin Mixes with Wife’s Manager
I was born in 1955 and, despite being reasonably assertive in some social situations, and at the office, and having known stong emotions, can’t imagine engaging in such. But my impression, from nineteenth and early twentieth century history reading, is that this behavior was fairly common, in western nations, then (and rarely considered a criminal matter).
Am I correct? And are there any evidence-based theories as to why?
P.S. Someone may mention the famed Oscar slap earlier this year. The fact that it was considered a big deal seems to be an example of the social trend I am asking about.
I’m a little younger than you , and can’t help but think the fact that you have apparently always worked in offices has something to do with it. Not the offices exactly, but the type of people you know. There were things I found surprising about the Oscar slap and people in 1920 may have found the same things surprising about the Chaplin incident - but I wasn’t surprised by the physical altercation itself. I was surprised by who was involved in it and where it took place - if it had been two blue-color workers at a factory or mechanic’s shop ending up in a fistfight because one insulted the other’s wife , it wouldn’t have surprised me at all. I’m not at all sure impromptu fist fights have actually declined when you look at similar types of people over time.
Certainly, what is “acceptable” depends on the milieu. In some dive bars, nightly fistfights may be almost expected. Drunken teenagers’ code of conduct is not going to be the same as at the Nobel Prize dinner. And so on.
Office settings and sports aside I believe fights between males has declined. Coming from a long career I believe the fear of the other party having a weapon, especially a handgun, is creating fewer and fewer fist fights between males. When I was growing up (now in my early 60’s) the use of a firearm coming out during a fistfight was almost unheard of. When I started in LE in the late 70’s it still did not happen often but as time went on we saw more and more fist fights end in bloodshed due to a firearm being pulled by one of the combatants. I moved over to non-sworn status to run training in 2010 and this seemed to be more prevalent in these fights. Get into a fight and let’s pull out handguns. Can I prove it? No and I don’t feel like doing any researching but this seems to be the case in my opinion.
Also as was intimated with dueling, after the mid 20th century especially among the middle and upper classes of the dominant demographic there rose a strong sociocultural pressure to NOT engage in casual fisticuffs, and ditch away old-time “honor culture”. That was portrayed as the way of ruffians and hoodlums and of “those other people”. And the prospect of arrest records and lawsuits became more highy dissuasive among “respectable” people “with something to lose”.
Chaplin and Mayer were born in non-privileged circumstances in the late 1800s and each raised in an environment where direct enforcement of respect was a use-it-or-lose-it proposition for a man. You don’t “unlearn” that by becoming an early millionaire in showbiz, which at the time anyway was not seen as a particularly “refined” circle.
I suspect there’s a chicken-and-egg scenario happening, that police have become more inclined to lay charges (and possibly the person assaulted) and so people are less inclined to throw the first blow as that lands them in legal hot water. Presumably provocative verbal insults are also less and less a defense against being the first to use violence. Since self-defense is permissible, only the instigator is at risk.
So even Smith was at risk of getting charged, convicted and sentenced for a slap if Rock were inclined to press the issue. A lot less deference to social position than before.
If you ever decide to motor west go back and watch Route 66, you might get the idea fistfights were a regular thing in the early 60s. It’s pretty rare for Buz or Tod to make it through an entire episode without getting into a fight with somebody.
I’ve read many, many books in which people in Chaplin’s day start whaling on one another. Pretty much 100% of the time alcohol was involved.
During Prohibition excessive drinking became disturbingly commonplace. An astounding number of biographies of actors, writers, journalists, and people generally in the public sphere tell tales of drunken escapades, idiotic drunken behavior, drunken destruction, careers and marriages destroyed by drunkenness, and drunken fights.
Much of this behavior continued through the 1950s. Norman Mailer was famous for getting into fights. William Burroughs killed his wife while drunk. Jack Kerouac drank himself to death. You weren’t a “real man” otherwise.
I think that attitude has long left American society as a whole and that includes the blue-class portion. Men’s bad behaviors are not as easily ignored and forgiven, and certainly not taken for granted as they once were. That applies over a whole spectrum of behaviors.
Gun control opponents often make such a claim — that guns create a polite society. But before accepting this, I want to see evidence that, in economically comparable societies, the more guns there are, the less fisticuffs. And do we really think that the fistfight decline has bypassed low gun ownership places like the U.K., Netherlands, Japan, Hawaii, and New York City?
I don’t know about the UK; every time I’ve been there, I’ve seen at least one drunken fistfight outside a pub. Based on the interactions with some of the locals, I get the impression that getting drunk and getting in a fight is not an unusual pastime. Luckily I’m tall enough and big enough to be an unappealing target for those guys. I did have to intimidate a couple of them into going away who were starting to pester my study abroad buddies for being American/wearing a USA Soccer jersey. Definitely helped being 6’1"/250 lbs and built like a smaller version of a NFL offensive lineman, when the aggressive types are about 5’7" and 140 lbs.
In 5 years of undergrad and 3 years of graduate school, as well as a lot of socializing in bars/clubs as a young man, I might have seen one honest-to-God fistfight in the US, and even that got broken up before it really got started.
But what’s striking is that the US temperance movement got going and achieved critical mass to get Prohibition passed on the back of massive public & private drunkenness. As in Russia / Russian levels of near perpetual intoxication and bad behavior.
I disagree, at least with your timing. The Prohibition movement was largely built on the perception that lower-class men were destroying families through their drinking. Some of that was true, as has always been true of excessive drinking, but most of the movement was built on Protestant religious prejudice against Irish and German Catholics whose culture was centered on good times in taverns. Dryness was mostly a rural movement that wasn’t taken seriously in the big cities, even though cities and their immigrant populations were very much the target of displeasure.
Not until Prohibition was enacted did the excessive drinking and drunkenness enter the middle- and upper-classes who now suddenly focused their good times on speakeasies. Their behavior made headlines and would forever be chronicled in books. (Although Chaplin had other reasons for getting into a fight with Mayer.)
Historians argue about whether Prohibition raised or lowered alcohol consumption nationwide, but there’s no question the culture of cities changed to accommodate it.
A good example of the attitude to drunkenness is the attitude to DUI. It used to be a very common and not unexpected thing, some people regularly racked up a DUI or two each year (so, every time they were pulled over after 9PM) and it had minimal impact on their life. Today - it can seriously impact everything, even if you don’t go to jail. (I heard the urban legend about a hit-man who used “it was a drunken accident” to run someone off the road and kill them, and the repercussions for a drunk driving accident that killed someone were minor… “It was an accident.”)
The same with drunken brawling. In the 50’s or the 1920’s, maybe you got hauled into night court if the police could be bothered, the judge fined you $25, and that was it. Today, if one party or a bar owner wants to press charges, your life can be effectively ruined, the record and repercussions will be inescapable.
But the same can be said of everything. For example… My old buddy who served in the Korean war told me the story of the time as a kid they made a home-made canon and gunpowder and built a raft, so they were rafting down the river setting off loud bangs. When they got ashore, the police were waiting - and took them home to their parents to get a severe (physical) talking-to. try to imagine that same escapade today, and what the legal ramifications would be, even for juveniles.
A few people have suggested it is due to concealed weapons. In the non-US world this has never been a significant issue, and I think the same decline has been seen. Even with allowance for the types of nights out and amount of drinking I base this on, I think there’s a significant decline in random fights, and an increase in how they are seen as being unacceptable macho jerk behaviour.
If I had to hazard a guess, its because the legal system [from police on the spot to courts hearing cases] is far unless likely to accept that ‘letting of steam’, ‘its okay because they are drunk’, macho shitbag showing off to his date etc etc behaviour is an adequate excuse for random violence.
The line between this and violence towards your partners/family is gossamer thin and that was always the unspoken counterpart to public violence. There has been a lot of emphasis recently on curbing domestic violence and it may well be aimed at the same cohort of angry men.
Another thing that I notice has changed in the past 20 years is owners of bars having to take more responsibility for not serving drunks, and intervening as tempers brew. I don’t know if this is a duty of care pressure, but it is marked.