Honoré Victorin Daumier: An Excusable Error. Chickens thinking they have found the cage where they spent their early childhood, plate 21 from La Crinolomanie (1857)
ABOUT THIS ARTWORK
This lithograph focuses on the outlandish crinoline fashion, which lasted about a decade. Among other activities, Daumier’s exuberant crinolines destroy gardens, sweep up street trash, and catch their wearers in high winds and turnstiles. While this plate comes from the Actualités series, it has also been catalogued under the topic La crinolomanie (Crinoline Mania). This sheet and others by Daumier play on the support garment’s incongruous approximation of the human form. Daumier’s images stress that these contraptions, whether cage- or basket- like, were functionally useless.

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"…we can curl up in wonder…"

The hospitality industry has finally become the least hospitable industry. I intend no artificial irony as I declare this obvious truth, just the old-fashioned kind of irony. What could be more Decent than hospitality? Perhaps nothing, unless it’s turned on its head. It has been turned on its head by seemingly everyone working in that most curious of industries. Hospitality seems an odd industry, anyway, because I can’t see smoke stacks protruding from whatever hospitality might be doing, and I think that I really should see smoke stacks protruding from the top of any Decent industry, even hospitality, if it actually imagines itself to be an industry.

In my day, even a half-decent industry featured assembly lines and efficiency experts. Hospitality employed those long ago. Its assembly lines were more disassembly lines, though, since they broke up crowds into distinct queues. To facilitate this transformation, hospitality invented fresh classifications, ones designed to attract those most interested in status. Those who fancied themselves a cut above others were especially appreciative of this attention, for they had been born attention hogs. They’d gladly pay through their nose to anyone willing to suppose they weren’t one of “those,” “those” being a pejorative term signifying lowly born. Before long, hospitality went from deep-down Decency into even deeper-down perversity.

No industry seems more opposed to democracy than the hospitality industry, for it promotes class division and inequality as its primary purpose. It builds what it refers to as lounges, essentially private clubs, in public properties like airports, so that patrons won’t have to wait for flights surrounded by “those” people. Hospitality encourages its customers to think of themselves as kings. They’re constantly pestering their patrons to invest in such ventures: Offering a credit card that strokes delicate egos every time it’s used and charges for that service, upgrading from mundane into the service you’ve always secretly deserved. Their target client gladly pays through the nose for “free” stuff and the accompanying ego income.

What happens when 90% of an industry’s clients think of themselves as members of a vaunted 2%? Far be it from any hospitality provider to ever even hint that they provide perks to commoners, but the economics of the industry demand just such subterfuge. But it dare not admit this fact, even to itself. It designs ever finer grades of exceptional until they can include almost everyone in some terribly special category. So much the better to repeatedly plunge for the jugular, for the whole hospitality industry seems populated by vampires and their eager victims. One can hardly count themselves as human without those tell-tale fang marks on their neck.

Those more interested in just transporting themselves from place to place couldn’t care less whether they travel first class or steerage. They’d just as soon sit in the back of the bus in one of those non-reclining seats next to a colicky baby as put up with beverage service before the door’s even closed. Those who feel compelled to gild their cornflakes seem pathetic to those just seeking breakfast. The constant need to be recognized as more special ultimately seems sadly pathological. Airlines now make more money selling upgrades to basic services than they make providing those basic services. They make more money “giving away” “free” duck confit sliders in their frequent flier lounges than they ever made just flying people around in airplanes. The tail of hospitality seems to be wagging the entire industry now.

And what of Decency under this regime? Where does common courtesy go when it becomes contingent upon some arbitrary designation? The digital divide thrives on every domestic flight, where full service is only available if you’ve humiliated yourself by pre-paying tribute. Whether that comes as the all-important priority boarding or the ever-popular “free” baggage service doesn’t matter. The commoner slinks into a middle seat and secretly wonders when hospitality started meaning there’s never any room in the overhead for their carry-on. One day, probably not today or tomorrow, but one day, I predict a Les Misérables-quality uprising as Decent people finally grow too fed up with special treatment and turn on their placators. It will be a bloody, scary affair. Until then, we can curl up in wonder how we managed to get onto a flight with so goddamned many kings on board.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Decency, #PureSchmaltz