A couple of weeks ago, with a glass of red wine close by (just to keep the “bougie” spirit alive), I’ve sat and watched what proved to be a “filmed performance” of “the bourgeoisie”:
One of Luis Buñuel’s later movies, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) is supposed to be a comedic intervention, following the life of 2 couples with their families and close friends. What follows is an absurd narrative centred on their personal dramas, rituals, social functions, and dreams — created as a slice of life, day by day “real” account.
Although not as experimental as the “more” surrealist cinema of Buñuel, it manages to perfectly capture something that we take for granted: the bourgeoisie as the impersonation of the fake and the superficial.
This gets me to the following question: What is the bourgeoisie? (usually implicit knowledge that remains implicit for such a long time erases our capacity for critical thinking or truly adding nuance to a discussion, right? We think we know. But do we really? I know I didn’t remember much of my history lessons.)
The definition as per the Merriam-Webster Dictionary tells us:
Then, we find out that the term bourgeois originated in medieval France, denoting the inhabitant of a walled town.
No social critique attributed to it yet.
How did we make the jump to the faulty philistine?
It was, as it happens, through literary intervention (looking at you, Molière) and partially philosophy (yes, Karl Marx is the culprit here, although for him the middle class was the real MC). Molière’s plays are ripe with ridiculous characters trying to “learn” to pose as aristocrats, fighting to earn their “natural” right for richness and debauchery:
MUSIC MASTER Mere praises do not provide a comfortable existence; one needs to add to them something more substantial, and the best praise is cash.
The Would-Be Noble by Molière
So it’s no wonder that a surrealist wanted to continue the job in a world where the social climber didn’t vanish. One can say it was just made both obsolete in language and a hero of the economy by capitalism.
Until we consult the Urban Dictionary which states the “bougie” is a person pretending to be high class, although it’s not (but doesn’t know it). Not so obsolete after all?
It’s interesting how cultural products shape the way we talk, think or socially critique a concept that is not so clearcut as we want it to be. Conflating the bourgeoisie with the middle class is not entirely correct. Nor is equating the bourgeoisie with every social climber there is.
Interested to dive deeper? Below is the historical explanation: