“To a greater extent every day, stock buyers—we won’t use the term ‘investors’—are going where the action is, and it is not hard to find.”
For anyone desiring a piece of the action, Shear-son has this advice: . . .61
Heavy selling developed during the first hour and stock tickers began to lag behind the action.62
Those who report on government contracting can employ the term, evoking an image of occasions when decisions, allocations, and very nice opportunities are in the very process of determination:
Powerful lobbyist Tom Gray’s investment firm got a $40,000 cut of the action when the Board of Supervisors approved a $2 million extension of the Fifth and Mission Garage, The Chronicle learned yester-day.63
These journalistic accents have significance. The cult of cars provides a case in point. One support for this world is found in professional racing and the spectator sport organized around it. Another support is found in advertising, two examples of which I cite from a recent color brochure printed by Buick:
Think of a car that’s loaded with action, classic in line, agile as a cat, and luxurious beyond belief. The car you’re thinking about is the Riviera by Buick. Here’s a unique blend of blazing performance (325 h.p.) and solid readability that sets the Riviera apart from all other cars. In other words, it’s a car that might be equally at home on the track as on the road.
THE ACCENT’S ON ACTION! A car doesn’t really come alive until you turn the key to start the engine. This is the greatest moment in owning a Buick. With any one of Buick’s six engines and four transmissions you’ve bought yourself a piece of action that just won’t quit.
These two sources of publicity contribute support for the manufacture, sale and use of sports cars and fast sedans, and this in turn provides official equipment for transforming the highways into scenes of action, places where skill, impatience, and costly equipment can be displayed under seriously chancy conditions.64
In this essay action will be considered chiefly in the con-text of American society. Although every society no doubt has scenes of action, it is our own society that has found a word for it. Interestingly enough, we have become alive to action at a time when—compared to other societies—we have sharply curtailed in civilian life the occurrence of fatefulness of the serious, heroic, and dutiful kind.
A final word about the spread of words. In casino gam-bling when a player makes a large bet and loses it he sometimes speaks of what he did as “blowing it.” Thus, to engage in action unsuccessfully is to “blow it.” The implication is that a desirable stake (in this case monetary) that had been possessed has now been lost, and that neither possession of the stake nor its loss was particularly justified or legitimate. Blowing a big bet reflects badly on oneself, but not so badly that one can’t fairly easily accuse oneself of having done so. It is this complex that has come to be generalized.
Casino personnel “breaking in” on a job feel there is much profit if they “make it” but no practical way of ensuring that they will. During this difficult phase there will be many minor infractions of rules, which can serve as sufficient grounds for being fired: coming on shift a few minutes late; declining an undignified task; mishandling chips; being irreverent concerning a house loss; expressing impatience with one’s rate of progress, and so forth. Once skill and reputation have been acquired, tenure is only somewhat more secure: runs of ill luck; ill-founded suspicion of theft; change in owner-sponsorship; all can provide grounds for sudden dismissal.
Loss of a job due to what can, in fact, be seen as a meaningless lapse is also “blowing it.” In contrast to the middle-class perspective that tends to define occupational position as something only deservedly acquired and deservedly lost, occupational situation for the casino worker tends to oscillate very rapidly between “having it made,” and “blowing it,” neither of which state is seen as particularly warranted. This perspective has extended to other areas of life, and a dealer may speak of having blown his mar-riage or his chance at a college education.
The logic of this racy attitude to the fundamentals of life, which implies a defense in depth to living with action, can be understood in reference to social organization in Nevada: the relative ease of divorce and marriage; the presence of a very large number of persons who have failed occupationally or maritally; a frontier tradition of asking no questions about a person’s history or current livelihood; the clear possibility of getting an equivalent job across the street after being fired; the high visibility of a large number of casino employees known to have worked recently in better jobs in other casinos; the fact that sporadic bouts of big play mean sporadic realization of the ideal experience of a culture, such that however long and lean the days between bouts, this use of one’s money may be the best that Nevada can offer. In any case, action is not the only term that appears to have spread outward from the gaming tables. A family of terms seems to be involved, and the entire family seems to be migrating.65
VII. Where the Action Is
I have argued that action is to be found wherever the individual knowingly takes consequential chances per-ceived as avoidable. Ordinarily, action will not be found during the week-day work routine at home or on the job. For here chance-takings tend to be organized out, and such as remain are not obviously voluntary. Where, then, is action routinely to be found? Let me summarize the suggestions already made in passing.
First, contenders find action in commercialized com-petitive sport. Perhaps because this activity is staged for an audience and watched for fun, it is felt that no fully serious reason could exist for engaging in the activity itself. Also, the fact that amateurs perform these spectacular activities on their own, privately and without pay, as recreation, reinforces the notion that the professionals are engaged in a self-determined free-will calling. This is the case even though it is apparent that professional and commercial interests may be staked in a business-like way on the outcome of the spectacle. Although a sports car racer may make a living at the wheel, and the decision of a company to continue or discontinue a car model may hinge on a race outcome,66 it is still felt that drivers could take other types of jobs or at least sit out the current race, and that this sort of chance-taking is somehow voluntary.
The next place of action to consider is non-spectator67 risky sports. No payment is received for this effort; no publicly relevant identity is consolidated by it; and it incurs no obligations in the serious world of work. In the absence of the usual pressures to engage in an activity, it is presumably easy to assume that self-determination is involved and that the chances incurred are brought on solely because of the challenge that results. Interestingly, some of these vigorous sports are dominated by solid young-minded citizens who can afford the time, travel, and equipment. These persons seem to get the best of both worlds, enjoying the honor of chance-taking without greatly threatening their routinized week-day involvements.
Next to consider are the more commercialized places of action—places, conveniently located, where equipment and the field for its use can be rented and a slight degree of action laid on. Bowling alleys, pool halls, amusement parks, and arcade streets provide arrangements where the cost of the play and the value of the prize generate a mildly fateful context for displaying competence. Public betting at race tracks and in casinos permits the gambler to demonstrate a variety of personal attributes, although at considerable cost. The “vertigo” rides at fairs and amusement parks nakedly resolve our dilemma concerning action by providing danger that is guaranteed to be really not dangerous—what Michael Balint has nicely described as the safe excitement of thrills:
In all amusements and pleasures of this kind three characteristic attitudes are observable: (a) some amount of conscious fear, or at least an awareness of real external danger; (b) a voluntary and intentional exposing of oneself to this external danger and to the fear aroused by it; (c) while having the more or less confident hope that the fear can be tolerated and mastered, the danger will pass, and, that o
ne will be able to return unharmed to safety. This mixture of fear, pleasure, and confident hope in face of external danger is what constitutes the fun-damental element of all thrills.68
There is a final type of commercialized action involving direct participation, which I will call “fancy milling.”69 Adults in our society can obtain a taste of social mobility by consuming valued products, by enjoying costly and modish entertainment, by spending time in luxurious settings, and by mingling with prestigeful persons—all the more if these occur at the same time and in the presence of many witnesses. This is the action of consumption. Further, mere presence in a large, tightly packed gathering of reveling persons can bring not only the excitement that crowds generate, but also the uncertainty of not quite knowing what might happen next, the possibility of flirtations, which can themselves lead to relationship formation, and the lively experience of being an elbow away from someone who does manage to find real action in the crowd.
When these various elements of fancy milling are com-bined, and the individual views the prestige and the brevity of participation against the cost of getting to the scene and the rate of expenditure necessitated during each moment of participation, a kind of diffuse action—or rather a flavor of action—results, however limited the fatefulness.70 The individual brings into himself the role of performer and the role of spectator; he is the one who engages in the action, yet he is the one who is unlikely to be permanently affected by it.
Here hotel casinos provide an extreme example. Not only are money gambles made available, this type of action is overlaid with the consumption kind. A brief penetration into high living is laid on. Attendant-parked limousines are cluttered at the entrance. Beyond the entrance, the setting is luxurious. Liquor is served at the tables, often at no cost to the consumer. A quality buffet may be provided, allowing for discriminative gorging. A gratuity system is encouraged that elevates its users and provides scantily clad waitresses, selected for their looks, cause to be somewhat accessible. A “pit” operated signal system enables these girls to deliver drinks, cigarettes, and aspirin anywhere on the premises upon request. Keno “runners” and change girls are similarly organized to be at beck and call. Table contact is facilitated with the nationally known and with big spenders. Proximity to what some might consider the gangster element is also provided. Easy access to nationally famous entertainment is assured, and even some physical closeness to the entertainers themselves. The lounge bar is “dressed” with chorus girls clothed in their off-stage costumes. Female customers feel they can experiment with sports high-fashion, claiming an age and style they might be too modest to try out at home. In brief, the opportunity for ephemeral ennoblement abounds. However, should the consumer want to sit down during this ennoblement, he will very likely have to sit at a gaming table. There is a rich ambience, then, but each minute of it is likely to cost the risking of considerable money.
Other public service establishments, too, appear to be increasingly overlaying their services with indulgence choices heretofore considered irrelevant. Thus, our crosscountry jets have added pretty girls, goodish food, movies, and free liquor.71 Filling stations can now provide not only gas but a moment’s company with a “bumper bunny/’ And, of course, there is the current “topless” trend, which brings, along with food, waitresses who are assuredly attractive.72
Certain segments of each community seem more respon-sive than others to the attraction of this kind of action. It is worth noting that individuals respond not as members of a local community but as like-minded, otherwise unrelated members of the great society. Strangers in town can ask the local cabby where the action is and probably gain entry when they get there. A freemasonry of individuals who would otherwise be strangers is involved, a temporary coalition against the society of the respect-able in which an action seeker is likely to have friends and relations. The traditional mechanisms of acquaintanceship and personal invitation are not needed to restrict participation; the risks of participation serve instead.
Although it is possible and desirable to look for where the action is by broadly examining social organization, a much more specific effort concerns me here. I want to consider the actual social arrangements through which action is made available.
The social world is such that any individual who is strongly oriented to action, as some gamblers are, can perceive the potentialities for chance in situations others would see as devoid of eventfulness; the situation can even be structured so that these possibilities are made manifest.73 Chance is not merely sought out but carved out. It should be added that the form of chance likely to be found here is appreciable risk to bodily welfare in exchange for the opportunity of trifling gain. Some version of “Russian roulette” is the one scene of fatefulness that almost everyone is in a position to construct, and a scene that nicely illustrates chance-taking as an end in itself. Interestingly, there is currently available through L.S.D. and other drugs a means of voluntarily chancing psychic welfare in order to pass beyond ordinary consciousness. The individual here uses his own mind as the equipment necessary for action.74 Persons who gesture with suicide use their bodies in a gamble, but here, as with drugs, chance-taking as such does not seem to be the main purpose of the undertaking.75 The current widespread interest in the deleterious effects of smoking and of cholesterol provide a milder example of the same possibility; to various flavors can be added the extra flavor of not-giving-a-damn.76
In the cases so far considered, chance lies in the attitude of the individual himself—his creative capacity to redefine the world around him into its decisional potentialities. Turn now to the action possibilities that place greater demands upon the environment and are more directly facilitated by organization.
A simple beginning can be found in casino gambling, since these are places, first of all, whose physical and social organization is designed to facilitate the occurrence of action. The efficiency of these arrangements must be understood and appreciated. A player need only stride into a casino (off-street casinos are not likely to require even the opening of a door) and put money on a squaring-off or commitment area. If the dealer is not already in play, he will immediately initiate it, a momentary pause that is itself avoided in many casinos by employing shills to keep dead games going. In a matter of seconds, the player can plug himself into quite meaningful activity; sockets are available.
Further, casino plays have a remarkably short span, permitting a very high rate of play. A slots play takes only 4 or 5 seconds. A hand at 21 may take as little time as 20 seconds, by virtue of card management practices that dealers are uniformly trained to employ.77 In all casino games it is possible, also, to engage in more than one play at a time, and, in the case of slots and craps, to phase the multiple betting so that a commitment is made and determination begun in regard to one bet while an-other is in the later phases of the determination process. One game, keno, available in most casinos, is specifically organized so that in almost all regions of the casino bets can be made and determination followed. Keno display boards are posted at various places and simultaneously scored electrically. Keno runners collect bets and deliver payoffs everywhere in the casino except the bathrooms. The phasing of play coincides with no other activities in the casino. Thus, whatever an individual is doing, and wherever he is doing it, he can overlay his activity with keno play and always have at least a keno number “going for him.”78
A player can engage in all manner of calculation and divination regarding how to manage his bet, whether this involves copings, defenses, or both. But he also may, if he wants, merely push an uncounted pile of money or chips in the general direction of the commitment area and the dealer will scrupulously do the rest. (I have seen a dealer assist a blind man to play, and one too arthritic to handle his own cards.) A great range of player effort is thus managed neatly by the same organization of play. This means that a player can start out very attentively watching all that happens and making elaborate calculations, find himself getting weary beyond me
asure after eight or nine hours of play, or drunk to the point where attendants must prop him up to prevent his falling out of his chair, and yet by merely making a few relevant gestures remain active in his gambling capacity. The organization of play in casinos is designed to service with action not only persons of widely different social status, but also those in widely differing physiological states.
Beyond these various organizational arrangements, there is the central fact that casinos, within very broad limits, routinely cover bets of any size. The player can therefore put his capital in jeopardy regardless of its size. He is assured of the opportunity of facing the excitement of a little more financial risk and opportunity than most persons of his means would be at ease with. Casinos concretely embody arrangements for allowing the individual to press himself to the margin of his own tolerance for loss or gain, thereby ensuring a real and close test, at least in his own eyes.
Some specific arrangements outside of casinos for effi-ciently generating opportunities for action might be mentioned. A good example can be found in the conventions associated with bullfighting. Here, the style and grace of movement and posture, the knowledge of the work, and the domination of the bull, three central qualities exhibited in bullfighting, are scored according to the danger to self that is voluntarily introduced by oneself during the movements. The extreme limits to safety must therefore be pressed:
In modern bullfighting it is not enough that the bull be simply dominated by the muleta so that he may be killed by the sword. The matador must perform a series of classic passes before he kills if the bull is still able to charge. In these passes the bull must pass the body of the matador within hooking range of the horn. The closer the bull passes the man at the man’s invitation and direction the greater the thrill the spectator receives.79
Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor. In Spain honor is a very real thing. Called pundonor, it means honor, probity, courage, self-respect and pride in one word.80
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