Shopping Like a Satyr, Styling like a Nymph: Towards a History of Classical Reception in Consumption

Abstract

This essay argues that consumer culture is a medium through which the classical tradition becomes incorporated into everyday experience. It does this through a close examination of the Broadway musical The Pink Lady (1911), which plays with the theme of nymphs and satyrs and is set in a variety of commercial environments. This theme has been mediated by earlier responses to classical culture, and its reimagining in the production design has been particularly influenced by the Rococo period. However, this art-historical context has been transformed by new cultures of celebrity and mass media. Using a range of contemporary sociological responses to consumption, as well as later scholarship on the topic, I demonstrate that classical antiquity made an excellent source for modern commodification. Consumer culture has a substantial impact on people’s sense of social identity and the way in which the public sphere is constructed. The Pink Lady makes links between ancient nymphs and satyrs on the one hand and contemporary fashion and sexual mores on the other. Through analysis of this production, I explore the role classically inflected modes of consumption play in the overlapping phenomena of sexual expression, social identity and the cultivation of discernment. The classical tradition was shaped as much by the apparently democratizing impulse of modern consumption as it was by fantasies of aristocratic idleness.