RAY HARTLEY: A brief history of conspicuous consumption
'Oliver Stone's intention was to caste Gekko as a repulsive grasping maniac, but the effect was the reverse. He emerged as a cult figure much admired by the repulsive grasping maniacs that dominated consumer spending'
In the April 1919 edition of Vanity Fair magazine, the editorial board and writer Robert Charles Bentley did an unusual thing. They introduced a new feature under the heading "Dullest Book of the Month". The honour, described acidly as "the Crown of Deadly Nightshade", went to The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York. Macmillan. Cloth. $2.00 net), a work by one Thorstein Veblen. The review, coming as it did some 20 years after the book was published in 1899, represented the viciously sarcastic response of the upper classes to Veblen's invention of a new term - "conspicuous consumption".Veblen, wearing a rakish middle parting over an egg-shaped head that terminated in a flourishing goatee, had caused affront by attempting to analyse and describe the phenomenon of acquiring goods for no useful purpose other than to demonstrate the wealth of the acquirer. He observed: "In order to gain and to hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or ...
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