For shame
How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
O! in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose.
– Shakespeare, Sonnet XCV
My parents grew up in a time when shame had weight, and they passed it on to us.
Already a hand-me-down from their stauncher parents – for whom crying hell in a moment of frustration was more thrilling than fuck is now – evocations of shame were sometimes associated with upholding (or tossed out in the guise of) Christian principles, but more often a rebuke for having disappointed, or embarrassed them in public.
Growing up as kids between marked generations (us to me), we still felt shame acutely but hoped something was amiss and sought a way out of the perpetual fear of humiliation and guilt.
Let your women keep silence in the churches: of it is not permitted unto them to speak.
If they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
– Corinthians 1:34-35
Shame was embedded in the printed words we revered. Shakespeare, of course, was big on shame, as were Milton, Wordsworth, Burns and others devout and not so (shame carrying the added bonus of rhyming with claim, fame, tame and blame).
There is a shame of nobleness
Confronting sudden pelf,—
A finer shame of ecstasy
Convicted of itself.
A best disgrace a brave man feels,
Acknowledged of the brave,—
One more “Ye Blessed” to be told;
But this involves the grave.
– Emily Dickinson
Societies and groups have long used infliction of shame as a tool to promote conformity, handing out scarlet letters. The need to make your congregation proud no longer holds sway, in the main, but individuals’ desire for acceptance in the fold has never waned. Shame never left us; we simply renamed it.
(It was curious, then, to see those men in Iraq being paraded naked through the streets as a form of punishment – a sudden image from panic dreams and a reminder that public shame remains a powerful weapon.
A form of punishment that would trigger outrage in any Western nation, so a good illustration too of the occupiers’ view of their charges.)
Pushing us to be proud of what was once our shame, we’re now surrounded by specialists, associations and self-help gurus offering us weekend retreats and newsletters to indulge in our newfound pride.
We can overeat and sleep around, mock religion and smoke dope, give the finger with impunity, lie staring at the ceiling for 72 hours, change our sex, worship money, not get married and live out loud – boast picayune details of our lives to anyone who will listen. We’re hungry to have no shame, and there will always be someone there cheering us on.
What began as brash non-conformity, from beatnik to hippie to punk, has now tumbled below the belt into cheap prime time entertainment.
I’m amazed by shows like Jackass (which I admit has made me giggle, though I’m not sure why) and its egregious Welsh cousin, Oily Sanchez (which only makes me wince). I wonder at the pleasure of seeing people make fools of themselves.
Enter “shame” into Google and over 3 million pages come back. With the exception of the “Wall of Shame” that publishes the urls of sites that are peddling kiddie porn, the rest of the top-ranked sites are largely “halls of shame” for entertainment or software judged particularly poor, or ways in which on reality TV stars have embarrassed themselves (as if the desperate dive for 15 minutes of fame weren’t enough).
So while it still involves public embarrassment, shame is no longer associated with morality; equating it with non-conformity is outmoded.
In this era of stardom, shame is equated mostly with stupidity and mediocrity. Admonishing those who did not succeed in being what they hoped.
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