On 6/9/15, Kurt Feltenberger <xxxxxx@thepaw.org> wrote:
> On 6/9/2015 7:14 PM, Richard Aiken wrote:
>>
>> I'm not sure how well it maps to real life (at least in the current
>> modern day). But I'm also put in mind of things I've read or seen on
>> screen (most recently in the movie "Kingsman: The Secret Service")
>> about exclusive tailors.
>
> Look up some of the tailors on Savile Row or the history of Thomas Pink
> (aka Mr. Pink of Jermyn Street) for two examples.  Some of these tailors
> have exclusive rights to patterns and designs that they've had for
> decades, if not centuries.
>
> It's like a client one explained when he bought his fifth Mont Blanc
> pen; "It isn't that the pen writes any better or any smoother; rather
> it's a statement that when I take it out and put it on the pen that
> those who know what it is know that I'm there for business, not to chit
> chat or to be one of the guys, but business.  Those who don't know what
> it is or means, well, they soon get educated."

Spoiler Space (in case you haven't seen "Kingsman" or read the comics) . . .

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Something which occurred to me is that the premise of the "Kingsman"
film fits well with sumptuary laws and customs (which is probably not
an accident). The secret service in question is a private enterprise,
taken up voluntarily as a facet of their station by certain members of
the English upper classes after WWI. E.g. "This needs doing and -
thanks to our station and wealth - we can do it, so we will."

Quite feudal, if you think about it: something normally seen as a
governmental responsibility instead seen as a personal duty. In short,
noblese oblige.

In reading the wikipedia article on noblese oblige, I came across the
idea that the rights and duties of nobility are something called
"jural correlatives." Searching *that* term revealed that - as best as
I can make out - noblese oblige only works as a concept if everyone in
the society who isn't an noble voluntarily accords to nobles
particular rights and their matching duties.

Kingsman reflects that, I think. Although it involves saving the world
from a megalomanic in classic James Bond fashion, the movie makes a
big deal out of the phrase, "Manners maketh man." The hero is the
penniless son of a slain veteran, born and raised among small-time
gangsters and the working poor. The movie's major arc concerns this
young man learning to adapts himself to the Service. Which he does, to
the point that he beats even it's leader. In the final scene, it's
obvious that Our Hero - calmly facing down a room full of gangsters
alone, clad in his bespoke suit - has become noble through assumption
not just by assumption of proper deportment and dress, but more also
of duties which need doing (e.g. major ones like saving the world but
also minor ones like beating the crap out of goons who richly deserve
it).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the *movie* says (and I agree)
that "noble is [and should be] as noble does." Further, it says that
there'll always be people better able to do needful things than the
rest of us. If we're very lucky, such people will always feel obliged
to step up and do said needful thing, without having to be told.

--
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident."  Robert A. Heinlein
"A word to the wise ain't necessary -- it's the stupid ones that need the
advice." - Bill Cosby
"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous."
Dean Winchester