{"id":3176,"date":"2010-09-12T19:03:15","date_gmt":"2010-09-12T23:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/?p=3176"},"modified":"2010-09-12T19:03:15","modified_gmt":"2010-09-12T23:03:15","slug":"dr-jekyll-and-mr-ahole-that-yelled-at-me-on-tottenham-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/2010\/09\/dr-jekyll-and-mr-ahole-that-yelled-at-me-on-tottenham-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. A**hole that yelled at me on Tottenham Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been fascinated by the effects of alcohol ever since I read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. <\/em>Hyde in my freshman year, the same time I was introduced to college drinking social norms. By day students go to class and make self-aware, well thought out comments and criticisms of society, and by night drink and do all manner of scandalous things to gossip about in the morning (obviously not everyone, but a sizeable portion). We\u2019ve been talk about the British social dis-ease, but I wonder if American social customs are really all that different.<\/p>\n

Kate Fox notes that our expectations of alcohol\u2019s effects are cultural rather than purely biological (261). England is known for its aggressive drunks and that expectation, and possibly a little national pride, is a self fulfilling prophecy. As the drunk insane asylum manager from everyone\u2019s favorite show, Bedlam, says as he stumbles around the stage, \u201cWe\u2019re English. It\u2019s what we do\u201d to which the audience responded with a proud cheer. For whatever reason, boisterous drunkness is a major source of identity for England, even if it\u2019s also a symptom of the inability to socialize without a lubricant to put you in a liminal state. As a result, while Latin American countries associate alcohol with more peaceful states, England gets bars in Covent Square Garden that forbid the wearing of football colors to prevent bar fights.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve tried to visit a few different types of pubs, and I\u2019ve found so far that no matter the atmosphere, the clientele, or even the level of drunkenness, when it comes to alcohol the Brits are not the friendliest bunch (You see what I did there? Understatement. I\u2019m so assimilated). I\u2019ve managed to get over the occasional obvious refusals of service when pubs close at an oddly specific time if they see a group of five Americans coming toward them. The slightly more expensive pubs I\u2019ve gone to have not been as bad. I usually just get a server who refuses to make any form of polite small talk or eye contact with me, unless he is joining in the group glare that I often receive from everyone in the room when I speak, stand in the wrong place, or exist. The younger, louder pubs were pretty nice because fewer people could hear my accent and it was too loud for me to hear angry throat clears. Unfortunately, the minute I got outside, a few drunk men took it upon themselves to fix that by yelling obscenities and telling me to go back to America (In their defense, I think I might have offended them when I was praising the benefits of Razor Scooters as they walked past. Hot button issue).<\/p>\n

During the day, besides the occasional angry glare when I use my 6 inch voice instead of my 4 inch voice in the library, people have been generally friendly, which leads me to believe that Fox is right about the British extremes in behavior.\u00a0\u00a0They\u2019re excessively mild and polite (Jekyll) until they drink a potion that makes them grow fur on their hands and have a strong desire to beat me to death with a cane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dickens has Wemmick whose personality between work and home differs so extremely that Pip doesn’t even recognize him. R.L. Stevenson has to create an entirely new character to represent Dr. Jekyll’s viscitudes in personality. Split personality seems like an important theme in England.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":445,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6671],"tags":[1504,1026,6756,15241,15103],"class_list":["post-3176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2010-jesse","tag-alcohol","tag-british-identity","tag-kate-fox","tag-pubs","tag-social-dis-ease"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/445"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}