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Short Stuff: Bourgeoisie · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's chalk and Jerry's sitting in for Dave. So it's
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: short stuff. You basic person.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: You calling me bougie?
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no not. I wouldn't do that. I think it's
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: kind of a mean thing to say to somebody, at
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: least in America. In France, they're like, yes, you're right,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: thank you. In America, it's a bit of a put down.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: That's right. And that's what we're talking about today, where
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: you're talking about a word bourgeois. B oh you r
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  Speaker 3: G E O I s. Yeah, not to be confused
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  Speaker 3: with bourgeoisie.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Correct, Well, yeah, they're very closely related. Bourgeois can mean
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: a It can be an adjective and a noun. Right,
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  Speaker 1: If it's a nown, you're talking about one person who
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: is bourgeois. So that's their behavior where it's the one
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: person bourgeoisie as all of the people who are bourgeois.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: It's a noun only, okay, everybody. There's gonna be a
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: quiz at the end of this episode.
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  Speaker 3: But if you if you talk to Americans, a lot
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  Speaker 3: of Americans probably hear bourgeois and they think, oh, fancy
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  Speaker 3: fancy fancy, right, And that is not the case because
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  Speaker 3: bourgeois refers to like you called me, basics or sort
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  Speaker 3: of a middle class basic individual, yes, or group of individuals.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Right. But there's a there's a long road between the
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: original version of bourgeois that we'll talk about and then
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: the American version that it has now and right, smack
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: dab in the middle are the commis, specifically Karl Marx.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I don't understand why Joseph Engles never gets his due
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: because he and Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto. But it's
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: always just Karl Marx. Karl Marx, you know, must drive
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: angles crazy. But in eighteen forty eight they published the
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Communist Manifesto, and in that they adopted the word that
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: had formerly been middle class people. It wasn't really much
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  Speaker 1: of a put down, it wasn't. It was just a
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: useful word for a while. He equated them with the
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: people who owned the capital that the labor was produced on,
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  Speaker 1: and decided that they were exploiting the proletariat, the working class. Right,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: that's right.
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  Speaker 3: And he was writing in German, so of course he
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: did not say bourgeois. He said bergiar lche Gesellschaft and English.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Make sureman sound beautiful, Chuck, thank.
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  Speaker 2: You, Donka.
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: In America they may translate that as sybil society or
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: maybe a bourgeois society. But either way you slice it,
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: what he's saying is the bourgeoisie are are the bad people.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: They're the one they're exploitive, They're not actually doing anything.
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  Speaker 1: They just own the stuff that the people are actually
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: doing something or using to do the thing that they're doing.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: But really the bourgeoisie are the ones who are making
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: the money off the working class in their labor right.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: So it was not it was not at this at
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: this time, it was not viewed as a very popular
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: or it wasn't it wasn't praise. How about that no
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: one ever used it for praise by this time and
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: when it finally crossed the Atlantic to America around the
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: early twentieth century, the wobbles the industrial workers of the
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: world who were I believe we talked about them before,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: and they were split between communists and anarchists, and there
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: was a big struggle I think between the two. But
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: regardless of whether you're a communist or an anarchists, at
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the beginning of the twentieth century. You were not a
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: fan of the bourgeoisie. And yeah, so the Wobbleys did
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: not like the bourgeoisie either, and then in fact came
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: up with a new slang term for him.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: That's right. The slang word was boushois bushwa. And what's weird?
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: I think that was an a quote from a nineteen
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: seventy article. What's weird, though, is that that word boushwa
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: eventually was sort of morphed into a slang for bs,
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  Speaker 3: like somebody's full of hot air, or bs someone you
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  Speaker 3: know is full of bushwi.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Right, we have to thank our friends at the Grammarphobia
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: blog for digging that stuff up.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: And then so it also kind of morphed in a
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: new way, kind of the way that we view it today.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: But a little yeah, I guess it was pretty much
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: the way we view it today. It first pops up
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: in black culture, where it kind of morphed thanks to
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Gladys Knight and the Pips. They had a disco hit
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty called Bougie Bougie.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: And can we hear a snippet?
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  Speaker 1: No, we can't, unfortunately, but if you want to hear
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: any of the song Boogie Bougie. You can find it
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  Speaker 1: on YouTube or just about anywhere where you can listen
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  Speaker 1: to it free and clear. But it's a great song
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  Speaker 1: and I strongly recommend people go listen to it.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that would be be o u r g
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  Speaker 3: I E comma b o u r g i.
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  Speaker 1: E right, and the whole the whole point of the
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  Speaker 1: song is it's about somebody who comes from the working
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  Speaker 1: class or a poorer background but started to make money
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  Speaker 1: and now they're flaunting it. They have like a new
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  Speaker 1: car with the sun roof, they have new clothes, and
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  Speaker 1: it was a it was a commentary on them, but
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  Speaker 1: also kind of like a snide one too, like like
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  Speaker 1: these these people are being tacky in a way and
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  Speaker 1: forgetting who they are where they come from.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: I guess yeah, it's kind of like that that new
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  Speaker 3: money old money thing, which is just so.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: You know, yeah, I say we take a break, chuck.
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: Yes, I was.
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  Speaker 2: About to say that nice.
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: Softly, jaw.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Soft.
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  Speaker 3: So if you want to go back to the original bougie,
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  Speaker 3: if you want to go back to France. The original
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  Speaker 3: meaning is from a French word b o u r g,
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: which I guess would that be Bourg.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of like berg on the end of a town.
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  Speaker 3: Okay, and that's like a small town or a small
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  Speaker 3: market in the Middle Ages. The people that live there
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  Speaker 3: sort of adopted that name for themselves, so it kind
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: of this this word is just morphing and morphing all
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  Speaker 3: over the place over the years. They were one step
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  Speaker 3: up from like a farming peasant, so they were sort
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  Speaker 3: of the middle class of the.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Time, right, which is just the way that it was.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Again I said, it was like a useful word. It
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: wasn't like a put down. It wasn't like a compliment.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: It was like you are bourgeois. That's that's that descriptor right,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: very nice. And it wasn't until the seventeenth century, specifically,
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  Speaker 1: I think in sixteen seventy when Moliere, the French playwright,
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  Speaker 1: came up with a musical comedy he was hilarious called
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Le Bourgeois gentle Gentleumes or the bourgeois Gentleman. And this
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: is when it takes bourgeois and makes fun of it.
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  Speaker 1: It's Moliere was punching down to the middle class and
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: essentially doing the exact same thing that Gladys Knight and
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  Speaker 1: the Pips are doing with bougie bougie they he was
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  Speaker 1: basically making fun of some middle class social climber who
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: was trying to make a name for himself in French society.
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: That's right, and that would be the definition that is
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: most sort of thought of today in the twenty first
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  Speaker 3: century when someone says bougie. Another modern musical example is
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: Atlanta's own from the atl Migos. You ever listen to Migos, Oh, yeah,
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: it's good stuff. They have a song called bad and
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  Speaker 3: Bougie in this case spelled b o u j e,
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  Speaker 3: and it sort of leans back on that what the
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: Pips we're talking about? Sort of a new fancy lifestyle.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, but two things were different. One the Migos made
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: their money cooking crack in a crock pot, which is
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: a proprietary eponym, and usually there was a oozy in
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: the same room too. And two they were proud of
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  Speaker 1: being bougie and all the new money and tacky like
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: ways that they threw it around like that was the thing.
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  Speaker 1: It wasn't. It wasn't a put down. They were like, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I'm bougie. You should have seen the money I had before,
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  Speaker 1: and now look what I got.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, totally.
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  Speaker 1: It is a great song. Yeah, okay, so that's where
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  Speaker 1: we are today. Bougie it's it's essentially a put down,
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  Speaker 1: depending on whether you've claimed it yourself. If most of
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: the time, if you're calling someone bougie in America, you're
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  Speaker 1: basically saying, like you said at the outset, they're basic,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: They're They're lifestyle in their life is just kind of
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  Speaker 1: boring and pedestrian, the middle of the road and what's
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  Speaker 1: the point kind of thing. Usually it's from somebody who well,
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  Speaker 1: they're just being mean essentially, right, Yeah, but in France
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  Speaker 1: it's not the case.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, in modern France, it does not mean pedestrian. It's
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  Speaker 3: a little more like good, well mannered, well educated. There's
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  Speaker 3: there's like three levels supposedly of a Parisian bourgeois, the
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  Speaker 3: nobility or people that are kind of close to nobility,
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  Speaker 3: or the rich or the crime de la creme. You
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  Speaker 3: have the bourgeois de provence, doctors, attorneys, middle class types,
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  Speaker 3: and then the petite bourgeois who are you know, shopkeepers, artists,
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  Speaker 3: you know, kind of self starting, self employed people.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and even though there seems to be a bit
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: of a hierarchy, to it. They all are. They're behaving
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  Speaker 1: the same way. I think it just depends on how
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: much money you have, is what it's really kind of
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  Speaker 1: carved out between. But the bourgeois in France is exactly
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: what Americans who don't know what bourgeois means think of.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: They're correct, but they're just thinking specifically of the French bourgeois.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah and yeah, I guess that's about it for being
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: bougie and bourgeois and bourgeoisie and Karl Marx and Joseph
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Engels and Migo's and Gladys Knight and the whole lot
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  Speaker 1: of it.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: Chuck, Well, we'll follow up in ten years and see
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: if the definition's changed again.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Great idea. In the meantime, Short Stuff is out. Stuff
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• 10:43
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• 10:46
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