Oral history on "uptight" (1966)

Sun Jan 1 00:20:34 UTC 2006

That's *de*scriptive, not *pre* !  For me, anyway !

  JL

Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: Oral history on "uptight" (1966)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The rule said that -

If the sublect of a sentence is of the form, _a_ number [of people], then
the verb must be plural: _a_ number [of people] _are_ sitting in the stands=
.

If the subject of a sentence is of the form, _the_ number [of people, then
the verb must be singular: _the_ number [of people] sitting in the stands
_is_ small.

-Wilson

On 12/31/05, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> Subject: Re: Oral history on "uptight" (1966)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
------
>
> Wilson, your prescriptive rule is stated too abstractly for my tired
> brain. It doesn't seem familiar, though. Examples would help.
>
> JL
>
> Wilson Gray wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Wilson Gray
> Subject: Re: Oral history on "uptight" (1966)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
------
>
> I didn't know that there was a source novel till now. Thanks for the
> information. Nevertheless, I would be shocked and chagrined to find
> that an example of BE slang that I myself didn't become familiar with
> till after I got out of the Army in 1962 had already appeared in print
> in a book written by, presumably, a white author a year earlier.
>
> I have no idea as to when the film was produced, but a random
> assortment of googled sources give the *release* date as 1965, the
> year in which I saw it.
>
> BTW, did you ever have to learn a prescriptive rule that stated that
> forms like "the number of, the assortment of" requiire a singular
> verb, whereas forms like "a number of, an assortment of" require a
> plural verb? I learned it so well that I no longer have any intuitions
> about such forms. I routinely and consciously apply the rule, which I
> learned in high school.
>
> -Wilson
>
> On 12/30/05, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender: American Dialect Society
> > Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> > Subject: Re: Oral history on "uptight" (1966)
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
------
> >
> > The film was produced in 1964.
> >
> > A search at Amazon.com does not reveal the presence of "uptight," "up
> tight," or "up-tight" in Edward Lewis Wallant's source novel (1961).
> >
> > JL
> >
> > Wilson Gray wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender: American Dialect Society
> > Poster: Wilson Gray
> > Subject: Re: Oral history on "uptight" (1966)
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
------
> >
> > On 12/29/05, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
> > >
> > > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > > -----------------------
> > > Sender: American Dialect Society
> > > Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
> > > Subject: Oral history on "uptight" (1966)
> > >
> > >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
=3D
> > ------
> > >
> > > A few months ago Wilson Gray initiated a thread on the change in
> > > connotation of "uptight" from positive ('excellent') to negative
> > > ('tense, on edge'). This change apparently occurred sometime in the
> > > mid-'60s, despite the 1934 cite given in the OED from J. M. Cain's
> > > _The Postman Always Rings Twice_ ("I'm getting up tight now, and I've
> > > been thinking about Cora"). Jon Lighter speculated that, given the
> > > context, the Cain cite actually meant 'up close (to my imminent
> > > execution)' rather than 'tense'. See:
> > >
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=3D3Dind0508A&L=3D3DADS-L&P=
=3D3D1=3D
> > 571
> > >
> > > Anyway, I've been reading _Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral Histor=
y
> > > of Punk_ by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain (1996), and I came across
> > > some interesting interviews having to do with a series of mixed-media
> > > performances called "Andy Warhol Up-Tight" on Feb. 8-13, 1966. The
> > > performances were at the Film-Makers' Cinematheque in New York (125
> > > West 41 St) and combined films by Warhol with music by the Velvet
> > > Underground.
> > >
> > > -----
> > > p. 12
> > > BILLY NAME [Warhol's photographer]: The entire thing was first called
> > > "Uptight" because when Andy would do something, everybody would get
> > > uptight. Andy was sort of the antithesis to what the avant-garde
> > > romantic artists were at that time.
> > > Filmmakers like Stan Brakhage and Stan Vanderbeek were still bohemian
> > > avant-garde hero artists, whereas Andy was not even an antihero, he
> > > was a zero. And it just made them grit their teeth to have Warhol
> > > becoming recognized as the core of this thing they had built. So
> > > everybody was always uptight whenever we showed up.
> > >
> > > p. 13
> > > RONNIE CUTRONE [Warhol's studio assistant]: The other groups were
> > > taking acid. By this time I was basically off of acid, I was into
> > > Methedrine, because you had to get uptight. "Uptight" used to have a
> > > good connotation -- you know, like Stevie Wonder's song "uptight," bu=
t
> > > we changed it to mean rigid and paranoid. Hence Methedrine.
> > > -----
> > >
> > > These two accounts are somewhat conflicting (not surprising, given
> > > that this is an oral history published three decades after the fact,
> > > describing a notoriously drug-addled scene). Billy Name's account
> > > suggests that "uptight" =3D3D 'tense' was in common use by then (note
> > > OED's cite from Feb. 13, 1966 in the _Sunday Times_ -- perhaps
> > > referring to the Warhol series, then just ending?). Cutrone suggests
> > > that the Methedrine users at Warhol's Factory were responsible for th=
e
> > > change in meaning and popularized it with the title of the series. Or
> > > perhaps the title was meant to have a double meaning: the approbative
> > > sense known to the general public through the Stevie Wonder song then
> > > on the charts, and the new 'nervous' sense known to speed freaks and
> > > others in and around that scene.
> > >
> > > Warhol's "Up-Tight" series also described here:
> > > http://www.warholstars.org/chron/1966.html
> > > Excerpt from _Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story_ by Victor
> > > Bockris and Gerard Malanga:
> > >
> http://www.warholstars.org/warhol/warhol1/warhol1c/warhol1cl/uptight.html
> > > Ad in the _East Village Other_:
> > >
> > >
> http://www.warholstars.org/warhol/warhol1/andy/warhol/chron/pix/uptight.j=
=3D
> > pg
> > >
> > > _Please Kill Me_ is also searchable on Amazon:
> > > http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0140266909/
> > >
> > >
> > > --Ben Zimmer
> > >
> >
> > Uh, my point was actually the loss of the *positive* meaning. My
> earliest
> > memory of the use of "up tight" - ca.1962 - is that it could be either
> > positive or negative, according to context. The earliest negative use
> that =3D
> > I
> > can actually *document* without doing any research elsewhere than in my
> > memory occurs in the 1965 movie, _The Pawnbroker_, when the black robbe=
r
> > quietly says to the white pawnbroker, "Cool it, baby. Don't get up
> tight."
> > But this negative use was hardly new. Of course, then-Little Stevie
> Wonder' s
> > recording using the phrase with the positive meaning was also released
> in
> > 1965 and probably influenced a far larger number of slang-users than di=
d
> > _The Pawnbroker_, a B&W "art" movie destined to become a "classic."
> > Likewise, this positive usage was not new. So, we know that the loss of
> the
> > positive meaning had to have started ca.1965, given the ease with which
> > anyone can show that the phrase was still being used with both
> polarities
> > during that year.
> > --
> > -Wilson
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Shopping
> Find Great Deals on Holiday Gifts at Yahoo! Shopping
>

--
-Wilson Gray

---------------------------------
 Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less