Melodrama

Melodrama (pronounced mel-uh-drah-muh or mel-uh-dram-uh)

(1) A dramatic form (used in theatre, literature, music etc) that does not observe the laws of cause and effect and that exaggerates emotion and emphasizes plot or action at the expense of characterization.

(2) Loosely, (sometimes very loosely), behavior or events thought “melodramatic” (overly dramatic displays of emotion or behavior and applied especially to situations in which “things are blown out of proportion”).

(3) In formal definition (seventeenth, eighteenth & nineteenth centuries), a romantic dramatic composition characterized by sensational incident with music interspersed.

(4) A poem or part of a play or opera spoken to a musical accompaniment (technically, a passage in which the orchestra plays a somewhat descriptive accompaniment, while the actor speaks).

(5) A popular nickname conferred on highly-strung young women with a Mel*.* given name (Melanie, Melissa, Melina, Melinda, Melisandre, Melodie, Melody etc).

1784 (used in 1782 as melodrame): From the French mélodrame (a dramatic composition in which music is used), the construct being mélo- , from the Ancient Greek μέλος (mélos) (limb, member; musical phrase, tune, melody, song) + drame (refashioned by analogy with the Ancient Greek δρᾶμα (drâma) (deed, theatrical act) and cognate to the German Melodram, the Italian melodramma and the Spanish melodrama.  The adjective melodramatic (pertaining to, suitable for, or characteristic of a melodrama) came into use in 1789 (unrelated to political events that year).  Melodrama, melodramaticism, melodramaturgy, melodramatics & melodramatist are nouns, melodramatize, melodramatizing & melodramatized are verbs, melodramatic is an adjective and melodramatically is an adverb; the noun plural is melodramas or melodramata.

As late as the mid-nineteenth century “melodrama” was still used of stage-plays (usually romantic & sentimental) in which songs were interspersed, the action accompanied by orchestral music appropriate to the situations.  By the 1880s, the shift towards a melodrama being understood as “a romantic and sensational dramatic piece with a happy ending” and this proved influential, the musical element ceasing gradually to be an essential feature, the addition of recorded sound to “moving pictures” (movies) the final nail in the coffin.  Since then, a “melodrama” is understood to be “a dramatic piece characterized by sensational incidents and violent appeals to the emotions, but with (usually) a happy ending”.

The origins of melodrama lie in late sixteenth century Italian opera and reflect an attempt to convince audiences (or more correctly, composers and critics) that the form (ie opera or melodrama) was a revival of the Classical Greek tragedy.  It was a time in Europe when there was a great reverence for the cultures of Antiquity, something the result of the scholars and archivists (and frankly the publicists) of the Renaissance building a somewhat idealized construct of the epoch and the content providers noted the labels, the German-British Baroque composer Frederick Handel (1685–1759) using both for his works.  In the late eighteenth century French dramatists began to develop melodrama as a distinct genre by elaborating the dialogue and adding spectacle, action and violence to the plot-lines, a technique still familiar in the 2020s, sensationalism and extravagant emotionalism as effective click-bait now it was for ticket sales in earlier times.

The use of “melodrama” to refer to the life of a troubled popular culture figure represents a bit of a jump in meaning but it’s now well-understood.

The path of the musical form had earlier been laid in text, something becoming a more significant influence as the spread of the printing press made mass-market publications more accessible and they spread even within non-literate populations because as public and private readings became common forms of entertainment.  Although elements of what would later be understood as melodrama exist in the gloomy tragedies of the French novelist Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (1707–1777), more of an influence on the composers would be those who wrote with a lighter touch including the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) whose Pygmalion (1775) and French theatre director and playwright René-Charles Guilbert de Pixerécourt (1773–1844) whose Le Pèlerin blanc ou les Enfants du hameau (The White Pilgrim (or The Children of the Village)) both came to be regarded as part of the inchoate framework of the genre.  Literary theorists still debate the matter of cause & effect between melodrama and the growing vogue of the Gothic novel, one of fiction’s more emotionally manipulative paths, many concluding the relationship between the two was symbiotic.

There was also the commercial imperative.  Literary historians have documented the simultaneous proliferation of melodramas produced for the English stage during the nineteenth century (notably adaptations of novels by popular authors such as Charles Dickens (1812–1870) and Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832)) and the paucity in original work of substance.  There are some who have argued the writers had “lost their ear” for dramatic verse and prose but it more likely they realized they had “lost their audiences” and these were people with bills to pay (the term “potboiler” was coined later to describe “books written only to provide food for the stove” but few authors of popular fiction have ever been far removed from concerns with their sales).  The reason the melodramas which flourished in the 1800s were so popular will be unsurprising to modern film-makers, political campaign strategists and other content providers for they can be deconstructed as a class of naively sensational entertainment in which the protagonists & antagonists were excessively virtuous or exceptionally evil (thus all tiresome complexities reduced for something black & white), the conflict played out with blood, thrills and violence (spectres, ghouls, witches & vampires or the sordid realism of drunkenness, infidelity or personal ruin used as devices as required).

The word “melodrama” appears often in commentaries on politics and that’s a trend which was probably accelerated by the presentation moving for most purposes to screens and Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) revolutionizing the business by applying the tricks & techniques of reality TV (itself an oxymoron) meant the whole process can now be thought an unfolding melodrama, indeed, the Trump model cannot work as anything else.  The idea of “politics as theatre” was first discussed in the US in the 1960s but then a phenomenon like Mr Trump would have been thought absurdly improbable.

Because of the popularity of the form, melodrama has rarely found much favor with the critics and that old curmudgeon Henry Fowler (1858–1933) in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) noted (and, one suspects, not without some satisfaction) that the term generally was “…used with some contempt, because the appeal of such plays as are acknowledged to deserve the title is especially to the unsophisticated & illiterate whose acquaintance with human nature is superficial, but whose admiration for goodness and detestation of wickedness is ready & powerful.”  Henry Fowler moved among only a certain social stratum.  He added that the task of the melodramatist’s was to establish in the audience’s mind the notion of the dichotomous characters as good & wicked and then “…provide striking situations that shall provoke and relieve anxieties on behalf of poetic justice.”  One device once used to produce the desired effect was of course music and a whole academic industry emerged in the mid-twentieth century to explain how different sounds could be used to suggest or summon certain emotions and because music increasingly ceased to be an essential part of the melodramatic form, the situations, dialogue and events in purely textual productions became more exaggerated.

Kammback

Kammback (pronounced cam-bak)

A motif in automotive styling (originally dictated by wind tunnel findings during research into aerodynamic properties) in which rear of the car slopes downwards before being abruptly cut off to terminate in a vertical or near-vertical surface.  The things are known also as the Kamm tail (K-tail).

1950s (the actual design first appearing in 1938): The construct was Kamm + back.  The surname Kamm (related to Kamp) was of Germanic or Jewish (Ashkenazic) origin and translates literally from the German as “comb”.  The German comb was from the Middle High German kamb, kambe, kam & kamme and the Yiddish kam (comb).  Genealogists conclude Kamm was probably an metonymic occupational surname for someone who either made or sold combs, a common tool used for grooming or for textile work such as carding or combing wool.  There’s also the possibility the name of some Kamm clans could have been of topographic origin because in German, Kamm can also mean “ridge” or “crest” of a hill, mountain or some other elevation; it could thus have referred to someone who lived near such a geographical feature.  Less likely is that some arose from nicknames based on physical features or personal characteristics with Kamm used to describe someone with hair resembling a comb or someone with a sharp or distinctive personality.  The surname emerged in the Middle Ages, a time when hereditary family names were becoming more common in German-speaking regions and in addition to the presence in Germany, exists at various scale in areas with a historic patter of German migration (notably the north-eastern US and South Australia.

Back was from the Middle English bak, from the Old English bæc, from the Proto-West Germanic bak, from the Proto-Germanic bakam & baką which may be related to the primitive Indo-European beg- (to bend).  In other European languages there was also the Middle Low German bak (back), from the Old Saxon bak, the West Frisian bekling (chair back), the Old High German bah and the Swedish and Norwegian bak; there are no documented connections outside the Germanic and in other modern Germanic languages the cognates mostly have been ousted in this sense by words akin to Modern English ridge such as Danish ryg and the German Rücken.  At one time, many Indo-European languages may have distinguished the horizontal back of an animal or geographic formation such as a mountain range from the upright back of a human while in some cases a modern word for "back" may come from a word related to “spine” such as the Italian schiena or Russian spina or “shoulder”, the examples including the Spanish espalda & Polish plecy.

Tail was from the Middle English tail, tayl & teil (hindmost part of an animal), from the Old English tægl & tægel (tail), from the Proto-Germanic taglaz & taglą (hair, fibre; hair of a tail) (source also of the Old High German zagal, the German Zagel (tail), the dialectal German Zagel (penis), the Old Norse tagl (horse's tail) and the Gothic tagl (hair), from the primitive Indo-European doklos, from a suffixed form of the roots dok & dek- (something long and thin (referring to such things as fringe, lock of hair, horsetail & to tear, fray, shred)), source also of the Old Irish dual (lock of hair) and the Sanskrit dasah (fringe, wick).  It was cognate with the Scots tail (tail), the Dutch teil (tail, haulm, blade), the Low German Tagel (twisted scourge, whip of thongs and ropes; end of a rope), the dialectal Danish tavl (hair of the tail), the Swedish tagel (hair of the tail, horsehair), the Norwegian tagl (tail), the Icelandic tagl (tail, horsetail, ponytail), and the Gothic tagl (hair). In some senses, development appears to have been by a generalization of the usual opposition between head and tail.  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) suggest the primary sense, at least among the Germanic tongues, seems to have been "hairy tail," or just "tuft of hair," but already in Old English the word was applied to the hairless "tails" of worms, bees etc.  The alternative suggestion is that the notion common to all is that of the "long, slender shape."  It served as an adjective from the 1670s.  A long obsolete Old English word for tail was steort.  Kammback is a noun; the noun plural is kammbacks.  No lexicographer seems to have listed Kammbackesque, Kammbacklike or Kammbackish as standard adjectives but, given the extent of the deviances from Professor Kamm's original which are still labelled as “Kammbacks”, they might be useful forms.  Who wouldn't want to be able to use terms like the comparative “more Kammbackish” and the superlative “most Kammbackish”?

Some notable Kammbacks

The Kammback (also known as the Kamm tail) was named after German engineer & aerodynamicist Professor Wunibald Kamm (1893–1966) who during the 1930s pioneered the shape, his work assisted greatly by some chicanery within the Nazi military-industrial complex which enabled the FKFA (Forschungsinstituts für Kraftfahrwesen und Fahrzeugmotoren Stuttgart (Research Institute of Automotive Engineering and Vehicle Engines Stuttgart) institute he established in 1930s to secure funding to construct a full-sized wind tunnel equipped with a two-part steel treadmill in the floor and an 8.8 metre (350 inch) diameter axial fan, able to drive air at up to 400 km/h (250 mph).  What the two concentric floor turntables allowed was that as well as enabling turbulence to be studied from the side on the running steel belt, slip angles were also possible.   At the time, it was the most modern structure of its kind on the planet, the very existence of which was owed to the priority afforded by the Nazis to re-armament, especially the development of modern airframes, most of the money eventually coming from the Reichs-Luftfahrt-Ministerium (RLM, the State Air Ministry).

A classic Kammback on a 1970 Fiat 850 Coupé (1965-1973), one of the last of the generation of post-war mainstream rear-engined cars built in Western Europe.

While Professor’s Kamm’s work on automobile shapes continued, increasingly the facility became focused on military contracts, contributing to an extraordinary range of novel aircraft designs, some revolutionary and most of which would never reach production.  All of this ceased in July 1944 when the facility was severely damaged in air-raids by Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command, a costly campaign in which one mission incurred a loss-ration of 20% and it wasn’t until the late 1940s that reconstruction began after it was acquired by Daimler-Benz AG which enlarged and modernized the machinery, the early fruits including the 300 SL (the W194, first gullwing coupé) which won the 1952 Le Mans 24 hour race and the W196R “streamliner” Grand Prix race cars which created such a sensation in 1954.  Although he wasn’t part of “Operation Paperclip” (the US project which secured (by various means including the military “smuggling” them into the country despite many being wanted by those investigating war crimes and crimes against humanity) Professor Kann was acknowledged as one of the world’s leading authorities on turbulence and between 1947-1953 was part of the team working at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.  Some of what was undertaken then remains classified but it can be assumed it was all related to military projects and what would later become the space program.

The Kammback which really wasn't: 1976 Chevrolet Vega Kammback.

One often misunderstood aspect of the Kamm tail is that the aerodynamic benefits are realized only if the flat, vertical surface created was no more than about 50% of the total area of the vehicle (as viewed directly from the back).  That’s why even designs which don’t conform to the requirements are often casually referred to as “Kammbacks” and in the US, Chevrolet were cynically opportunistic when the Vega range (1970-1977) included what was nothing more than a two-door station wagon (estate), it was named “Vega Kammback”.  Actually, even the existence of the thing in the US was unusual because at that stage, General Motors (GM) really “didn’t like” small station wagons but many critics did agree the Kammback was the best looking of the Vega’s body-styles.

2023 Ford Mustang coupe (left) and convertible (right).  Three of the Mean Girls (2004) ensemble (Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried (b 1985)), Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert (b 1982)) & Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan (b 1986)) in 2023 filmed a commercial for Pepsi Corporation, one of the props a 2023 Ford Mustang convertible.  So ubiquitous has the Kammback become that its now unnoticed (except in its absence), one quirk being that when convertibles are created from such a base, many of the aerodynamic advantages are lost, one reason why (all else being equal which is rarely the case) a convertible will tend to have slightly inferior performance and slightly higher fuel consumption.

The knowledge gained from aero-engine development during World War I (1914-1918) meant even the mainstream engines of the 1920s were developing much more power so the speeds of cars were rising.  Some intrepid types also took advantage of the number of huge, powerful aero-engines being sold cheaply as “war surplus”, installing them is powerboats and racing cars, resulting in some fast machines and not a few fatalities.  However, it became clear the law of diminishing returns applied as speeds rose because while an increase of 100 horsepower might make possible an increase in top speed from 100 to 120 mph, another 100 hp might yield only another 10 mph; wind resistance increasing too much for the power to overcome.  Thus the interest in aerodynamics, then usually called “streamlining” something which, coincidently, produced some memorable art deco designs buy the engineers were interested in higher speeds and lower fuel consumption for a given quantum of energy input (fuel consumption).

2014 Shelby American Cobra 427 50^th Anniversary Edition in aluminium (left) and 1964 Shelby Daytona Coupe (right).

The AC Shelby Cobra (1962-1967) was small, light and powerful which made it an instant success on the race tracks but, ruggedly handsome though it was, its aerodynamics limited the top speed and on the some fast, open European circuits it gave away as much as 50 km/h (30 mph) to less powerful but more streamlined machines.  More power wasn’t the solution but a new Kammback body was and the Daytona duly won its class in the 1965 World Sports Car Championship.  All used the 289 cubic in (4.7 litre) Ford Windsor V8 although one briefly was fitted with a 390 (6.5) FE V8 and the planned 427 (7.0) version (CSX3027, the so-called “Daytona Super Coupe”) was never completed until sold by Shelby some 17 years later in a “rummage sale”.  The Kammback Daytona was the work of US designer Pete Brock (b 1936) and in a macabre coincidence, his namesake, the Australian racing driver Peter Brock (1945–2006) was killed while competing (in retirement) in a replica Daytona Coupe during the now defunct Targa West (2005-2021) in Western Australia.

Before the Kammback, the state of the aerodynamic art was the airship-like "streamliner" which, although it probably didn't cross the engineers' minds, owed something to the train of a bride's gown.  1939 Lincoln Zephyr V12 Coupe (left) and 1937 Mercedes-Benz 540K (W29) Special Roadster (originally delivered to Mohammad Zahir Shah (1914–2007; the last King of Afghanistan 1933-1973) (right).

What soon became clear was that the shape of the dirigible (better known as the “airship” or “blimp”) was close to ideal and needed to be tweaked only by honing it into a “teardrop shape” with a rounded nose, extending to a long, tapered tail, a shape which in the 1930s caught the imagination of designers who rendered some memorable designs although the most famous were impractical and inefficient in terms of packaging, thus suitable only for the then small market niche which sought speed.  It was to try to gain the benefits of streamlining in a shape more suitable for mass production that Professor Kamm and others took their slide-rules to the wind tunnel began to experiment.  The solution which emerged was to terminate the lovely, long flowing roofline with an abrupt end at a surface which was either vertical or close to it, an unexpected benefit being an improvement in high-speed stability, obviating the need for (a usually central) stabilizing fin (a la an aircraft’s tail).  By 1938, BMW had produced a car with a Kammback and although World War II (1938-1945) interrupted development by the late 1940s the shape had begun to appear in showrooms and in little more than ten years it was common in specially bodied racing cars.  That didn’t mean the allure of the teardrop went away because the aerodynamicists (who now had both access to bigger wind tunnels in which higher speeds could be tested and the novelty of computers which could process previously unimaginable quantities of data) could still prove ultimate slipperiness could be attained only with the teardrop.

Pre-Kammback & non-Kammback.  Porsche 917LH (Langheck (long tail)) at Arnage, Le Mans 24 hour, 1969 (left) and 2020 McLaren Speedtail (right).  Such things are now possible.

It was this which convinced Porsche to use such a tail on their revolutionary 917 in 1969 and having encountered no stability issues on their test track, sent the car to the circuits where it proved as fast as expected.  Unfortunately, the size of the Porsche test facility limited the 917 to 290 km/h (180 mph) and when on the long straights of some European circuits when speeds exceeded 320 km/h, it was clear the thing was lethally unstable.  Although the drivers killed at the wheel of the early 917s didn’t die at such velocities, it was understood it would be only a matter of time so the rear bodywork was redesigned.  When in 2018 McLaren returned to the teardrop for the “Speedtail” (a car which sacrificed just about anything not mandated by law in the quest for top speed), it was able to achieve a safe (it’s a relative term) 400 km/h (250 mph) because advances in aerodynamics, computing, materials & hydraulics had made such things possible although the packaging inefficiencies remained, something not significant for the target market.

Junk

Junk (pronounced juhngk)

(1) In historic nautical use, old cable or cordage used when untwisted for making gaskets, maps, swabs etc and (when picked apart), the oakum used for filling the seams of wooden ships.

(2) A fragment of any solid substance; a thick piece; a chunk (obsolete).

(3) Old, damaged or discarded material (metal, paper, rags etc).

(4) Anything regarded as worthless, meaningless, or contemptible; nonsense; gibberish.

(5) Anything judged cheap or trashy.

(6) In slang, the narcotic heroin (used casually of other injected drugs, the users thus “junkies”).

(7) In historic sailor’s slang, as saltjunk, the salted beef or pork used as rations on long voyages, the origin being the comparisons in taste and texture made with junk (frayed old rope).

(8) In slang, the external genitalia (especially of a male if used as a target in unarmed combat).

(9) In baseball slang, relatively slow, unorthodox pitches, deceptive to the batter in movement or pace (knuckleballs, forkballs etc).

(10) A sea-going sailing vessel with a traditional Chinese design and used primarily in Chinese waters, having square sails spread by battens, a high stern (poop deck) and (usually) a flat bottom.

(11) A sperm whale equivalent of the melon (cetacean)

(12) To cast aside as junk; discard as no longer of use; to scrap.

1350-1400: From the Middle English joynk & junke (old refuse from boats and ships), from the earlier nautical sense of “old rope or cable”, and the use of junk to describe “old rope and such” may have been influenced by the words “join, joint &, juncture”.  The Middle English junk, jonk, jounke, jonke & junck (a rush; basket made of rushes), from the Old French jonc or junc (rush, reed (also used figuratively to describe “something of little value”), from the Latin iuncus (rush, reed) was once often cited as a source but etymologists have concluded there’s “no evidence of connection”.  In nautical use, the extension from “old rope & cables” to “old refuse from boats, ships & ports” had occurred by the 1660s, travelling inland to “old or discarded articles of any kind” by the late nineteenth century, initially with the implication of reusability.(following the naval tradition with rope) as opposed to “scrap” which (except for metals) had an air of finality.  Saltjunk (salt beef or pork used on long voyages) was first recorded in 1762, the slang for heroin (later used loosely of other injected narcotics) dates from 1925, junk food (the term rather than the product” first appeared in the US in 1971, the culinary equivalent of junk art (from a decade earlier and used by conservative critics to decry some modern art).  Junk mail (unsolicited advertizing delivered to the letterbox was so described in 1954 and was later re-used for the electronic version (“junk email” thought just a letter too much and never caught on) while the term junk bond (a financial instrument (originally bonds) rated below “investment grade” due to a high risk of default by the issuer and thus offered at a high interest rate) emerged in 1979.  The verb, dating from 1803, also owed something the old nautical practice of “cutting up ropes for other purposes” in that it conveyed the idea of “to cut off in lumps”, the modern sense of “to throw away as trash, to scrap” appearing a century-odd later.  The synonyms can thus (depending on context) be rubbish, trash, rubble, debris, detritus, refuse, litter or clutter while (in the sense of (to throw away) they include bin, chuck, chuck away, chuck out, discard, dispose of, ditch, dump, scrap, throw away, throw out, toss or trash.  Junk is a noun & verb, junkie & junker are nouns, junky is a noun & adjective, junklike, junkier & junkiest are adjectives and junked & junking are verbs; the noun plural is junk or (of the sailing vessels) junks.

The use to describe the Chinese sailing vessels dates from 1545–1555 and was from the Portuguese junco, either from or influenced by the Dutch jonk, from the Arabic جُنْك (junk), from the thirteenth century Malay (Austronesian) jong (large boat, ship) or Javanese djong (a variant of djung), from the Old Javanese jong (seagoing ship), ultimately from either the Hokkien 船 (chûn) or the Teochew 船 (zung), from the Proto-Min -džion (ship, boat).  The use in Malay may have been influence by the dialectal Chinese (Xiamen) chûn (which may be compared with the Guangdong (Cantonese) dialect syùhn, and the (Mandarin) Chinese chuán).  In sixteenth century English use it was recorded as giunche & iunco.  Unrelated words include junket and the German Junker.  Junket was from the Middle English jonket (basket made of rushes; food, probably made of sour milk or cream; banquet, feast), from the Medieval Latin iuncta, possibly from the Latin iuncus (rush, reed) and thus possible a doublet of jonquil (a species of daffodil and a shade of yellow).  By the 1520s the meaning had shifted to “feast or banquet”, presumably because of the association with “picnic basket”, leading to the early nineteenth century notion of a “pleasure-trip” which later evolved by the 1880s to mean “a trip made ostensibly for business but which is really for leisure or entertainment”.  Junkets remain common (often well-disguised for expense-claim purposes) and in the gambling business, a junket is a gaming room for which the capacity and limits change daily, often rented out to private vendors who run tour groups through them and give a portion of the proceeds to the main casino.  The idea of a junket being “a delicacy” or “a basket” is long obsolete but remains a culinary niche, describing a dessert made of sweetened curds; it was originally a type of cream cheese, the name gained from it being originally prepared and served in a rush basket.  The English Junker was from the German Junker, from the Middle High German juncherre (young lord; not yet knighted nobleman).  As a term it became associated with Prussia militarism and was used to refer to the stereotypical “narrow-minded and anti-liberal, authoritarian attitudes associated with the “Junker class” (the sometimes impoverished) land-owners of “great Prussian estates”, the families which provided the so many of the officer class of the Prussian and later Imperial German Armies (thus “junkerdom”, “junkerish” & “junkerism” entering the language of political science).

Stocking up: Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) buying junk food to share with former special friend DJ Samantha Ronson (b 1977) , Los Angeles, October, 2008.

Junk is widely used in derived terms and idiomatic forms including “Jesus junk” (Christian-specific junk mail or other merchandize), “hunk of junk” (a term which adds no meaning but is a compelling rhyme (compared with “heap of junk”, “pile of junk” “load of junk”, all of which mean the same thing) and often heard in IT departments when discussing components more than a year old), “junkaholic” (either a hoarder of what others perceive as junk or an individual who consumes much junk food), “junkhead” (either a drug user or addict (ie a synonym of “junkie”) or in engineering, an always unusual (no close to extinct) design of internal combustion engine (ICE) in which the cylinder head is formed by a dummy piston mounted inside the top of the cylinder, “junk news” (a early 1980s critique of “journalism” consisting of sensationalized trivia (as opposed to the later “fake news” which was intended to mislead rather than being merely entertaining)), “Junk DNA” (in earlier use in genetics, “any portion of the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid; the so-called “building blocks” or “framework of life”) sequence of a chromosome or a genome with no apparent function” (the term “non-functional DNA” now preferred because there’s now a greater understanding of what was one dismissed as “junk DNA”), “junk in the trunk” (having a big butt), “junk shop” (a shop selling second-hand goods, originally cheap but there are now some “junk shops” with some high-priced items), “ junk drawer” (the place designated for the storage of various miscellaneous, small, but (at least potentially) useful items (and apparently usually the third-drawer down in the kitchen); some residences even have a “junk room”), “junk science” (assertions or methods expressed in the language of science but either with no scientific legitimacy or with data interpreted in a misleading manner), “junk conference” (a nominally “academic” conference run for other purposes (holiday junkets, commercial promotion etc), “junk job” (used variously of employment thought boring, pointless, disrespectable or offering no obvious social benefit, “junkware” (in computing, (1) malicious or unwanted software or (2) software which is buggy or doesn’t work), “junkshot” (in oil drilling, a method to shut off a faulty blowout preventer (BOP) by injecting the BOP with material which will “choke off” the hole), “space junk” (the objects in orbit around the Earth that were created by human activity but which now serve no useful purpose and can be a hazard to satellites (known also as “space debris”), “junk hook” (in whaling, a hook designed for handling or extracting the unwanted material (junk) from the head of a whale) “junkman” (one who works in a “junk yard” (a place where scrapped items (typically cars) are sold for parts or metal recycling).

A little corner in the late Rudi Klein's junkyard, Los Angeles, California.

In the junkyard business, in some jurisdictions, there are cars with “salvage titles” and “junk titles”, both designations related to the condition of a vehicle but serving different purposes and reflecting distinct stages in a vehicle’s lifecycle and potential future.  A Salvage Title can be issued when a vehicle has been damaged or declared a total loss by an insurance company, typically because exceeds a certain percentage of the car's assessed value (75-90%, depending on local regulations).  Despite that, a with a salvage title may be repairable and returned to the road after undergoing proper repairs and inspections although the title usually significantly reduces the resale value and can be a factor in insurance companies limiting or denying subsequent coverage.  A Junk Title (also known as a “Certificate of Destruction”) can be issued for a vehicle that considered irreparable or not safe for use on public roads and thus suitable only for scrap or the salvaging of usable parts.  Once a junk title is issued, the vehicle cannot be registered or driven on public roads again, unlike a salvage title vehicle which can be repaired or restored.  Informally, the terms “junkyard” and “scrapyard” are used interchangeably and while there used to be many “car wreckers”, of late, environmentally respectable titles like “recycling centre” have come into vouge.

The Junkyard: The Rudi Klein Collection

Although well-known in the collector community for its large stocks of rusty and wrecked Porsches, Mercedes-Benz and other notable vehicles from the post-war years, the Californian “junkyard” belonging to Rudi Klein (1936-2001) attracted world-wide interest when details were published of the gems which had for decades been secreted in a large and secure shed on the site.  Mr Klein was a German butcher who in the late 1950s emigrated to the US to work at his trade but quickly discovered a more enjoyable and lucrative living could be had dealing in damaged or wrecked European cars, sometimes selling the whole vehicles and sometimes the parts (“parting out” in junkyard parlance).  His Porsche Foreign Auto business had operated for some time before he received a C&D (cease & desist) letter from the German manufacturer’s US attorneys, the result being the name change in 1967 to Porche (sic) Foreign Auto.

Three dusty Lamborghini P400 Miuras in a corner of Mr Klein's now famous shed.

Unlike many collectors, Mr Klein amassed his collection unobtrusively and, astonishingly to many, apparently with little interest in turning a profit on the rarest, despite some of them coming to be worth (at the time of his death), over a million US dollars.  In the way of such things, just what sat unseen in the big shed was the stuff of speculation and rumor, the mystery enhanced by tales of Mr Klein turning the junkyard’s dogs (“junkyard dog” itself an idiomatic use suggesting the particularly aggressive type of canine associated with such a role and applied figuratively also to people of similar temperament) on those who ventured too close to the locked doors although some trusted souls apparently were give a tour on the basis of maintaining the secret and it seems all respected the confidence.  After Mr Klein died in 2001, his two sons preserved the collection untouched but in October 2024, a series of rolling sales will be conducted by the auction house Sotheby’s.

Period photograph of the 1935 Mercedes-Benz 500 K Special Coupé (the “Caracciola Coupé” Roadster-Limousine).

Undoubtedly, the star (though not the most expensive) of the show will be the 1935 Mercedes-Benz 500 K Special Coupé, built by Sindelfingen (the factory’s in-house coach-building house) for the three-time European Grand Prix Championship winner Rudolf Caracciola (1901-1959).  The leading driver of the Mercedes-Benz racing team, it was said of him by Alfred Neubauer (1891–1980; racing manager of the Mercedes-Benz competition department 1926-1955): “He never really learned to drive, he just felt it, the talent came to him instinctively”.  The one-off 500 K (W29, deconstructed as 5.0 litre (306 cubic inch) straight-eight with kompressor (supercharger)) was a “gift” (ie part of his “package” as a factory driver) and confusingly tagged (the build-sheet is included in the documentation) by Sindelfingen as a “Roadster-Limousine” which neither etymologically nor by coach-building conventions makes sense but was explained by the car being “built on the chassis of a 500 K Special Roadster with limousine-like fittings & appointments.”  As a basis, the sleek 500 K Special Roadster was illustrious enough, described in the post-war years as “the brightest glint of a golden age” (the reference to the cars of the era, not the geopolitics) so the lines and unique provenance of the “Caracciola Coupé” will attract much interest.

The “Caracciola Coupé” in Mr Klein's shed

It’s believed Caracciola used the car until the late 1930s when it is said to have passed into the hands of Count Galeazzo Ciano (1903–1944; Italian foreign minister 1936-1944), notable both for his entertaining (if not wholly reliable) diaries and having married the daughter of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943).  The marriage was certainly a good career move (the Italians would joke of the one they called “ducellio”: “the son-in-law also rises”) although things didn’t end well, Il Duce having him shot (at the insistence of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945), something which over the years must have drawn the envy of many a father-in-law (and the sentiment was expressed by Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) who didn't always approve of his daughters' choices).  There seems to be no evidence of Count Ciano’s stewardship but even if not true, it’s certainly the sort of car he’d liked to have owned.  Things become murky after the outbreak of World War II (1939-1945) but in 1962 it was discovered in Ethiopia, covered in tarpaulins and hidden in a manure pile.  That may hint at a (probably unrelated) connection between count & car because in 1935, during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (the last war of the era of European colonialism which even at the time seemed to many an embarrassing anachronism), Ciano had commanded the Regia Aeronautica's (Royal Air Force) 15th Bomber Flight (nicknamed La Disperata (the desperate ones)) in air-raids on primitive tribes during the Italian invasion, being awarded the Medaglia d'argento al valor militare (Silver Medal of Military Valor), prompting some to observe he deserved a gold medal for bravery in accepting a silver one, his time in the air having hardly exposed him to danger.

The “Caracciola Coupé”, "Best in Class" winner, Pebble Beach, Monterey County, California, 1978.

The coupé in 1963 then travelled to the US where it was subject to an 18 month restoration before being entered in the 1966 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, finishing second in class, behind a Bugatti Royale (type 41), beginning a 13 year career as a fixture on the North American concours & classic car circuit becoming, a little ironically given its later 44-year hiatus, one of best-known Mercedes-Benz of the “supercharger era”.  Back on the manicured lawns of Pebble Beach in 1978, it went one better than a decade earlier, this time taking first in class and in 1979 it was purchased by Mr Klein who exhibited at a show at least once.  After that, it was left to languish in the big shed but it remained solid, mechanically original (apparently, in the restoration only the paint, chrome, upholstery and perishable parts were replaced) so as re-commissioning projects go, while unlikely to be “cheap”, it won’t be intimidating.  Sotheby’s haven’t published a price estimate but most are suggesting it should achieve between US$3-4 million.

Out in the California sun: The Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster & aluminum Gullwing with the one-off Iso Griffo A3/L Spider prototype behind the roadster, sitting beneath a Facel Vega HK500.

At auction also among dozens will be a 1957 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Roadster, a rare (one of 29) 1955, aluminum-bodied Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing (long thought lost and likely to realize close to US$10 million), a trio of damaged Lamborghini P400 Miuras, the one-off Iso Griffo A3/L Spider prototype (which will need to have its unique front coachwork re-created but will still command well over US$1 million) and a 1939 Horch 855 Special Roadster, always prized for its rakish lines and the only 855 known to have survived the war.

Decadence

Decadence (pronounced dek-uh-duhns or dih-keyd-ns)

(1) The act or process of falling into an inferior condition or state; deterioration; decay.

(2) Synonyms: decline, retrogression, degeneration

(3) Moral degeneration or decay; turpitude.

(4) Unrestrained or excessive self-indulgence.

(5) The decadent movement in literature (often with an initial capital and extended sometimes to the visual arts).

1540–1550: From the early fifteenth century French décadence, from the Medieval Latin dēcadentia (decay), from the Late Latin dēcadent-, stem of dēcadēns (falling away), the present participle of the Vulgar Latin dēcadere (to fall away; to decay), an etymologically restored form of the Latin dēcidere (to fall away, fail, sink, perish”), the construct being de- (apart, down) + cadere (to fall (from the primitive Indo-European root kad- (to fall)).  The meaning “process of falling away from a better or more vital state” dates from the 1620s while the use to define epochs is traced by some historians to the sense used of “decadent” in 1837 by Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881): “…in a state of decline or decay (from a former condition of excellence)”, decadent from the from French décadent (a back-formation from décadence).  The use to refer (disparaging) the perceived corruption of literary values began in the 1850s and thirty years later was common in both French and English criticism.  The addition of the sense of decadence being “a form of self-indulgence” seems not to have emerged until the late 1960s when it was applied (negatively) to the counter-culture but modern commerce soon re-packaged to use it of products marketed as “desirable and satisfying”; creamy desserts were often so labeled and the cake “Chocolate Decadence” became a generic term, the recipes varying greatly in detail.  Originally, the term “decadence” was used of “a period of historical decline, particularly of empires or civilizations” but, from the late nineteenth century, it shifted to become a literary & artistic word describing a movement and later a type of moral or cultural behavior, particularly human behavior that is seen as self-indulgent or excessive.  Finally, it became the name of a chocolate cake, something (vaguely) linked to association philosophers and historians would make between the decline of civilizations declined from periods of greatness into moral and structural decay, often with a focus on materialism and indulgence.  Decadence & decadency are nouns, decadent is a noun & verb and decadently is an adverb; the noun plural is decadences.

The related adjective deciduous was from the Latin dēciduus (falling down or off), from dēcidō (fall down) and is now most familiar from the arboreal branch of biology where it describes trees which shed their leaves (variously in winter, the fall (autumn) or the dry season.  However, in the technical language of anatomy it’s used of body parts which fall off or are shed, at a particular time or stage of development (ie not the result of injury or disease) and more generally can be used figuratively of things transitory or ephemeral, this mostly as a literary device.  Obviously also related is the noun decay, from the Middle English decayen & dekeyen (to decrease, diminish), from the Anglo-Norman decaeir (to fall away, decay, decline), from the Vulgar Latin dēcadere.  Decay describes the process or result of being gradually decomposed; rot, decomposition and is widely used of qualities such as (1) a deterioration of condition; loss of status, quality, strength, or fortune, (2) civic, societal or moral decay and (3) systemic decay.  It was also once used of overthrows of governments and even now has a technical meaning in computer programming.

Lindsay Lohan arriving at the Maddox Gallery to attend the Tyler Shields (b 1982) Decadence exhibition private view, London, February 2016.

Despite the spelling, unrelated is the noun “decade”.  Decade (the spelling decad long obsolete) was from the Middle English decade, from the Old French decade, from the Late Latin decādem ((set of) ten), from the Ancient Greek δεκάς (dekás), from δέκα (déka) (ten).  In English, the reference to a “span of ten years” was originally a clipping of the phrase “decade of years”, that seeming tautology existing because over the centuries there have been also “decades of soldiers” (ie ten men), “decades of days” (in history a period of ten days, particularly those in the ancient Egyptian, Coptic, and French Revolutionary calendars, “decades of books” (a work in ten parts or books, particularly such divisions of Roman historian Livy’s (Titus Livius; 59 BC–17 AD) Ab Urbe Condita (literally “From the Founding of the City” and in English usually styled as History of Rome), “decades of prayers” (in the rituals of the Roman Catholic Church, a series of prayers counted on a rosary, typically consisting of an Our Father, followed by ten Hail Marys, and concluding with a Glory Be and sometimes the Fatima Prayer), “decades of stuff” (things which existed as a group, set or series of ten),  The dominant, modern sense of “a period of ten years” dates from the seventeenth century while the notion it “usually” is one beginning with a year ending in 0 and ending with a year ending in 9” was (more or less) formalized in the nineteenth.  In technical use “decade” has been re-purposed in some specialist fields including the Braille language (to refer to the various sets of ten sequential characters with predictable patterns), electronics (of devices or components used to represent digits and physics & engineering (of the interval between any two quantities having a ratio of 10 to 1).

For what most people do most of the time, a decade is “a period of ten years beginning with a year ending in 0 and ending with a year ending in 9” (ie the 1980s, 1990s etc) bit it remains correct that a decade can be any period of that duration (such as 1994-2003).  May style guides don’t approve of this, not because it’s technically wrong but because it can tend to confuse if things are not carefully phrased.  That seems wise advice although the suggestion terms like decennium or decennary can be a substitute for “non-standard” ten-year periods is unlikely to catch on.  Words nerds note that the computation protocol for something like “the 1970s” is xxx0-xxx9 whereas for “real” decades it’s xxx1-xxx0, following the practice for centuries and millennia, something which creates the certain anomalies because there was no “year 0”, the Western calendrical shifting directly from 1 BC to 1 AD.  “Decadence” and “decade” do however sometimes mix: the Japanese term Lost Decade (失われた10年) (Ushinawareta Jūnen) coined in the late 1990s to describe the period of national economic stagnation in precipitated by the collapse of the asset price bubble (notably Tokyo commercial floor-space) which began in 1990.  The phenomenon though endured and economists responded in subsequent decades by adding 失われた20年(lost 20 years) and 失われた30年 (lost 30 years).  The 2020s are showing little indication of a return to high growth and given Japan’s structural challenges (debt rations and an aging & declining population, there’s an expectation 失われた40年 will appear in the late 2020.

The other chocolate cake: Chocolate Decadence Soap by Heritage Downs: Aus$6.50 (inc GST) per cake; the gift for the chocaholic who has everything.

In the history of art or literary theory, “decadent” was in the nineteenth century iused to describe a period during which the output was “qualitatively in decline” compared with the (perceived) excellence of a former age.  Historically, it was applied to the Alexandrine period (300-30 BC) the period after the death of Augustus (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (known also as Octavianus (Octavian)); 63 BC-14 AD, founder of the Roman Empire (27 BC-476 AD) and first Roman emperor 27 BC-14 AD).  In modern use it’s applied to the late nineteenth century symbolist movement in France (the poetry a particular target).  The movement emphasized the autonomy of art (exemplified in the contemporary phrase l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake), the need for sensationalism & melodrama, egocentricity, the bizarre or (wholly or partially) artificial, and the superior “outsider” position of the artist who was “in” yet not quite unambiguously “of” society; a critic rather than a participant (which of course was a reference to middle-class (or bourgeois society).  What is now classified as “decadent” poetry was preoccupied with personal experience, self-analysis, perversity, the suffering of artists and elaborate and exotic sensations.

View of Amalfi (1844), pencil, ink & water colour by John Ruskin (1819-1900).

In France the exemplar of decadence was the poet & critic Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) whose book of lyric poetry Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil; the first version published in 1857) is regarded still a manifest of the movement (though some conservative critics prefer “cult”) and the deconstructions who trace the changes in tone (he continued to add material until his death) regard it as something of a “journal” of the times.  In English translation, Les Fleurs du mal is some 300 pages and, in the way of the movement, the poetic forms are not “traditional” and some of the imagery is as suggestive as the thematic motifs of eroticism, suffering, sin, evil and death which will delight some and repel others and the latter wishing to explore the movement might find more accessible the novel À rebours (Against the Grain (published also as Against Nature); 1884) by the French author & art critic Joris-Karl Huysmans (pseudonym of Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans (1848–1907)); it’s a slimmer volume which English poet & critic Arthur Symons (1865–1945) would later describe as the movement’s “breviary” (in this context “a brief summary”).  There were many notable figures who devoted their lives to proving their allegiance to this aesthetic cult and the preoccupation with decay, ruins sadness and despair was appealing to nihilists and neo-Romantics, linked even with twentieth century German fascism which was styled (however misleadingly) as a revival of purity and a return to Classical roots.  It never caught on in quite the same way in the English-speaking world the influences are clear in the work of “excessively civilized” & “troubled” figures like the Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) and English aesthete John Ruskin.

Chocolate Decadence Cake by Vegan Peace (Striving towards peacefully sharing our Earth).

Ingredients (wet & dry to be mixed separately)

1½ cups whole wheat pastry flour (or gluten-free all-purpose flour) (dry).
1 cup organic white sugar (not powdered) (dry).
3 tablespoons cocoa powder, sifted if lumpy (not Dutch process cocoa) (dry).
1 level teaspoon baking soda (dry).
¼ teaspoon sea salt (dry).
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (wet).
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar (wet).
1½ cup oil (sunflower, non-virgin olive, melted coconut, or safflower) (wet).
1 cup chocolate soymilk (wet).

Freaky Frosting Ingredients

5 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon non-hydrogenated margarine.
2¼cups plus 4 teaspoons organic powdered (confectioner's) sugar.
5 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon cocoa powder (sifted if lumpy).
2 teaspoons vanilla extract.
Pinch of sea salt.
½ cup chocolate soymilk.

Directions

(1) Preheat oven to 350° F (175° C).

(2) Oil 9 x 9 inch (230 x 230 mm) pan or a dozen muffin cups.

(3) Mix wet & dry ingredients separately ensuring each is lump-free and well-mixed.

(4) Gently combine wet-mix & dry-mix do not “over-mix” (the batter will at this point taste strange but this will disappear in the baking process.

(5) Pour mix into oiled baking pan or muffin cups and bake until the point where a knife inserted in the centre comes out clean (ie no trace of liquid or semi-liquid batter).  For cupcakes, this should take about 20 minutes; for the pan between 30-40 minutes.

(6) Remove from oven and allow cake to cool before frosting.

Frosting Directions

(7) Using electric beater, whip margarine in a large bowl until fluffy (do not over-whip.

(8) Slowly add in remaining ingredients one at a time, in the order listed.  Beat at high speed until very fluffy, using a rubber spatula to scrape down the sides of bowl as needed.

(9) Refrigerate frosting until cake has cooled.

(10) Frost cake, ideally after allowing frosting to warm to room temperature before serving cake.  A chocolate decadence may be decorated with edible flowers, raspberries, strawberries, chocolate shavings or whatever else seems to suit.