Yass[ification], Queen

[on the shock of the newfangled]

A good twenty years ago—as much as it pains me to begin a sentence “A good twenty years ago” and not follow that phrase with “when I was in kindergarten”—I, then in my latish forties and, perhaps owing to the very state of being in my latish forties, in search of some new type of modish self-adornment, inquired of a friend, then in his latish twenties, whether he thought I might be too old for a wallet chain. To which he replied, not unkindlily but firmly and definitively: “Benjamin, I’m too old for a wallet chain.” And that was the end of that.¹

A good twenty years later I find that I must still be mindful of my attraction to baubles and bangles and sometimes beads (one does not want to end up looking like, as the indeed Fabulous & Opinionated Tom + Lorenzo once described Johnny Depp, an elderly gay windchime),² an attraction that also extends to the modish baubles and bangles and sometimes beads of coinages.

These last few days, in the face of the grisly coverage of the grisly Las Vegas “reimagining”³ of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz,⁴ I’ve been exercising my fascination with the newishfangled word “yassification,” a neologism I’m extremely fond of because it lives up to my chief criterion for neologisms, which is that they should fill a void no extant word currently occupies. In this case, our brave new word takes in the act of cranking the dials up on a person’s or object’s beauty, specifically as that person or object is represented online, and with the use of various softwares and filters that so oversucceed in their task that the result is uncanny-valley-ly grotesque. Also in “yassification”’s favor, it sounds (at least to me) precisely like what it means, which is endearingly user-friendly of it. Plus I was tickled to learn that the “yass” part of “yassification” derives indeed, as I’d hoped and prayed it would when I first went to look the word up, from the “yass” of “yass, queen.”

In the event, I find “yassification” so alluring, so on point, so simply-too-much-fun, that I’m willing to risk a certain mutton-dressed-as-lamb-ness in using it.⁵

Coinages, I’d say, occupy a spectrum from essential (“regift” and “selfie,” for instance, and more recently the superb “doomscrolling”) to close-to-pointless-and-destined-to-be-discarded-and-forgotten-almost-as-soon-as-they’re-spawned, like, for instance, “goblin mode,” which I suspect most God-fearing people had never encountered before it was inexplicably named a word of the year, to the egregious “rizz,” which ditto, a word that’s useful, I suppose, if you’re so bereft of life expectancy that you don’t have enough time to say “charisma.”⁶

Otherwise, YM, as they say, MV. I despise “cromulent”⁷ the way some people despise “irregardless,” particularly as those who wield the former seem endlessly delighted with their own wit in hauling it out whenever the subject of, oh, say, neologisms pops up,⁸ and “enshittification” similarly rubs me the wrong way, mostly because it seems to me to be trying too hard.⁹

I rather like “mid” (for “middling,” that is), though I’m sufficiently self-aware to recognize that it’s far too youthful for me, and I leave the adjectival “cringe” to those who are apparently, at least as far as its continuing, lingering appearances suggest, holding on to it like grim death. (I much prefer “cringeworthy,” which works as both flavorful modifier and valet name.)

But I do my best, if no longer young then at least admiring and in occasional awe of the young—and let’s not kid ourselves, kiddos: We all know that a chief point of coinages is that they should baffle and/or infuriate the elderly—to keep the door open and hold a place of honor at the table for effective, useful, and truly innovative (wit helps too, I’d add) new words. Otherwise what is our language for?

And with that: Get off my lawn. I have clouds to yell at.

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Cover photograph: Billie Burke as Glinda in The Wizard of Oz

Without question, Billie was yassified by MGM’s costume, hair, and makeup departments, to say nothing of cinematographer Harold Rosson, but that is certainly bespoke, artisanal yassification.

Next time you’re watching the film, by the bye, do slap on your headset for the Munchkinland sequence so that you can properly enjoy the moment when the Widow Ziegfeld bonks herself in the crown with her star-tipped wand, resulting in a delightful shploiinkkk sound.

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Thank you for being here, with particular thanks to those of you who have subscribed to this series, and extra particular thanks to those of you who’ve chosen to subscribe to this series and contribute financially—which, to be sure, you don’t have to do to read any of the entries, though I have, with some but not excessive reluctance, erected a paywall—more a pay picket fence, really—around the comments section, just to cut down on the amount of time I have had to spend monitoring some truly egregious unpleasantness. Such is life. But to the point: Your support makes a difference to me, in terms of time, effort, and spirit, and I’m grateful.

Sallie, who is recovering—quite nicely, I assure you, and she’s being spoiled even more rotten than usual—from a procedure to remove a hematoma from her right ear, and who bears, I think, a startling resemblance these last few days to Little Edie Beale, also says thank you.

Mother wanted me to come out in a kimono, so we had quite a fight.

1. Did you know that carrying one’s wallet in one’s back pocket can enflame and aggravate sciatica? If not: Now you do.

2. If I ever wrote anything that blazingly good, I’d like to think that I’d pat myself firmly on the back and take the rest of the week off.

3. There aren’t enough quotation marks in the world to encase that word in this context.

4. In very brief, beyond my objection to the desecration of someone else’s—anyone else’s—art, I object to the fact that the result, at least as it’s been previewed for us, looks like absolute shit (it’s as if, as has been pointed out, Oz has been transformed into a Windows screensaver), especially the expansion of the Gales’ modest farmhouse into what looks like an airplane hangar, complete with the biggest étagère yet seen in the Western hemisphere. (I can’t say I’ve ever thought of Auntie Em as much of a knickknack and bibelot hound. You?) And though I know that I’m swerving here into “and such small portions!” territory, one also notes that the 102-minute original is being hacked down, in the service of cramming in a few additional daily screenings, to 75 minutes. (Goodbye entire Professor Marvel sequence, I’m thinking, and quite possibly Bert’s big number, which would surely resist AI tarting up, or at least one prays so.)

All that said: Am I tempted to drive to Las Vegas, drop acid, and attend the thing? Sure. If I do, I’ll report back.

5. The modern version of “mutton dressed as lamb” is “how do you do, fellow kids?,” so eloquent that one doesn’t even need the originating accompanying image of be-ballcapped Steve Buscemi and his skateboards (plural, by the way: he’s got two of them) to make its point.

6. And what’s the matter, I say, fully embracing antiquity so antique even I wasn’t born yet, with Elinor Glyn’s majestic “It”?

Obligatory Elinor Glyn reference A:

“And she had It. It, hell; she had Those.” —Dorothy Parker, “Madame Glyn Lectures on ‘It,’ with Illustrations,” in The New Yorker, November 26, 1927

Obligatory Elinor Glyn reference B:

Shirley Jones as Marian Paroo: Honestly, Mrs. Shinn. Wouldn’t you rather have your daughter read a classic than Elinor Glyn?

Hermione Gingold as Eulalie Mackechnie Shinn: What Elinor Glyn reads is her mother’s problem!

7. Having been coined in 1996, “cromulent” is by now old enough to vote, which means that it’s no longer a neologism so much as a weary, dreary cliché.

8. See as well that g.d. “I like to verb words” Calvin and Hobbes strip, which, oh, yes, thank you, I haven’t seen that five thousand times since 1993.

9. I note as well that the original and highly salient quality that separates enshittification (maybe it’s the not entirely necessary “en” that irks me?, who knows) from mere degradation or deterioration is its high-handed willfulness, and if that part of the definition is fading away, why even bother.