Simon Morley 2/14/22 Simon Morley 2/14/22

A Valentine’s Day Post about Roses

Image courtesy of: https://infinityrose.com/valentines-day/

As it’s Valentine’s Day today, here is a short adapted extract from my book, ‘By Any Other Name. A Cultural History of the Rose’, recently published by Oneworld:

“I began writing this Chapter just before Valentine’s Day which in the United States was worth $20.7 billion in 2019. The average American spent $161.96 on gifts, meals, and entertainment, and men spent twice as much as women. In 2018, according to the Society of American Florists, an estimated 250 million roses were produced for the special day in the USA alone. But people also gave and received huge quantities of products with red roses emblazoned on them – cards, chocolates, lingerie. In 2009 it was estimated that in the United States, the 100 million roses given on Valentine’s Day generate about 9,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide on the journey from field to florist. In 2019 the level for the UK was 5.65 cubic tones. To put this in proportion, the average American has a carbon footprint of about 15 metric tons a year, which is the highest in the world. (And the carbon footprint of the cut-rose trade will continue to increase, because the Internet has made ordering on-line so effortless, while simultaneously widening the chasm between our commendable intentions and any sense of the real-world consequences of our actions, which have also been highjacked by social media in cahoots with commercial interests. All this means that rather than taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and giving out oxygen, like normal plants, cut-roses are actually adding to the disastrous toxic payload.

That’s quite a legacy for an anniversary that seems to have been invented by the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth century. His The Parliament of Fowls includes a love debate among birds who choose their mates on ‘Saint Valentine’s Day’, and this is the first known mention of the annual festival of love. He seems to have consciously fabricated the festival, introducing it to the English court as a special courtly-love anniversary, loosely derived from Catholic tradition. The historical precedents include the fact that in the fifth century, Pope Gelasius made February 14th St. Valentine’s Day, after a martyred bishop, Saint Valentine of Terni. There is some documentary evidence supporting a link between this saint and ideas of fertility, but it isn’t substantial enough to warrant the forging of a concrete alliance that makes Valentine’s Day the day of lovers. But thanks to Chaucer, by the middle of the 18th century friends and lovers were exchanging small tokens of affection or handwritten notes on February 14th.

The arrival of printing technology capable of mass-producing greeting cards, the emergence of the advertising industry, and cheaper postage rates, encouraged the channeling of expressions of amorous affection towards this one particular anniversary. Roses were already traditionally associated with love, a fact reflected in the nineteenth century vogue for floriography – the ‘language of flowers’ – where different flowers stood for different emotions. The red rose was associated with deep love, becoming the flower of choice to signal one’s love for someone. So in this way, the grounds for the co-opting of the rose for an anniversary celebrating love became more or less inevitable, despite the fact, of course, that February is not a month known for its rose blossom.”

The typical cut-rose we give on Valentine’s Day is ‘high-centered.’ The ensemble of petals divide into four equal parts, and the petals at the centre stand above the outer opened petals. This is the form of the Hybrid Tea roses bred for the cut-rose business.

These are also the kind favoured by the dastardly President Coriolanus Snow in ‘The Hunger Games’ movies. Snow wears a white one in his lapel buttonhole at all times. In the final episode, ‘‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part II’ (2014) the heroine Katniss Everdeen visits the now defeated Snow in the winter garden of his mansion and sees beds of white roses growing. Snow wears the rose, we are told, to hide the stench of the rotting ulcers in his mouth caused by imbibing the poison he is obliged to drink small doses of while toasting the unexpecting rivals and enemies he dispatches by putting poison in their drinks.

President Snow in ‘The Hunger Games. Mockingjay’ (2014)
Image courtesy of: https://thehungergames.fandom.com/wiki/Coriolanus_Snow

The choice of the rose was a masterstroke in ‘The Hunger Games’, as it perfectly symbolizes the nature of the regime of Panem, whose name derives from the Latin phrase Panem et circenses - 'bread and circuses'. In other words, the rose plays a role in making coercive power seem pleasing, not just by being beautiful but by concealing the truth. I wouldn’t want to say that Valentine’s Day plays a similar role within our neoliberal capitalist order. Not quite…..

In my book, I don’t mention ‘The Hunger games’, as I hadn’t remembered the roses, but watching ‘Mockingjay’ recently on Netflix reminded me. But I did note the comments of the celebrated graphic designer Pete Saville, who borrowed a reproduction of a Henri Fantin-Latour’s still life painting for the cover of the electronica band New Order’s album Power, Corruption and Lies (1983). Saville commented: “Flowers suggested the means by which power, corruption and lies infiltrate our lives.” , it is almost certain that the roses used in the movie are completely without scent, like pretty much all of the cut-roses sent at Valentine’s Day.

Simon Morley 10/25/21 Simon Morley 10/25/21

A Rose a Day No. 20

Valentine’s Day rose merchandise.

Valentine’s Day in the United States was worth $20.7 billion in 2019. The average American spent $161.96 on gifts, meals, and entertainment, and men spent twice as much as women. In 2018, according to the Society of American Florists, an estimated 250 million roses were produced for the special day in the USA alone. But people also gave and received huge quantities of products with red roses emblazoned on them – cards, chocolates, lingerie.

In 2009 it was estimated that in the United States, the 100 million roses given on Valentine’s Day generate about 9,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide on the journey from field to florist. To put this in proportion, the average American has a carbon footprint of about 15 metric tons a year, which is the highest in the world. And the carbon footprint of the cut-rose trade will continue to increase, because the Internet has made ordering on-line so effortless, while simultaneously widening the chasm between our commendable intentions and any sense of the real-world consequences of our actions, which have also been highjacked by social media in cahoots with commercial interests. All this means that rather than taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and giving out oxygen, like normal plants, cut-roses are actually adding to the disastrous toxic payload.

That’s quite a tarry for an anniversary that seems to have been invented by the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth century. His The Parliament of Fowls includes a love debate among birds who choose their mates on ‘Saint Valentine’s Day’, and this is the first known mention of the annual festival of love. He seems to have consciously fabricated the festival, introducing it to the English court as a special courtly-love anniversary, loosely derived from Catholic tradition. The historical precedents include the fact that in the fifth century, Pope Gelasius made February 14th St. Valentine’s Day, after a martyred bishop, Saint Valentine of Terni. There is some documentary evidence supporting a link between this saint and ideas of fertility, but it isn’t substantial enough to warrant the forging of a concrete alliance that makes Valentine’s Day the day of lovers. But thanks to Chaucer, by the middle of the 18th century friends and lovers were exchanging small tokens of affection or handwritten notes on February 14th.