He wears a thin-cut navy-blue leisure suit with a fit that accentuates his lanky frame, a loosened thin tie to match, and a yellow shirt with a collar that’s popped more often than it’s not. It carries over to his sense of fashion, too. One of Spike’s defining quotes in Bebop is, “Whatever happens, happens.” Sprezzatura! That outlook carries over to his fluidly choreographed, Bruce Lee–influenced fighting style and-crucially-his approach to life. He doesn’t do anything too quickly unless it happens to involve sleight-of-hand or kicking ass, and those are exactly the things he’s best at anyway. This is no coming-of-age tale where we discover how he became a practiced marksman, martial artist, and pilot. The Spike we meet at the start of Bebop would seem to endorse all of it too, down to the slightly untucked shirt.

Sprezzatura endorses comfort, individuality, contradiction, wrinkles.

You’re accidentally wearing your shirt inside out? Just call it sprezzatura and go about your day. Your shirt is a little untucked? Sprezzatura. Sprezzatura allows for-and, more important, promotes-whimsy, messiness, flaws. The Esquire and GQ magazine editor Ross McCammon put it perfectly in his book Works Well With Others: Men throughout the 20th Century, from industrialist Gianni Agnelli to musicians like Miles Davis to contemporary fashion icons like Michael Bastian, took it for proof that you don’t have to look entirely put together to look terrific and that, in fact, it was quite the contrary. If you liked this story, sign up for our newsletter.Īs defined in Baldassare Castiglione’s 1508 handbook for court life, The Book of the Courtier, sprezzatura is “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.” It started as a tip for how men of society should dress and comport themselves-basically, try a little, but definitely not too hard, ever-and has grown into a fashion mantra. All of that is a glamor you can trace back to a 16th Century Italian fashion tenet called “sprezzatura.” While guarded about his past, Spike doesn’t project the aura of a person tormented by a violent history and an old flame he can’t get over. Think about how Spike is introduced in “Asteroid Blues.” He’s laconic, almost absurdly competent, relishes in his ability to shrug off just about anything, and cocky as hell. The only armor Spike wears is sprezzatura Spike’s armor is impenetrable for most of ‘Bebop’ - until the very end. The first thing he does after her death is see his old partners, and the second thing is a suicide mission to kill the guy responsible. The psychological toll of Julia’s death on Spike is far more traumatic than simply the murder of a loved one. The thud was a hammer, bludgeoning him to reality. For Spike, this is not literally a dream, but the start of a grieving process that will end with his own death. It’s always been an upsetting scene, but that thud helps illustrate a disconnect in Bebop, one Julia points out in her final words to Spike: “It’s all a dream.” As she dies, Spike mournfully agrees with her. Then her skull crashes down to the earth. Even in the rain, Julia looks angelically brighter than the scene around her. The ensuing firefight takes them outside, into the rain. Of course, minutes after they decide this, they have to deal with syndicate goons first. In the finale of Cowboy Bebop, “The Real Folk Blues,” she and Spike reunite for the first time in years and resolve to run away together - away from Vicious and from a life of violence. The thud of Julia’s head on the roof is what always stuck with me. 1 & 2įor one month, The Dot and Line is publishing essays, interviews, and discussions about each episode of Cowboy Bebop, which turns 20 this April. Sessions 25 & 26: The Real Folk Blues, Pts.

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