Abstract: Hygiene is the religion of the twentieth century and the toilet its ambiguous icon. This paper focuses on the 'American Century' examining where the toilet appears within its symbolic order, tracing connections between European modernism and its later American incarnations. The toilet's ambiguity as an icon revolves around two main axes: abjection and bodily anxiety, especially as manifested in gynophobia and castration anxiety; and in the conflicted position of the individual subject vis-à-vis public space. For the individual under the modernity, there are two dominant ideological drives: on the one hand, toward individual integrity, finitude and agency; and, on the other, toward increasing entitlement of public space and mass culture. These drives are conflicting and the conflict anxiety producing. This conflict appears in the interstitial spaces of modernity — in the twentieth century especially in public toilets, wherein one is most aware of being simultaneously private and public. Anxiety around the intimate non-spaces of modern public culture, especially the toilet, are manifested in the annals of modern art and architecture, in the reception of media events and, most persistently, in Hollywood film.
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