[HN Gopher] Why Are So Many Romances Set in the Regency Period?
___________________________________________________________________
Why Are So Many Romances Set in the Regency Period?
Author : apollinaire
Score : 45 points
Date : 2021-02-01 23:06 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (daily.jstor.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (daily.jstor.org)
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| Restoration periods are always really fun. The Napoleonic wars
| were ending, which meant peace and prosperity.
|
| By the 1820s you get into the electrical age, with Faraday. <a
| href="https://youtu.be/6Ns5tRyvoHY?t=92">First electric motor,
| 1822, Fraday.</a><br> Now you're into the Steampunk aesthetic.
| dangerbird2 wrote:
| I guess the snarky answer would be "because Austen and the
| Brontes"
| Peritract wrote:
| Georgette Heyer is the originator here, not Austen or the
| Brontes. Obviously those authors do have imitators, but the
| focus and aesthetic is very different to modern Regency
| romances.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Georgette Heyer was explicitly inspired by Austen, and
| presumably many of her readers were Austen fans hungry for
| more stories from the same era.
|
| In a similar way we might say that Tolkien was the progenitor
| of a line of pulp fantasy novels, even though they have a
| significantly different character.
| neaden wrote:
| Pulp fantasy started before Tolkien, Howard and Burroughs
| are more important for that genre. Tolkien is what took
| fantasy out of the pulps and started the hard cover
| doorstopper fantasy series.
| Peritract wrote:
| Sure, but I think you have to draw a line somewhere between
| proximal and ultimate inspirations; modern Regency romances
| are very like Heyer (albeit generally much more explicit)
| and rather unlike Austen.
|
| We subdivide modern fantasy into 'epic', 'sword and
| sorcery', 'low', and so on, even though they have common
| ancestors.
| arbitrage wrote:
| > We subdivide modern fantasy into 'epic', 'sword and
| sorcery', 'low', and so on, even though they have common
| ancestors.
|
| that's news to me. i personally consider that meticulous
| categorization of fiction to be tedious and childish.
| Consider that there are no good definitions of "high" vs
| "low" fantasy, and that there a few books that are both
| a) successful (whether you measure this in terms of
| profitability, popularity, or a combination of both) and
| b) regimented enough to hold themselves to a dictionary-
| style definition of what the author is supposed to be
| writing about.
|
| you're using a definition of fantasy that is frankly not
| supported by the reality of how we consume and produce
| said literary works.
| milesskorpen wrote:
| You can disagree without attacking the original poster.
| It's obviously not news to you, since you present a
| counter argument, and nothing in your comment suggests
| thinking there are subgenres is childish. Why resort to
| ad hominems?
| Peritract wrote:
| Genres are complex and fuzzily-defined, but they're
| definitely both useful and widely-used.
|
| You don't have to make it incredibly strict and granular,
| but subgenres give an easy way to say 'these works are
| similar', and that's helpful in all kinds of situation.
| bear8642 wrote:
| >"high" vs "low" fantasy
|
| Thought distinction (originally at least) was whether
| fantasy happening on imagined realm or here on Earth?
| ameister14 wrote:
| >i personally consider that meticulous categorization of
| fiction to be tedious and childish
|
| When you read several hundred books a year,
| categorization goes from being tedious and childish to
| being necessary and useful.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Ooch. In my experience talking to professional reviewers,
| they will generally say that genres are marketing, not
| objective categories.
|
| Ilona Andrews's books are marketed to romance (three
| series) and to urban fantasy (one series). Two of the
| romance-marketed series could get new covers and be sold
| as SF. The urban fantasy novels could get romance covers
| put on and be sold that way.
|
| Repeat ad infinitum with literary SF, magic realism,
| respun fairy tales, space opera, epic fantasy, issekai,
| portal fantasies, hard SF, character-driven gay romance
| post-apocalyptic cyberpunk action fantasy (that was a
| very good one)...
|
| I read 203 books in 2019. I assure you that the marketing
| categories are not helpful in my basic quest, which is to
| determine if the book is good. Nothing short of starting
| to read the book can do that.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| >I read 203 books in 2019.
|
| That is really remarkable! Can I ask how you go about
| selecting what to read? Compared to the ~20 books I read
| every year that seems like an absolute firehose. I
| wouldn't even know where to start assembling such a long
| list.
| dsr_ wrote:
| The vast majority of my reading is SF/F, history,
| biography, autobiography, and sciences. Each of these
| have excellent reviewers who I treat as sources of
| recommendations.
|
| e.g.: for current SF/F, James Nicoll, Locus, and John
| Scalzi's posts which are nothing but "here's what
| publishers sent me as ARCs which they are hoping I will
| blurb" are all good sources. I have access to NetGalley
| and some insider-baseball publishing sites thanks to my
| wife, who used to be a professional reviewer for
| Publishers Weekly. When I read a book by an author I
| really like, I try to add their blog or website to my RSS
| reader.
|
| I think the 203 in 2019 was not a record for me, but it
| was certainly much larger than in 2020, where I had
| several multiweek periods of not wanting to read. This
| year is looking up.
|
| One of my long-term tactics is to have some reserve books
| that I know I want to read but haven't, yet. Currently
| that pile includes a Walter Jon Williams, a Steven Brust,
| and an Elizabeth Bear. If I see a long run of not-so-
| great books, I know I have those to pull me out.
| harperlee wrote:
| How quickly do you read!? That's 1.8 books per day!
| Assuming a book is 240 pages, that takes me about 6 hours
| if it's not too dense prose, so for me that would be a
| full time job with quite some overtime and weekends,
| assuming I don't get tired.
|
| Honest question, there's a couple assumptions in my
| napkin calculation :)
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| I think you did the division backwards. By my math that's
| 1.8 _days per book_. I 'm guessing OP reads pretty fast,
| and 1-2 hours per day spent reading isn't outside the
| realm of possibility. I would probably read 2-3 times as
| many books, except I'm a fairly slow reader and since I
| read for fun I have pretty much zero interest in reading
| faster.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't read much fantasy but I do read a fair bit of
| science fiction and categories like cyberpunk, soft,
| hard, space opera, etc. while fuzzy are something I tend
| to find somewhat useful (as is the distinction between SF
| and fantasy). There are probably books in every category
| I like but I generally favor some categories over others.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| You don't actually need to use other people's categories,
| you know. It's not a personal attack against your
| interests.
| science4sail wrote:
| Sort of. From the article:
|
| > For the origins of the modern Regency romance, look to the
| works of Georgette Heyer. Starting in 1935, Heyer wrote over
| two dozen meticulously researched historical books, all set in
| Jane Austen's era, with an obsessive focus on London's tiny
| upper class. According to literary scholar Diana Wallace, it
| was the incredible popularity of Heyer's historical novels that
| helped transform historical fiction into a more feminine space
| that continues to "centralise female subjectivity, desires and
| apprehensions to an unusual extent."
| [deleted]
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| Coincidentally, started "Bridgerton" on Netflix just yesterday.
| Mills and Boon brought to the screen basically so bound to be a
| ratings winner, a lot of fun but with clever contemporary twists
| like a completely multi-ethnic aristocracy at which no character
| turns a hair.
| jfengel wrote:
| I think it's mostly just a way of making the show more visually
| interesting. Take a look at those dance scenes, and then
| compare it to a shot from any other regency romance movie. The
| faces in the latter all just blend in to one another;
| everything looks like a big blur.
|
| The ethnicity is largely ignored. There's one interesting
| passing reference to it -- the idea that it's a recent
| phenomenon that could easily be reversed -- but they spend
| little time on it.
|
| It's not authentic, but of course nothing about Bridgerton is
| authentic. Queen Charlotte's skin color is no wronger than her
| clothing, which is more 1770s France than 1810s England (and
| not really authentic at that, either). The Duke of Hastings'
| skin exactly matched that of the real Duke of Hastings -- since
| Hastings was a Barony.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Today I learned there was a short period of history called
| Regency and I demured on the fact that British society could put
| a psycho executive in restraint while my country, a supposed
| enlightened democracy (the US), can not.
|
| I actually found the article wanting. I could not turn to a
| colleague after reading it and explain _why_ this period was an
| ideal setting for romances. I learned who some of sources of
| romance in this period are. I learned that perhaps modern
| romances set in the period aren 't true to the original form. And
| I got a glimpse at some of the attributes of said era (fictional
| or not so). But I did not see much that told me why this was an
| appealing backdrop for romance novels. What about this era makes
| it ideal for romance vs other eras?
| Veen wrote:
| > the fact that British society could put a psycho executive in
| restraint while my country, a supposed enlightened democracy
| (the US), can not.
|
| That "psycho executive"--George III--reigned during the period
| of the American War of Independence, which, if you recall, he
| lost, so it seems both nations managed to restrain his power.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > I demured on the fact that British society could put a psycho
| executive in restraint while my country, a supposed enlightened
| democracy (the US), can not
|
| The UK's mechanisms for restraining Naughty Monarchs, back when
| it was relevant, were largely unwritten but pretty extensive;
| 150 years previously, Charles I had, ah, lost his head about
| it. The US's mechanisms are limited, written, and, as it turns
| out, don't work.
|
| It's probably best to keep in mind, though, that George III had
| a lot less power than the US president; the monarch had
| basically lost the royal assent (veto) by then, for practical
| purposes. I'm reasonably sure that by that point the monarch
| had nothing similar to an executive order, either.
| Mizza wrote:
| That literally just happened, and democracy was the process by
| which it occurred.
| jfengel wrote:
| Barely. Even now there are a great many people -- tens of
| millions -- who believe that democracy failed.
| [deleted]
| macspoofing wrote:
| >I demured on the fact that British society could put a psycho
| executive in restraint while my country, a supposed enlightened
| democracy (the US), can not.
|
| To be clear, this is a partisan political opinion that borders
| on authoritarianism. You may not like Trump, but he was
| democratically elected. So prey tell, what would "restraining"
| a democratically elected 'executive' look like? Remember, any
| rule you define has to be measured against past presidents and
| apply to future presidents.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| It would look like the 25th Amendment being exercised.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| It's generally agreed upon by constitutional scholars that
| the 25th amendment wasn't designed for that, and that
| trying to use it in that way creates some nightmare
| scenarios. Specifically it gives the president the ability
| to challenge their removal and have the senate adjudicate,
| which would be decidedly not great.
|
| If Trump had been intubated with Covid or suffered a
| stroke, then the 25th amendment would have been an
| appropriate choice. Otherwise the proper avenue to remove a
| misbehaving president is impeachment.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > It's generally agreed upon by constitutional scholars
| that the 25th amendment wasn't designed for that...
|
| Well, we sure had a bunch of "constitutional scholars"
| saying that the 25th should be invoked for exactly that.
| If you want to claim that those people were random people
| pushing their viewpoint rather than actual scholars, I
| could accept that. But if you're saying there's a general
| consensus among the experts, I wouldn't mind seeing a
| credible source to that effect.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| >... and have the senate adjudicate, which would be
| decidedly not great.
|
| Why not? Sounds like it's roughly tantamount to giving
| the cabinet the power to impeach the President. Given the
| natural restraint on that power in that the cabinet is
| appointed by the President, I'm not sure I see any
| problem there.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Sounds like it's roughly tantamount to giving the
| cabinet the power to impeach the President
|
| Congress also the ability to impeach the President.
| Congress couldn't get the votes to do remove the
| President from office ... so your partisan solution is
| for the cabinet to find a reason to remove the President?
| Why? Because you don't like how your fellow citizens
| voted?
|
| How about this: Vote him out in the next election? Oh
| that actually happened! And Democracy survived!
|
| For all the talk about Trump, the opposition is perfectly
| willing to destroy every single norm and democratic
| institution just to get him.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Woha, what? This wasn't "my solution". I was just
| commenting because I didn't understand the particular
| danger, which the OP clarified.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| My wording was unclear. Having the Senate check on the
| 25th amendment is a good thing; the cabinet should not
| have the power to depose the president just because.
| That's clearly a very dangerous power to just leave
| laying around like that.
|
| What's bad is having a very much awake and ambulatory
| Trump arguing in front of the Senate that he should be
| back in power. That's a political nightmare, and far
| worse than Congress using its powers to expel the
| president on their own initiative. It's much better for
| our body politic for Congress to impeach and save the
| 25th amendment for less politically ambiguous situations.
| macspoofing wrote:
| What are you talking about? Remove Trump for what reason?
| Because you don't like him and so you're willing to discard
| the votes of half the country just get him out?
|
| Insanity.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| The supposedly enlightened democracy is currently heavily
| polarised and the British society back then was not.
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| The reason the article is found wanting is that the answer to
| the question is not _really_ in anything to do with the
| Regency era per se. It 's mostly because Jane Austen was
| really good at writing romantic comedies, and so set a
| template that everyone wants to follow in much the same way
| that nearly all modern era Hollywood romcoms are pale
| imitations of Nora Ephron's work (When Harry Met Sally,
| Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail - which was itself a
| remake anyway but with the Ephron formula liberally applied).
|
| Ephron's genius, as with Austen's, was not simply the fact
| that she seemed to have come up with a winning formula, there
| was also an enormous amount of craft, wit, originality and
| compassion involved.
| monadic3 wrote:
| How do you figure the time was not polarizing? This reeks of
| nostalgia. Jane Austen's time, for instance, was an
| incredibly volatile time in the labor market. She just
| doesn't acknowledge contemporary issues because they weren't
| relevant to the stories she wanted to tell.
|
| Meanwhile if you watch "You've Got Mail", the fact that it
| does touch on contemporary issues sours the whole film.
| rsynnott wrote:
| That's an... interesting view of history. I think people do
| downplay it these days, but there was significant unrest for
| most of the 19th century.
| stereolambda wrote:
| I don't know, it was the sort of a period when regular people
| in England where ran over by cavalry for demanding suffrage
| rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre The
| whole Europe's elites were busy putting down the post-French
| Revolution upheaval.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| People overrate the number of smart people and the number of
| dedicated writers. Most literature is just hacks copying hacks to
| make a buck.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| >one of the characters eulogizes George IV's reign as "holiday
| time for people intent upon promoting the greatest happiness of
| the smallest number," notes scholar Winifred Hughes.
|
| This seems rather applicable to now as well.
| Animats wrote:
| They still are? The bodice-ripper era was in the 1970s and the
| 1980s. Or is it back, now that vampires, zombies, and Navy SEALs
| have been done to death?
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Am I just missing something, or did this article not really even
| attempt to answer the question? I guess there's nothing wrong
| with that.
|
| It occurs to me that the "Old West" books, movies, etc. in the
| U.S. are nearly as small a period in terms of both time and
| people, and they have been subject to a similarly obsessive
| focus, although more male-oriented.
| dependsontheq wrote:
| The regency period is interesting because it combines the
| influence of the French Revolution with the aristocratic society
| of England. Clothes, fashion and behavior no longer were supposed
| to match your role and status but also your personality. So you
| have individualism and princes and balls and at the same time it
| feels quite modern. So it's not that Jane Austen wrote some
| books, she lived in a time where she could write books that feel
| quite modern to us.
| naringas wrote:
| because this period of history is being rewrriten in the public
| culture to reifnorce myths about the present and so influence
| (softly control) the future
|
| edit: the first sentence gets downvoted. I both expected and felt
| bad about it.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| I was surprised this article didn't mention British colonialism
| at all.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Why would it be worth emphasizing in a very home island bound
| setting which doesn't even address the middle class residents
| of the isle. Colonialism went on for over a century before
| and after.
|
| It would be like emphasizing that Edgar Allen Poe married his
| thirteen year old cousin when discussing his horror
| influence. Terrible but hardly germane to the topic.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| "Le bon ton" likely had a very direct hand in shaping
| colonialism, given that they were aristocrats and landed
| gentry, and given the "season" spent in London was shaped
| around political networking.
|
| However, I also meant that it was a sort of cultural neo-
| colonialism: that the British are allowed to present the
| history of this period as a romantic drama.
| desas wrote:
| Bridgerton at least was written by an American novelist
| and then made into a TV show by an American director /
| writer / producer team for an American media company.
| rebolek wrote:
| People are free. This notion of collective guilt - "the
| British are allowed" - is terrifying.
| [deleted]
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| #BLM has challenged that period in the UK and US. And it was a
| terrible period, with those vast idyllic country estates being
| built on the backs of slavery abroad and Enclosure of common
| land at home.
|
| Slavery is being acknowledged now, but the Enclosures still
| don't figure in the national narrative.
|
| But Regency Romance has been a money spinning genre for a very
| long time, and it's not _more_ popular now than it used to be.
|
| Nor is there any evidence of conscious narrative control by
| editors and publishers. There's far more evidence of that
| elsewhere - for example in both the mytho-feminist and techno-
| dystopian ends of contemporary SF.
|
| But it's actually most obvious in period and class-specific
| movies and soaps, which the UK specialises in, and which are a
| very different genre to romantic fiction.
|
| Here's the creator of Downton Abbey. He's now working on a US
| equivalent called - unsurprisingly - The Gilded Age. Could he
| possibly have an angle to sell?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Fellowes
| arethuza wrote:
| The Highland Clearances are certainly remembered in Scotland
| - one of the reasons why there is a lot of support for
| community buy outs of estates:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances
| naringas wrote:
| so I expand:
|
| but of course, this is not an answer; it's an explanation in
| the style of the surreal way in which I have chosen to make
| sense of the larger world around me.
|
| however, who am I to chose how to make sense of the world? who
| am I to say that mytholgy-engineering has anything to do with
| the reason for the creation lots and lots of romances set in
| the british pre-victorian era?
|
| in order to be taken seriously I must provide sources, backing,
| it is not enough to explain my thoughts cogently. I must show
| other ideas that support what I say. I must acquire a
| reputation and then, only then, I can say whatever I want.
|
| But how does one gather a reputation such that whatever I say
| will be read mindfully and not just dismissed right out when I
| start to make reasoning leaps all around? the most direct way
| is to simply repeat what other people with a reputation have
| said; to preach to the choir.
| seneca wrote:
| HN, for all of its claims of intellectualism, is pretty
| unforgiving to any thoughts that don't fit one of a couple of
| echo chamber themes. I hang around because I think it's
| important for people (including me) to hear other ideas, but
| you should expect to be downvoted.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| It takes long, hard work to accumulate the knowledge and
| experience to be able to consistently say things that
| matter. It's impossible to fake, and an astute crowd will
| always spot it.
|
| The Luke-in-Yoda's-hut scene pops to mind.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Which thoughts? Are you talking about the liberal echo-
| chamber downvote squad, the americana/patriot downvote
| squad, or something else?
| silicon2401 wrote:
| I've only been coming to this site for maybe 5 years now
| (not under this account in case people do the lame reddit
| thing of checking your account history at the drop of a
| hat), but I feel like even in that time things have become
| noticeably more echo-y here.
| minikites wrote:
| Hacker News is just Reddit plus a thesaurus.
| nomdep wrote:
| Some americans went insane after Trump won in 2016 and the
| media fed that insanity for harvesting clicks.
|
| As a reaction, the "with me or against me" mantra was
| increasingly strong for the last four and a half years.
|
| I hope people calm down again now that that its over.
| naringas wrote:
| > is pretty unforgiving to any thoughts that don't fit one
| of a couple of echo chamber themes.
|
| sounds better in ther converse: "it's pretty forgiving of
| thoughts that do go along the predilect tropes"
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > in order to be taken seriously I must provide sources,
| backing, it is not enough to explain my thoughts cogently
|
| You must at least provide reasoning, for the thoughts to be
| cogent. Your assertions are vague - you allude to things
| without clarifying what you mean, and why you believe it to
| be so.
|
| > in order to be taken seriously I must...
|
| > I must show...
|
| > I must acquire...
|
| You _must_ do theses things? According to who. again,
| assertion without explanation. Understand, your thoughts don
| 't explain themselves!
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Man, you really hated Bridgerton huh
| neaden wrote:
| I honestly am having trouble understanding what you are
| trying to say here, I think the reason you are encountering
| so much resistance isn't necessarily because of what you are
| trying to say, but how you are saying it.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > in order to be taken seriously I must provide sources,
| backing, it is not enough to explain my thoughts cogently. I
| must show other ideas that support what I say. I must acquire
| a reputation and then, only then, I can say whatever I want.
|
| No one here is actually asking for your sources, so far as I
| can see. The people who are taking umbrage at your comment
| are most likely (like me) those who do not see your
| explanation as cogent but instead an assertion that doesn't
| even fully explain what is asserting. You're promoting a
| conspiracy theory--a shadowy "They" who are conspiring to do
| something--without explaining what the conspiracy actually
| is. What are the myths being enforced? Why are "They" doing
| this? Who even is "They"?
|
| > But how does one gather a reputation such that whatever I
| say will be read mindfully and not just dismissed right out
| when I start to make reasoning leaps all around? the most
| direct way is to simply repeat what other people with a
| reputation have said; to preach to the choir.
|
| In my experience on HN, that reputation is gathered mostly by
| being seen to speak authoritatively on topics. The highest
| upvote comments I have gathered are generally when I can put
| together thorough, concise explanations quickly. It doesn't
| have to agree with the current zeitgeist, but you do
| generally want to provide stronger argumentation for your
| viewpoints in that situation.
| kiliantics wrote:
| There doesn't need to be a shadowy "they" for this to be
| true. It can be purely the result of a dynamic in the
| system that results due to certain feedback loops and
| hierarchies in the organisation of media institutions. This
| is essentially the thesis of Chomsky's "Manufacturing
| Consent" -- that the only media that gets put in front of
| you has been selected by a process which is emergent and
| not controlled by some "cabal" but nevertheless results in
| a form of, essentially, propaganda which supports the power
| structures of the system.
| dudul wrote:
| Without providing sources or backing, it would be useful to
| be a bit more explicit. You could mention the myths that are
| being re-inforced, that would be interesting.
| lucozade wrote:
| You alleged that Georgian romances are part of a conspiracy
| to control the future. That's a surprising allegation that
| you made no attempt to justify nor explain, cogent or
| otherwise.
|
| Under those circumstances, it's perfectly coherent for
| strangers to dismiss the allegation if it doesn't conform to
| their preconceived view. It is also perfectly coherent for
| strangers to agree with it if it does.
|
| Now, if you wish for strangers to come to agree with your
| world view then you'll have to make some effort to convince
| them. Whether or not you can be arsed to do that is, of
| course, up to you.
| lkbm wrote:
| That explains nothing whatsoever as to what's so special about
| the Regency period? As the article notes, it's _nine years_.
| Why not when George III was still in command? Why not during
| Victoria 's reign?
| ghaff wrote:
| Definitions vary. The formal Regency period was nine years.
| But, from Wikipedia: "The term Regency (or Regency era) can
| refer to various stretches of time; some are longer than the
| decade of the formal Regency, which lasted from 1811 to 1820.
| The period from 1795 to 1837, which includes the latter part
| of George III's reign and the reigns of his sons George IV
| and William IV, is sometimes regarded as the Regency era,
| characterised by distinctive trends in British architecture,
| literature, fashions, politics, and culture."
| arbitrage wrote:
| because the constituencies involved (of both the characters
| in the book, and the modern audience that consumes them)
| prefer the absence of a strong federating remote figure, to
| the ability of being able to imprint/insert themselves as
| participatory observers of the events.
|
| lack of a strong central nexus gives fantasy writers and
| readers the opportunity to engage with the story and period
| on their own terms, instead of being subjugated to what some
| accidental monarch wants the era to have been.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| There really wasn't much of a difference for them in terms
| of actual actions aside from more gentry officers actually
| being in the field. They still could and did have those
| parties before and after. It would be a matter of being
| upshown instead of controlled.
| the_af wrote:
| Can you elaborate? Which myths are being reinforced, how can
| they be used to influence the future, and who is trying to
| influence it and for what?
|
| I'm not asking for hard references, like your other comment
| implied. Just trying to make sense of your comment.
| naringas wrote:
| I'm not talking about myths under a precise definition (as in
| stories to make sense of the world), rather mythology in the
| rougher sense of the way we think about our ancestors and
| people from the past (in the vein of "the good ol' days" or
| in contrast "the dark ages")
|
| also, "who is trying to influence" seems to imply some sort
| of distinct actor (with agency) doing it based on some
| definite agenda.
|
| but I don't think this is the case; as some other comments
| point out, it's closer to a dynamic. it gets fashionable so
| everybody does it never mind the fact that the next
| generation of people will inform their beliefs about our
| ancestor's lives based on this romanticized versions. so in a
| sense "cultural ideology" is the "agent" behind this.
|
| finally, answering how does this affect our future is not so
| easy. I said it because knowing our past (our history) allows
| understanding our present circumstance. and based on this we
| are able to visualize our future. If I could explain this
| better I could probably also answer why is there historical
| revisionism
| the_af wrote:
| But how does this relate to the article?
| naringas wrote:
| my original post answers the question posed by its title
| (but in an unrelated way)
| arbitrage wrote:
| if you feel that badly being disagreed with, perhaps you should
| go back to a safe content/context bubble on reddit, where your
| views can be constantly reinforced, and any challengers to your
| domain can be proudly assailed and repulsed by your impeccable
| logic and unassailable wit.
| ska wrote:
| > the first sentence gets downvoted.
|
| Pretty sure that's because it's a mix of unsubstantiated,
| controversial, and incoherent.
| seneca wrote:
| Indeed. It's startling how much entertainment is actually
| social engineering. It's worth reading Propaganda by Edward
| Bernaise if you're interested in better understanding these
| coordinated approaches.
|
| I'm not sure how much I'd say that's why so much romance is set
| in a particular era, but I'd buy that's why they are promoted
| so much and heavily influences their tone and themes.
|
| "Who control the past controls the future. Who controls present
| controls the past." essentially.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| You can take anything and try to claim it is social
| engineering if it differs from your viewpoint. That sort of
| tripe has been applied to boring uncontroversial dry
| Newtonian physics textbooks being called "cultural
| imperialism".
|
| It is absurd black and white thinking to declare that
| anything which reflects its source culture is propaganda even
| if it embeds the bullshit influnces of propaganda of the day
| like the classics obsession of the Enlightenment.
|
| Calling a work propaganda merely because it reflects a source
| culture is propaganda in itself. Used to justify suppression
| of anything not actively promoting their world view as
| actively in service of evil. That has been used by amongst
| many others evangelical fundamentalists and the Party in
| basically every nation which called themselves Communists.
| ape4 wrote:
| The clothes helped
| ohnoesoes wrote:
| probably because music, art and society weren't about pulling
| hoes and shaking asses or shallow chemistry. may have been about
| actual love and love games. but the plebes want ass shaking today
| so no wonder.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| I wonder about the premise: we need a plot of of number of
| romance stories by setting year.. my guess is that modern pulp
| romance outweighs all others.
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