Stop It.

[poliphilo]

We celebrated the millennium (all those fireworks- bim, bam, twitter, fizz) but we never embraced it. Probably because it scared us. Now, five years in, we're in the grip of the most furious, carpet-chewing nostalgia. We want the past. Any past. Religion of the stupidest kind (the Christian right, Muslim fundamentalism, Pope Ratzo) is clawing away at our liberties; dammit we're even re-running the Crusades.

And in popular culture we're up to our eyes in medievalising fantasies- LOTR, Harry P, Narnia.

I don't like this rage against modernity. I don't like it all.

Bring back the future.

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I don't see "medievalising fantasies" as protest of modern culture so much as a need for an imaginative life in a culture that discounts imagination.

I understand HP well--when I was a child, I hated school so much that I would bring in pictures of meadows or mountains so that I could pretend myself inside the pictures and not feel suffocated during class.

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

If it's a rage, it's a superficial and ironic one (we could hardly have movies like Lord and Potter without high technology).

Maybe a better way to form the question is why is it modernity and technology inspire reactionary fundamentalism and nostalgia?

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

because, things were always better in the past. Never mind the fact that people didn't bathe, things were better at the time of Queen Elizabeth (Henry VIII's daughter). All those royal parties. (of course, there were more poor that there were royals, but so what?)

Things were better 80 years ago. Never mind there was a Depression. Never mind the world was at war. Things were better then, families were closer - those whose father wasn't overseas -

Life in the past was ALWAYS better. It must be a big like childbirth - people don't remember the painful stuff.

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

Yep - the myopic view of "the good ol' days".

Here! Here!

[jubal51394.livejournal.com]

AND... if the poor had been schooled and encouraged to write we might all have a very different view of their reality too!

The past is ALWAYS better... especially after we have so creatively rewritten it for ourselves.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm not exactly knocking the fantasies. They're fine in themselves. I just think it's odd and a little worrisome that popular culture is so very escapist right now.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Fear. Fear pure and simple.

Maybe in some respects a justified fear.

That we will lose our heritage/past/ancestral roots/ humanity.

[seaslug-of-doom.livejournal.com]

Luddites unite!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Does that mean I have to smash my computer?

[seaslug-of-doom.livejournal.com]

You know you want to, sometimes.