Sentimentality

[poliphilo]

So what's the problem? Why is that word still used as a put-down? We all like a good cry, don't we?  Speaking for myself I love it when Dickens emotes over a dead kiddy or Richard Curtis makes amends to Van Gogh. I don't find such moments embarrassing. I don't find them cheap. Life is sad and tears are the proper response to a lot of what goes on in it.  Is making people weep any less respectable than making them laugh?

We've all been intimidated by Oscar Wilde- and his bon mot about Little Nell. He's made it uncool to be moved by fiction. And yet Wilde was the most sentimental writer going. Have you read the Selfish Giant or the Happy Prince? He makes Dickens look stoical.

Wilde- and the twentieth century opinion makers that followed him- had daddy issues with the Victorians.  Their mockery isn't thought through. It's instinctive and defensive. The Victorians were sentimental, therefore sentimentality is bad.  But it's the Twenty First century now,  the Victorians are our great-great-great grandparents- and it's time we dropped our great-great grandparents feud with them.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's certainly a national characteristic, but one that's changing, I think. Look at the outpouring of grief over the death of Diana Princess of Wales- or, again, consider the oeuvre of Richard Curtis.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Er, the Richard Curtis I know is an American literary agent. Um, is this the screenwriter you mean?

Diana was, I think, almost a singularity, but if the tendency to feel personally threatened by anything that triggers empathic sorrow is on the decline in the UK, then I'm glad to hear it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Richard Curtis is the writer of Blackadder, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill- and much else. He's as famous- over here- as any screenwriter is ever likely to be. Getting him to write the latest episode of Dr Who- the one featuring Van Gogh- was a real coup.

There's a continuing debate in the British media over the significance of the public reaction to Diana's death. Some think it shows we're lightening up emotionally- and that's a good thing, others deplore it as unBritish.