Tea at Trianon: Trash and More Trash

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, January 29, 2018

Trash and More Trash

From the National Center on Sexual Exploitation:

There’s no doubt fans of Fifty Shades et al, will argue it’s fantasy. They may even make the point that successful fiction has long featured abused women at the hands of powerful men, from Jane Austen’s Mr Darcy who destroys Elizabeth Bennet for 400 pages, or Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (the role every actress on the planet wants to play) a woman objectified by three men, whom she still flirts with. And there’s Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, the upstairs/downstairs tale of the toff whose “courtship” of the eponymous heroine features attempted rape and slavery. But after a sound ravishing, she marries him.

Yet, while these stories are products of their time, we’re still pursuing the same theme; young vulnerable woman being pursued by a hugely powerful man, lured into a world of promise. (Weinstein?) And whether in real life or fiction, even if the female (eventually) consents, does this remove the physiological damage created to reach this point?

Katherine Blakeman, of the US National Center on Sexual Exploitation, argues for storylines of domination to be booted hard in the development strategies. “It is incredibly socially irresponsible to uphold Fifty Shades as mainstream entertainment, while at the same time we express our outrage at Harvey Weinstein, and his ilk, and while we work to eradicate sexual harassment, sexual assault, and the rape myth mentality from our culture.”

Blakeman’s comment begs other questions; would Fifty Shades devotees consider watching the S&M adventures of Christian and Ana if Harvey Weinstein were the producer? And what are men to make of women’s appetite for entertainment in which female characters are debased? Some feminists argue it’s wrong for a man to place an unsolicited hand on a woman’s shoulder; touch a knee and you could be soon be reading a solicitor’s letter. Or worse. (Read more.)