Tea at Trianon: Pushing the Boundaries

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

Thursday, August 27, 2020

Pushing the Boundaries

From C.C. Pecknold at First Things:

Yet despite so much acclaim from cultural elites, Doucouré’s film has come under a hailstorm of criticism from the moment Netflix began promoting it with posters of prepubescent girls posing in sexually seductive fashion. Apparently it never occurred to executives at the entertainment company that such a film would be seen as problematic. Cultural elites had vetted it as a sophisticated tale about the over-sexualization of young girls, and an exploration of the tensions between Muslim and liberal cultures. Yet somehow the masses responded with almost instantaneous moral revulsion at the very idea of a film about the sexual awakening of an eleven-year-old child. Many asked, with exasperated skepticism, how a film about sexualizing children could solve the problem of sexualizing children.

In a curious apology following the public outcry, Netflix stated that the company was “deeply sorry” for the marketing and “inappropriate artwork” they used to promote the film, adding that it was not “representative of this French film which won an award at Sundance.” This “apology” sought to put the blame on the “artwork.” Yet the marketing department also used clips and stills from the film itself, which depicts young girls in seductive poses and various states of undress. Critics reasonably replied that the problem seems less with the marketing, and more with the subject matter itself. Some saw a broader trend on display here, not only the normalization of the pedophilic gaze, but also liberal society reaching its perverted telos. After the Netflix non-apology, Princeton’s Robert P. George spelled out such broader implications: “I've long said that our society's dirtiest little secret is the sexualization of children. It was only ‘secret’ in the sense that people could pretend not to know. With Netflix's ‘Cuties,’ that is no longer possible. You know. Everyone knows. No one can credibly deny knowing.”

Sensitive patience with challenging artwork is often commendable. Yet in this case, I think the gag reflex is far more reliable, morally speaking, than the trust that elites often place in vetted purveyors of cultural production. Cuties invites us to gaze for hours upon sexualized images of young girls against the backdrop of Islamic veils, honor, modesty, custom. Whatever the intentions of the filmmaker, or Netflix, your average American is not yet so morally supine as to be blind to the next con. (Read more.)