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Re: The Decline and Fall of Our Society as We Know It.

63.224.1.2

Posted by daryl on July 11, 2000 at 11:42:24

In Reply to: The Decline and Fall of Our Society as We Know It. posted by Daryl R on July 7, 2000 at 20:20:27:

Well, at the risk of coming off as some sort of liberal relativist, I can't help but present the following episode of cultural history:

In 1774 Goethe published the novella The Sorrows of Young Werther (anonymously). It was an epistolary novel about a young man who falls in love with a woman who is engaged to marry another man. <<200-year-old spoiler alert: at the end of the novel, the protagonist commits suicide>>

* It was an enormous popular hit, unprecedented in its time. In fact, I would argue that it was the first modern literary sensation. People dressed up like the characters, adopted their affects, bought plates and teasets with their likenesses painted on it, etc.

* Literary critics gave it a lukewarm reception. Some noted literary figures expressed reservations about the moral content -- or lack of it -- of the novel.

* Social critics across Europe condemned the novel, arguing that it was a damnable book that romanticized and encouraged suicide, that it glorified self-indulgent reverie, that it infected its readers with its melancholic sensibility. The novel was banned in some cities; some religious leaders forbade its reading.

* The novel was widely held out by critics as the epitome of the decline of European civilization: it was identified with the decline of religiosity, with the rise of philosophical and moral skepticism, with the spread of materialism, with the disintegration of social bonds, etc.

* Some two centuries later, "Werther" is considered one of the masterpieces of modern European literature.

* I can't think of many periods in modern history that weren't -- at least in the minds of some interested group -- about the decline and fall of our society as we know it. The idea of degeneration itself has a fascination history; I can trace its modern usage back to about the mid-19th century. It includes some pretty nasty moments, including the rise of the eugenics movements in Britain and the United States at the turn of the 20th century.

I don't mean to lecture, and certainly not to chide. None of this is meant to minimize any real substantive critiques of the film, of which I've not seen. I'm just trying to bring another perspective to bear upon some of the language in which some of the critiques are wrapped.

--daryl

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