Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
As popular entertainment continues its downward spiral, we worry about how the sex and violence are affecting teenagers and children.
In comparison, the entertainment popular in Jane Austen's day seems pretty harmless to us.
But she was concerned about it--not so much for children, and not in a This-trash-must-be-censored! kind of way.
She believed that adults needed to watch out for the powerful ways that our entertainment affects us.
It's hard for us, living after the triumph of the "art for art's sake" theory, to see novels and poetry as things that have (and were meant to have) an effect on our moral and emotional lives, that will inevitably shape our choices and thus the trajectory of our lives.
But that's how people saw art back then.
And weren't they actually more realistic about it than we are?
After all, advertisers pay for "product placement" in movies because they know people are impelled to imitate what we see in our fiction.
That's a major theme of Jane Austen's own writing--from the crazy Romantics in Love and Friendship who reduce their lives to charred rubble by acting out the struck-by-lightning style of love they've picked up from the fiction they've read, through Catherine Morland trying to living in a Gothic novel, to Sir Edward Denham setting out to be just as wicked and interesting as the villain of Richardson's Clarissa.
That's why it's interesting to notice that the very same Romantic memes that concerned Jane Austen in the novels and poetry of her day are still going strong 200 years later. This instance is a few years old, but possibly you all can help me with more recent examples. Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck: "Love don't make things nice--it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. . . . We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die." (Whatever he's looking for, it isn't happiness.)
This is pretty much the exact same view of love as you get in, say, Byron, whose "impassioned descriptions of hopeless agony" Anne Elliot thought Captain Benwick should read only in moderation.
Is Romanticism in our entertainment messing up people's real lives?
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Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
Of course. Popular entertainment shapes the imagination. Juliet says to Romeo, "You kiss by the book."
Dec '10
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
Elizabeth,
So very nice to be reading you here on Ricochet.
It is well known in these environs that I am a proponent of Immanuel Kant. For Kant Aesthetics plays a very powerful role. Stated as briefly as possible (always a little difficult) for Kant Aesthetic Taste is Morality subjectively perceived. Morality is always objective. Kant is the progenitor of the Deontological moral point of view.
Given a Kantian interpretation of Aesthetics, nothing could be more important than how Art portrays Love. Although you seem to be concerned about the dangers of Romanticism or say you are, I see little problem with this in modern society. Rather it is the total lack of Romanticism in which Human Love is portrayed as a scientific phenomenon that I think is destroying everything that makes life worth living. I think even Moonstruck's Nick Cage with his black vision is superior to Freud's amortized relationship or Jung's quadrasexual bonding. Moonstruck is certainly more entertaining.
Warm Regards,
Jim
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
Sad modern version: "'When I first started kissing boys,' [Girls star Lena Denham] said, 'I remember noticing things, certain behaviors, where I thought, "There’s no way you learned that anywhere but on YouPorn.com. There’s no way any teenage girl taught you and reinforced that behavior."'"
Jun '10
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
When I was young, I learned about relationships with women mostly from James Bond 007 movies. Didn't work out. Had to reevaluate the situation.
Apr '11
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
These life's dim window, of the soul...distort the heavens from pole to pole...when we are goaded to believe a lie.....and see with, and not through the eye.
I wish I knew whom to attribute this to but seeing life devoid of a conscious is truly where the harm begins.
Aug '10
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
I refuse to admit that popular entertainment is in a downward spiral. There is much to be praised in what audiences deign to consume as entertainment today. Some of the worthy entertainment is recently produced, but the enduring love many (and I include myself among them) have for the novels of Jane Austen speak for the "masses" appreciation of an ennobling tale.
In fact, I would argue that your comparison to the Romantics hits more squarely the mark. It is quite insightful. The Romantic memes still infect society. Take a recent depiction of Helen of Troy in the film TROY. What Spartan king would choose a woman who disdains the classical virtues to be the inheritor of the rule of Sparta? Helen was Queen of Troy and wife to Menelaus. Helen should be more Gorgo and less a simpering angsty teen. Alas, the emo Helen is nothing new. The characters in Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida" lack the virtues of their Homeric and Chaucerian counterparts.
Should we mark the decline of popular entertainment with Shakespeare then? No, never, nay!
That said, your point regarding popular entertainment and the imagination is spot on.
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
Definitely more entertaining!
I do think Romanticism, which tends to alternate with Victorian-style attempts to contain the damage, in the end sets people up for exhaustion & cynicism. From Dirty Dancing to Being John Malkovich in a generation, as it were.
(I 1st read Sense and Sensibility in a seminar that was mostly on Kant's Critique of Judgment. I was not sold, but I do know vaguely what you're talking abt.)
James Gawron:
. . . Aesthetic Taste is Morality subjectively perceived. Morality is always objective. Kant is the progenitor of the Deontological moral point of view.
Given a Kantian interpretation of Aesthetics, nothing could be more important than how Art portrays Love. Although you seem to be concerned about the dangers of Romanticism or say you are, I see little problem with this in modern society. Rather it is the total lack of Romanticism in which Human Love is portrayed as a scientific phenomenon that I think is destroying everything that makes life worth living. I think even Moonstruck's Nick Cage with his black vision is superior to Freud's amortized relationship or Jung's quadrasexual bonding. Moonstruck is certainly more entertaining.
Warm Regards,
Jim · 2 minutes ago
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
Have a v. soft spot in my heart for Wm. Blake b/c I wrote my dissertation on him.
It's interesting discussing where all these problems ultimately come from, but also interesting, I think, to see if things can't be improved, starting from where we are now. That's what The Jane Austen Guide is about.
Stephen Spicer: These life's dim window, of the soul...distort the heavens from pole to pole...when we are goaded to believe a lie.....and seewith,and notthroughthe eye.
I wish I knew whom to attribute this to but seeing life devoid of a conscious is truly where the harm begins. · 10 minutes ago
Jan '11
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
We are a product of all we have met. So, take care who you meet.
Consider: Sam Harris, the atheist, writes that there can't be any free will ... because studies show that the brain has already fired the synapses to resolve a problem a few seconds before the c0nscious mind ever considers the problem. Therefore, that feeling you have about making a free decision must be an illusion. Harris argues that free will is an illusion.
Well, no. Free will just isn't entirely (or even mostly) conscious.
As the Catholic Church (and others) have been saying for thousands of years, your conscience isn't your consciousness. Your conscience is built up over the course of time, seeded and nurtured by each choice you make. When you indulge one small vice, it makes it easier to indulge larger vices, or more frequently. But, thankfully, the same applies to virtue. Conscience isn't instantly made, like coffee. It takes formation.
When the culture constantly shows approval to materialistic, secular, non- or anti-intellectual cynicism, it pushes the tug-of-war between virtue and vice closer to vice.
May '10
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
For a real Jane Austen stand against popular culture, look at the treatment of the play "Lovers' Vows", and amateur dramatics in "Mansfield Park".
Feb '12
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
Good topic. I try to ask myself, "If I think my daughters shouldn't watch X, why do I think it's OK for my wife or myself?" Alas, the answer often comes down to "I've already been coarsened, but my daughters have a chance not to be."
The idea that it's good if a recreational book or movie is edifying as well as entertaining seems to have pretty much disappeared with regard to fiction. I try not to recommend to friends books that I think are entertaining and wonderfully written but nonetheless bad for you. [I won't cite examples, since you might go out and read them. (: ]
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
I once watched two or three episodes of The Sophranos. I found that it induced me to add certain words to my ordinary vocabulary that I wanted not to use. We are by nature mimics. What we habitually see we tend to do. What we habitually hear we tend to say.
Have you ever had the experience of driving a car with a two-year-old daughter in a car-seat in the back and been shocked when this sweet little voice suddenly says, "Oh s---t!" It concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Aug '11
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
Lionel Trilling wrote a great book on this, "Sincerity and Authenticity" - contrasting the apollonian ethic of Sincerity as found in Jane Austen, with the dionysian one of Authenticity, as found in the romantics and modernists. Trilling brings on a host of witnesses for the latter, who overtop each other in a scramble for the the darkest, most passionate, most redemptive form of self-destruction. There aren't too many re-imaginings of the Sincerity ethic in Trilling's book, as I recall; as if there isn't much you can say about it, after Austen.
Is there such are counter-tradition running alongside Romanticism and its various lines of descent?
In other words, what do you read after Austen? Some have suggested Barbara Pym.
Edited on April 4, 2012 at 6:40amNov '11
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
Here's a stupid question to illustate my ignorance:
What's the path along which Rousseau's original Romanticism (a vain longing to return to some simpler, more natural, more primitive, less artificial, more virtuous life of the past) evolved to become the Romanticism of Byron? I suppose the connection of Byron's Romanticism back to Rousseau's must have something to do with some similar ideas about nature and the individual, about the individual following his "natural inclinations" in opposition to society's artificial refinements.
Or what? Sorry for the digression, but I'm curious.
About the main topic:
Yes, you gotta watch what you watch, and watch yourself watching what you watch.
Nov '11
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
James Gawron: . . . For Kant Aesthetics plays a very powerful role. . . . for Kant Aesthetic Taste is Morality subjectively perceived. Morality is always objective. Kant is the progenitor of the Deontological moral point of view.
Given a Kantian interpretation of Aesthetics, nothing could be more important than how Art portrays Love. . . . it is the total lack of Romanticism in which Human Love is portrayed as a scientific phenomenon that I think is destroying everything that makes life worth living. I think even Moonstruck's Nick Cage with his black vision is superior to Freud's amortized relationship or Jung's quadrasexual bonding. . . .
I dunno squat about Kant or major dental procedures, but I think I agree with you if you are saying that it is a big mistake to accept as exclusively authoritative reductive science's account of Human Love (and everything else) as purely physical phenomena. Didn't Romanticism emerge as an alternative against that? Aren't those the two surviving contending alternatives right now? Those aren't rhetorical questions. I'm really asking. (Maybe Austen presents a third alternative, the best alternative, between those extremes?)
I like the way you capitalize Human Love!
Nov '11
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
Elizabeth Kantor
Sad modern version: "'When I first started kissing boys,' [Girls star Lena Denham] said, 'I remember noticing things, certain behaviors, where I thought, "There’s no way you learned that anywhere but on YouPorn.com. There’s no way any teenage girl taught you and reinforced that behavior."'"
Times have changed.
I'll never forget my first kiss. For all I know she kissed like a goat and so did I, since neither of us had the faintest idea, but it made my head spin like nothing before or since. The thought of it still makes me chuckle, happily and innocently.
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
Exactly! The more you get into Jane Austen, the more you see that over & over again she knows all about the happy medium that both extremes miss.
Astonishing
I dunno squat about Kant or major dental procedures, but I think I agree with you if you are saying that it is a big mistake to accept as exclusively authoritative reductive science's account of Human Love (and everything else) as purely physical phenomena. Didn't Romanticism emerge as an alternative against that? Aren't those the two surviving contending alternatives right now? Those aren't rhetorical questions. I'm really asking. (Maybe Austen presents a third alternative, the best alternative, between those extremes?)
I like the way you capitalize Human Love! · 8 hours ago
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
What indeed? The Romantics won.
In other words, what do you read after Austen? Some have suggested Barbara Pym. · 10 hours ago
Edited 10 hours ago
Re: Choose Your Entertainment Carefully (and Watch What It's Doing to You)
NOT a stupid question, a very interesting one. I am just understanding more about how besides Rousseau, the Scottish enlightenment--reacting against Locke's tabula rasa thing--played a role. Think of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Astonishing: Here's a stupid question to illustate my ignorance:
What's the path along which Rousseau's original Romanticism (a vain longing to return to some simpler, more natural, more primitive, less artificial, more virtuous life of the past) evolved to become the Romanticism of Byron? I suppose the connection of Byron's Romanticism back to Rousseau's must have something to do with some similar ideas about nature and the individual, about the individual following his "natural inclinations" in opposition to society's artificial refinements.
Or what? Sorry for the digression, but I'm curious.
About the main topic:
Yes, you gotta watch what you watch, and watch yourself watching what you watch. · 9 hours ago