Reading this, I get the feeling that the real horror story is growing up in the US, that childhood, especially for white, middle class kids (after all, aren't all these movies about white, middle class kids?) who seek a haven in the movies you describe. That 'real life' is the one they pursue in the never-never land of Hollywood, the fear is actually a reflection of the fear they experience in real life, hence the abusive step-father, note that he's not a 'real' father, (that would be too close to home) hence the alienation. It's as if the movie is actually the patient and the characters are the 'doctors', the analysts. There's something deeply disturbing about a generation of children growing up in the world that Hollywood has created, it's so different from the fantasy world of my childhood, where I imagined being someone , or something else, a fish, a nymph, transformed by water, where I would swim to a far-off land. I read these movies as the inner turmoil of alienated children, made 'real'. Doesn't it explain your 'obsession', is that the right word, with horror? BTW, I quarrel with your description of the Middle Ages as being "pretty horrible", where does that come from I wonder?
Yeah, I wonder some of the same things, particularly about horror in the last, say, 30 years. Because the horror genre is, as I've talked about a lot on here, really, really, really old, though its character shifts and changes over time, and goes through all manner of evolution, usually reflecting whatever the epicenter of terror is in a culture at a particular time. And I do think that right now we are very, very afraid of the way our minds and our childrens' minds are being hijacked by TV and media culture and social media. So I think this film is very much of its own era.
My characterization of the MIddle Ages as pretty horrible comes from 30 years of studying them. There's certainly a lot of good in the Middle Ages, too, but if you weren't an upper class male whose native language, physical appearance, sexual orientation, faith coincided with the majority around you, you were going to have a very difficult life. Of course, that's true in a lot of different historical periods, though it is in some ways acutely true in the Middle Ages. Beyond that, there was an enormous amount of war, catastrophic plagues, food shortage, agricultural collapse, and lots of pre-industrial waste for people to deal with. To, hopping back to you, where does your quarrel come from? What texts or documents or cultural objects do you read that give you a different sense?
Well, largely Silvia Federici and to a lesser extent, William Morris. But yes, there is a lot of romantic nonsense about that time but again, look at what came next!
Oh, I love Federici. Are you thinking of Caliban and the Witch, or something else? For sure, what came next was at least as complicated, in many ways. If you want to get a quick and gnarly sense of the difficult of existing as a human in the Middle Ages, look no further than the wildly popular--so popular that it helped trigger a class-based rebellion in 14th century England--than Piers Plowman. Which I'm planning to do a substack on in a couple months.
I sent you a link to an essay I wrote about Caiban and the Witch, awhile back and yes. I read Piers Plowman a very, very long time ago. I suppose my point about 'The Dark Ages' is just that, it's viewed as an uncouth, crude and generally barbarous period in English history which I think does a disservice to the period. Yes, the serfs got a raw deal, but freemen were precisely that, free and the alienation of labour, especially women's labour didn't yet exist, it took capitalism and Hobbes 'Leviathon' to completely subjugate women and remove their key role in social life. I think that was William Morris's position, romantic as it was, he abhorred the factory, those dark, satanic mills and surely wasn't that at the heart of Federici's Caliban, especially the role of women in medieval society?
Yes, I remember your essay! And of course, you're right that the Middle Ages weren't exclusively "dark," but they definitely were a very, very hard time to be alive, especially if you were a woman. Or poor--and I don't just mean a serf. I've said many times that, if I could live in a time and place other than now, I'd pick medieval Palermo, and it's true. In many ways, that was a very special place and very interesting time. But if I lived there, I'd want to be rich, male, landed, and Catholic, with a strong immune system, a huge family, and way, way better eyesight than I have in real life. :) Federici can be right that the rise and coalescence of capitalism was partially about the increasing subjugation of women under the yoke of reproductive economy, but that doesn't mean that medieval women had it easy, or even acceptably ok, in general. Maternal mortality rates alone were something to worry about!
Re Federici: she most definitely has a different take on the role of women in the medieval period that doesn't concur with your take, it's why I took issue with the 'horrible' description. I think in Caliban, Federici is looking specifically at the role of the Commons, as a shared, collective space and the key role women played in it. Yes, the larger situation of Feudalism, the role of the owners of land that tied the peasants to the lords through working the land, taxes and so forth but within it, if you compare role of women with what came with the rise of capitalism, women's role was most definitely important.
Reading this, I get the feeling that the real horror story is growing up in the US, that childhood, especially for white, middle class kids (after all, aren't all these movies about white, middle class kids?) who seek a haven in the movies you describe. That 'real life' is the one they pursue in the never-never land of Hollywood, the fear is actually a reflection of the fear they experience in real life, hence the abusive step-father, note that he's not a 'real' father, (that would be too close to home) hence the alienation. It's as if the movie is actually the patient and the characters are the 'doctors', the analysts. There's something deeply disturbing about a generation of children growing up in the world that Hollywood has created, it's so different from the fantasy world of my childhood, where I imagined being someone , or something else, a fish, a nymph, transformed by water, where I would swim to a far-off land. I read these movies as the inner turmoil of alienated children, made 'real'. Doesn't it explain your 'obsession', is that the right word, with horror? BTW, I quarrel with your description of the Middle Ages as being "pretty horrible", where does that come from I wonder?
Yeah, I wonder some of the same things, particularly about horror in the last, say, 30 years. Because the horror genre is, as I've talked about a lot on here, really, really, really old, though its character shifts and changes over time, and goes through all manner of evolution, usually reflecting whatever the epicenter of terror is in a culture at a particular time. And I do think that right now we are very, very afraid of the way our minds and our childrens' minds are being hijacked by TV and media culture and social media. So I think this film is very much of its own era.
My characterization of the MIddle Ages as pretty horrible comes from 30 years of studying them. There's certainly a lot of good in the Middle Ages, too, but if you weren't an upper class male whose native language, physical appearance, sexual orientation, faith coincided with the majority around you, you were going to have a very difficult life. Of course, that's true in a lot of different historical periods, though it is in some ways acutely true in the Middle Ages. Beyond that, there was an enormous amount of war, catastrophic plagues, food shortage, agricultural collapse, and lots of pre-industrial waste for people to deal with. To, hopping back to you, where does your quarrel come from? What texts or documents or cultural objects do you read that give you a different sense?
Well, largely Silvia Federici and to a lesser extent, William Morris. But yes, there is a lot of romantic nonsense about that time but again, look at what came next!
Oh, I love Federici. Are you thinking of Caliban and the Witch, or something else? For sure, what came next was at least as complicated, in many ways. If you want to get a quick and gnarly sense of the difficult of existing as a human in the Middle Ages, look no further than the wildly popular--so popular that it helped trigger a class-based rebellion in 14th century England--than Piers Plowman. Which I'm planning to do a substack on in a couple months.
I sent you a link to an essay I wrote about Caiban and the Witch, awhile back and yes. I read Piers Plowman a very, very long time ago. I suppose my point about 'The Dark Ages' is just that, it's viewed as an uncouth, crude and generally barbarous period in English history which I think does a disservice to the period. Yes, the serfs got a raw deal, but freemen were precisely that, free and the alienation of labour, especially women's labour didn't yet exist, it took capitalism and Hobbes 'Leviathon' to completely subjugate women and remove their key role in social life. I think that was William Morris's position, romantic as it was, he abhorred the factory, those dark, satanic mills and surely wasn't that at the heart of Federici's Caliban, especially the role of women in medieval society?
Yes, I remember your essay! And of course, you're right that the Middle Ages weren't exclusively "dark," but they definitely were a very, very hard time to be alive, especially if you were a woman. Or poor--and I don't just mean a serf. I've said many times that, if I could live in a time and place other than now, I'd pick medieval Palermo, and it's true. In many ways, that was a very special place and very interesting time. But if I lived there, I'd want to be rich, male, landed, and Catholic, with a strong immune system, a huge family, and way, way better eyesight than I have in real life. :) Federici can be right that the rise and coalescence of capitalism was partially about the increasing subjugation of women under the yoke of reproductive economy, but that doesn't mean that medieval women had it easy, or even acceptably ok, in general. Maternal mortality rates alone were something to worry about!
I came across this today, that I thought might interest you:
https://commonspress.com/the-power-of-peasants/
Re Federici: she most definitely has a different take on the role of women in the medieval period that doesn't concur with your take, it's why I took issue with the 'horrible' description. I think in Caliban, Federici is looking specifically at the role of the Commons, as a shared, collective space and the key role women played in it. Yes, the larger situation of Feudalism, the role of the owners of land that tied the peasants to the lords through working the land, taxes and so forth but within it, if you compare role of women with what came with the rise of capitalism, women's role was most definitely important.