A Comment on Current Things and a Reminder of Things Past
Nidra Poller weaves a tale of murder and French hypocrisy and purported decadence.
My favorite part begins, "Star-crossed lovers from anti-warring families in a free world where adultery does not turn women scarlet, divorce is not a disgrace, patchwork families cause no concern...The bare-bones story is not Greek tragedy, Shakespearean drama, Biblical narrative. It's a fait divers: Just one of those things that happen, illustrating nothing. The facts will come out in court, editorialists will pontificate on the futility of seeking vengeance, the bereaved lover will be shown as suffering from the loss of his beloved partner and the destruction of his brilliant career. What more should he suffer?"
Speaking of Shakespearean drama, "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" ( Macbeth , Act V, Scene II [?]). Ooh, so post-modern.
As for disgrace, men of good families and good prospects always have been exploiters and batterers. I was reading a publication from 1836 in which the story is told of a man of good family who courts an attractive and well-mannered woman of more obscure family. He seduces her and leaves her pregnant in the care of her parents, who soon "die of shame." Who knows what happens to the girl herself, who is left like Jane Eyre nearly is, without family, money, or respectability.
Later, the man is converted at a revival and marries an attractive and pious woman. They have children. As their daughters grow into adolescence, the family boards the wife's brother, a medical student, who showers a great deal of attention on his nieces. One niece in particular gets the literal equivalent of Jove's golden shower. The girl is left without reputation to a degree far more than the first case, but her parents simply tell him to leave the area before they prosecute him. Perhaps, the theory was that the other daughters and the son might have prospects provided that the incest story spreads no further than their small town. The wicked uncle goes off and does quite well for himself in society somewhere else.
Was this story true? I don't know. The same publication warned about nannies moonlighting as prostitutes. What I believe is that it falls into the same archetype as Poller's story. Faced with a gross crime, it ties crime to crime with both sex and violence lurking in the background when they are not at the fore. A girl is punished for the sins of her father, while the sins of France and themselves presumably are heaped upon a man and a womam. The psyche is led by a cart horse and whipped at its tail. In the 1836 case, the bystanders shout only that the father is responsible. The wicked uncle is evil, yet he is somehow absolved as the agent of expiation. In Poller's story, the decadence of France, the demand of some within France for cultural purification of American influence, and French anti-Semitism or sympathy for Palestine becomes the scapegoat. Of course, Cantat is responsible, Poller claims, but so are everything for which France will absolve him.
Yes, I am definitely rambling. I really should now attack unjust forms of shame, but I am going to desist. What I am going to warn is that issues of expiation, shame (guilt, whether true or false), larger social forces, and personal and collective responsibility probably are going to enter the national discourse very soon. You see, Mel Gibson, has just made a movie.
ESA(20030815.1)
Nidra Poller weaves a tale of murder and French hypocrisy and purported decadence.
My favorite part begins, "Star-crossed lovers from anti-warring families in a free world where adultery does not turn women scarlet, divorce is not a disgrace, patchwork families cause no concern...The bare-bones story is not Greek tragedy, Shakespearean drama, Biblical narrative. It's a fait divers: Just one of those things that happen, illustrating nothing. The facts will come out in court, editorialists will pontificate on the futility of seeking vengeance, the bereaved lover will be shown as suffering from the loss of his beloved partner and the destruction of his brilliant career. What more should he suffer?"
Speaking of Shakespearean drama, "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" ( Macbeth , Act V, Scene II [?]). Ooh, so post-modern.
As for disgrace, men of good families and good prospects always have been exploiters and batterers. I was reading a publication from 1836 in which the story is told of a man of good family who courts an attractive and well-mannered woman of more obscure family. He seduces her and leaves her pregnant in the care of her parents, who soon "die of shame." Who knows what happens to the girl herself, who is left like Jane Eyre nearly is, without family, money, or respectability.
Later, the man is converted at a revival and marries an attractive and pious woman. They have children. As their daughters grow into adolescence, the family boards the wife's brother, a medical student, who showers a great deal of attention on his nieces. One niece in particular gets the literal equivalent of Jove's golden shower. The girl is left without reputation to a degree far more than the first case, but her parents simply tell him to leave the area before they prosecute him. Perhaps, the theory was that the other daughters and the son might have prospects provided that the incest story spreads no further than their small town. The wicked uncle goes off and does quite well for himself in society somewhere else.
Was this story true? I don't know. The same publication warned about nannies moonlighting as prostitutes. What I believe is that it falls into the same archetype as Poller's story. Faced with a gross crime, it ties crime to crime with both sex and violence lurking in the background when they are not at the fore. A girl is punished for the sins of her father, while the sins of France and themselves presumably are heaped upon a man and a womam. The psyche is led by a cart horse and whipped at its tail. In the 1836 case, the bystanders shout only that the father is responsible. The wicked uncle is evil, yet he is somehow absolved as the agent of expiation. In Poller's story, the decadence of France, the demand of some within France for cultural purification of American influence, and French anti-Semitism or sympathy for Palestine becomes the scapegoat. Of course, Cantat is responsible, Poller claims, but so are everything for which France will absolve him.
Yes, I am definitely rambling. I really should now attack unjust forms of shame, but I am going to desist. What I am going to warn is that issues of expiation, shame (guilt, whether true or false), larger social forces, and personal and collective responsibility probably are going to enter the national discourse very soon. You see, Mel Gibson, has just made a movie.
ESA(20030815.1)
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