ten secret runes have I seen scratched on smoothed out fish bone

[intertribal]

Holy crap, Lord of the Rings is so damn depressing.

This is why people should not aim for "epic".  I would take obscure, inconclusive Cormac McCarthy endings over all that grandiose let's-watch-everybody-die-so-people-know-not-to-expect-sequels crap.  I won't ask you for a sequel, ok?  I won't ask you for a fucking sequel. 

This is also directed at Akira Toriyama, obviously.  And myself, because I have done the epic overarching, overreaching ending myself, and I have to say writing it really depressed me.  I won't do it again. 

Also, is it wrong how much I like European folk metal?  Faun is my favorite.  I think it ties in to my forbidden love for Charmed and my secret desire to be pagan.  And the fact that I'm going home in two and a half weeks and Nebraska brings it out in me!  You can't be pagan in the city, man.  The city's naturally dead, which is why it depresses me so much. Seriously, though - when I first moved to Nebraska and lived with my aunt and uncle, I got this big influx of folksiness.  Like I've said, my cousins are SCA re-enactors.  My aunt always listened to Steeleye Span, for goodness sake, and I'm still obsessed with their version of "Tam Lin".  Two of my favorite Midsomer Murders episodes are The Fisher King and The Straw Woman.  And I think part of what annoyed me about Twilight was the use of folk-pagan symbolism in the justification of a Mormon pro-abstinence public service announcement. 

The problem, and one that I've written about before, is how thin the line is between happyvolk and Nazivolk.  I really hate that this is true, but... it is, and seriously Europe, blame the Nazis for usurping your culture and making all the white supremacists proclaim that they're descended from Odin and Frigg.  Or blame the French, if you desire to take it that far, for making you develop Cultural Nationalism (or as my history professor calls it, Nationalism with a capital N). 

Goddamn crisis of modernity.  I'm pretty sure I've bought into it.  Don't think I realized how much so until I had to write an essay about it.  Let's just hope I don't self-immolate in a glorious fascistic moment.

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

crisis of modernity?

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's people feeling like modern life is disconnected and meaningless and valueless and so they try to revert to an "authentic past". The Nazis used the crisis of modernity to get support. They had just lost World War I badly and the Nazis swooped in with their Aryan mythology and people who were disillusioned bought into it.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

well, i know that the Nazis did that, but is it really because of a 'crisis of modernity', or just, you know, because they lost WWII badly and various other issues? i don't see what it has to do with modern life being disconnected. i can see that people think that modern life is these things, but that seems to be another issue, and not necessarily accurate.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well the great lol-factor of the crisis of modernity is that it's not based on "reality", it's based on perceptions. A lot of people have theorized that the German interwar period - and certainly Japan of the same period - was filled with artists who were trying to heal "the wounds of modernity".

As my history professor says... everyone was speeding along on the road to progress, Europe thought it could do anything, and the first soldiers to fight in WWI were actually not working-class at all - they were young men of the middle-class who were enthusiastic about imperialism and various other things that seemed totally invulnerable. Then they came back all mutilated and maimed and people started thinking, "gosh, war is really bad, look at what our new weapons can do to our boys." (meanwhile they sent the working-class boys off to finish the war, and when they died too, they sent soldiers from the colonies) And what it turns into is a longing for the (good) old days, except, well, how to get back to the good old days. obviously impossible. Germany and Japan took up "fascistic moments" - purging the country of impurities, whittling it down to a vision of the authentic nationalist spirit. In Japan writers produced books where "bored urban intellectuals" seeking "meaning" and "authentic vision" went to the countryside and watched people jump off burning buildings and became absorbed into the sun and therefore became one with the universe and crap (because modern life is alienating). Japan actually wasn't recovering from a war at the time, but they were dealing with social changes and economic changes, and basically, some people, the ones who perceived a "crisis of modernity", were digging in their heels. I can't give you specific examples of German artists doing something similar but I'm pretty sure they did - although Germany seems not to be so into the "beautiful self-obliteration" as Japan, and more into going back to specific myths about ancient Germany. But Germany doesn't have the cultural history of suicide that Japan does.

it's basically blowback against social change. it's not a real crisis, it's a perceived crisis; the same people who are like, "what is the world coming to, cats and dogs sleeping together, mass hysteria" or "OMG the internet will eat our children" or what have you. Japan is really in deep in it now too, even though they're unlikely to try to invade China again - the nationalists think that modern life has produced a masochistic Japan that only cares about money and bureaucratic red tape, and they're trying to recover this ancient authentic japan through ritual, commemorating the war dead, and changing school textbooks. Things like the sarin gas incident and Shonen A and various other horrific crimes are interpreted by nationalists who believe in the crisis of modernity as evidence that the social framework has come undone. ironically, of course, it seems that Shonen A himself was trying to commune with some ancient god by killing all those people - like he was himself trying to cure a perceived crisis of modernity. But that's the irony of the crisis of modernity - what people seek to cure it is peace, but that peace turns into violence. Europe responded to all its angst about WWI being modernly horrible with having a greater, more spectacular war. it's a vicious circle, because the bottom line is people can't timetravel, they can't recover authenticity, and any hopes to reclaim it are doomed.