tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post1347910059066279502..comments2024-03-28T17:53:43.541-04:00Comments on DarwinCatholic: Fifty Shades Of FalseDarwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-51548946021886537742012-07-20T09:02:45.966-04:002012-07-20T09:02:45.966-04:00Brandon, I'd seen that at Slate the other day,...Brandon, I'd seen that at Slate the other day, but I was too classy to link to it. :)<br /><br />But seriously: Jane Eyre is a long book, and not written in the world's most accessible style. Mr. Rochester doesn't come into play for a good quarter of the story, at least. Anyone unfamiliar with the story who's just showing up for the sex is going to have a good long slog getting to the payoff (unless they're doing some nasty stuff with John Reed at the beginning). Anyone who knows the story of Jane Eyre is just going to skip forward to read the new scenes. I don't see this as being a long-term viable option for the industry. And stylistically the content is going to be completely anachronistic, unless they're drawing from historical sources like Fanny Hill and Justine -- unlikely, judging from the soppy excerpts.<br /><br />But you know, t's the same thing with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and all the trendy mash-up genre. No one reads it for the P&P. I worked my way through Mansfield Park and Mummies and found myself constantly frustrated because I wanted to read Mansfield, and the damn zombies kept getting in the way of the narrative.mrsdarwinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03446744635277205867noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-60417453187346604982012-07-20T08:44:57.759-04:002012-07-20T08:44:57.759-04:00Anon, no more do I think that Jane Austen writes r...Anon, no more do I think that Jane Austen writes romantic fantasy. She's not to be blamed for writing a memorable character. But I do think it's a problem when a woman spends her sexual energy fantasizing about a man other than her husband, whether it's Mr. Darcy, Hercules, Adam Smith, George Washington, or the guy across the street.mrsdarwinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03446744635277205867noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-85942011453159707182012-07-20T02:59:53.169-04:002012-07-20T02:59:53.169-04:00Her characters are so rounded and fully developed ...<i>Her characters are so rounded and fully developed that any woman who pulls Darcy into her sexual fantasies is really manipulating her own "mental blow-up doll" who may share Darcy's name and historic dress (or undress...). </i><br /><br />But apparently it doesn't stop them from trying:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/oh-mr-darcy-pride-and-prejudice-among-classic-novels-to-receive-erotic-makeover-7946364.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/oh-mr-darcy-pride-and-prejudice-among-classic-novels-to-receive-erotic-makeover-7946364.html</a>Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-64888122140824684062012-07-19T19:43:57.433-04:002012-07-19T19:43:57.433-04:00Excellent observations. I share the one cavil that...Excellent observations. I share the one cavil that Jane Austen is not romantic fantasy. Marianne in "Sense and Sensibility" pays dearly for her romantic infatuation with Willoughby. But Miss Austen aside, I am grateful for your comments. You express very well precisely what the problem is with trashy novels, movies, etc.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-61768705900918383742012-07-19T16:05:45.936-04:002012-07-19T16:05:45.936-04:00Mrs. D,
As someone who struggled for years with ...Mrs. D, <br /><br />As someone who struggled for years with porn (both visual and text-interative) I completely understand where you're coming from.<br /><br />It seems that the S&M overtones of the 50 Shades book is the obvious progression for women who have become numbed by "conventional" romance novels.<br /><br />Visual porn worked the same for me. I needed more "unusual" scenes for the same effect. It got to the point that I was experiencing erectile dysfunction with my wife, having to fantasize stranger and stranger scenarios.<br /><br />My salvation was "Theology of the Body" and the Blessed Mother. As I began to consider and really understand intercourse as the physical "communion" of our spiritual relationship in covanental marriage, I began to appreciate my wife, and want to be closer to her. No longer was I "hag ridden" by mental images I could not wash out of my brain, and physically, I never had another problem responding to my wife.<br /><br />I still have occasional flashbacks, but a quick Hail Mary and a rebuke to Satan takes care of it.<br /><br />Now to start working on the other sins of the flesh... Gluttony and Sloth. :)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-69751024737181677332012-07-18T12:07:33.070-04:002012-07-18T12:07:33.070-04:00DMinor! Good to hear from you again.DMinor! Good to hear from you again.MrsDarwinhttp://darwincatholic.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-51000150697054048232012-07-18T09:42:19.404-04:002012-07-18T09:42:19.404-04:00Thanks for a very well-written and engaging post, ...Thanks for a very well-written and engaging post, and subsequent comments. I am sharing this.DMinorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10961244508260731087noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-75753450420866250812012-07-16T16:56:08.177-04:002012-07-16T16:56:08.177-04:00Brandon, this article is fascinating on many level...Brandon, this article is fascinating on many levels. I particularly like this quote about composing a novel:<br /><br /> "...one should sit quietly and let the thing invent itself. One piece of imagination leads to another. You think about a certain situation and then some quite extraordinary aspect of it suddenly appears. The deep things that the work is about declare themselves and connect. Somehow things fly together and generate other things, and characters invent other characters, as if they were all doing it themselves. One should be patient and extend this period as far as possible. Of course, actually writing it involves a different kind of imagination and work."<br /><br />This level of sub-creation is what sets imagination above fantasy. If art is reality distilled, fantasy is reality warped and molded to model only one aspect of reality, usually sexual. I've always thought that a good definition of pornography is something which reduces a person down to one overwhelming trait, whether lustful, brutal, defenseless, childish, etc., and then sexualizes it. It's a style of work that allows for no real nuance, change, or personality, because for an author to allow for the possibility that a character may be able to rise above the merely sexual is to crack the veneer of single-minded desire which allows fantasy to slip along without getting hung on on reality.MrsDarwinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-45611754303731418022012-07-16T15:43:40.217-04:002012-07-16T15:43:40.217-04:00Another Murdoch quote that's even more appropr...Another Murdoch quote that's even more appropriate (I mention these because your argument in the post is very Murdochian; Iris Murdoch makes this point all the time):<br /><br />"Great art is connected with courage and truthfulness. There is a conception of truth, a lack of illusion, an ability to overcome selfish obsessions, which goes with good art, and the artist has got to have that particular sort of moral stamina. Good art, whatever its style, has qualities of hardness, firmness, realism, clarity, detachment, justice, truth. It is the work of a free, unfettered, uncorrupted imagination. Whereas bad art is the soft, messy self-indulgent work of an enslaved fantasy. Pornography is at one end of that scale, great art at the other end."<br /><br />http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2313/the-art-of-fiction-no-117-iris-murdochBrandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-15713513897813668622012-07-16T15:37:23.130-04:002012-07-16T15:37:23.130-04:00That's a good quote from Murdoch making a very...That's a good quote from Murdoch making a very appropriate distinction.<br /><br />Jane Austen is too rich and varied an author, too honest and unsparing in her assessment of the consequences of sexual behaviors (the pain, worry, and social disgrace of Lydia's disappearance, the domestic discordance of the Bennetts' marriage) to too reserved in her narration to be accused of writing wish-fulfillment romance. Her characters are so rounded and fully developed that any woman who pulls Darcy into her sexual fantasies is really manipulating her own "mental blow-up doll" who may share Darcy's name and historic dress (or undress...). <br /><br />I think that "Christian" romance does become a problem if the main purpose of the novels is to create and then fulfill sexual tension in its readers, whether or not the content is explicit. However, such books are far easier to read as basic relationship stories that happen to have happy endings (and less likely to be a temptation to sexual sin) than romances with more explicit content. I've read several assessments of Fifty Shades that hold that the books are almost impossible to engage with at a story or character level because the nature of the content is so overtly, spectacularly, incontrovertibly designed to titillate that it overwhelms any other merit the books may have.MrsDarwinhttp://darwincatholic.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-66333287918556695862012-07-16T15:09:14.772-04:002012-07-16T15:09:14.772-04:00"I think we need the familiar word [imaginati..."I think we need the familiar word [imagination] to designate something (good by defintion) to which the contrast with fantasy (bad by definition) gives substance. The human mind is naturally and largely given to fantasy. Neurotic or vengeful fantasies, erotic fantasies, delusions of grandeur, dreams of power, can imprison the mind, impeding new understanding, new interests and affections, possibilities of fruitful and virtuous action. If we consider the narrow dreariness of this fantasy life to which we are so addicted the term 'unimaginative' seems appropriate." (Iris Murdoch, <i>Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals</i>, p. 322)Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-53445960068053793952012-07-16T13:58:43.842-04:002012-07-16T13:58:43.842-04:00I really love how you outline the problems with &q...I really love how you outline the problems with "Fifty Shades of Gray" and erotic novels in general, but are you really saying that Christian romance and Pride and Prejudice are just as bad? Are all romance novels occasions of sexual sin?Kristinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-54623832288206591072012-07-16T12:31:37.284-04:002012-07-16T12:31:37.284-04:00Well done, Mrs. D!Well done, Mrs. D!BettyDuffyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17130418609022759086noreply@blogger.com