Emily

One of the things that annoys me most in period films is the fact that although the filmmakers often take great care that the physical environments and wardrobes are true to life, when it comes to values (aesthetic values and moral-philosophical values) the creators absolutely reject any attempt at historical accuracy, and anachronistically import present-day degenerate values into the works of nobler bygone eras.

Thus, when it comes to moral-philosophical values, heroes and heroines in historical films often espouse modern notions of "social justice" and feminism and hyper-democratic levelling principles in eras where such thinking simply didn't exist.

Just as offensively, when it comes to aesthetic values, ingénues are universally reconfigured to resemble the modern, androgynous, emaciated standard rather than the ideal of full-figured femininity which would actually have been preferred in every century prior to the 20th.

With that in mind, I was intrigued when I came across a very interesting post at a web log which is maintained by a group of female writers of historical fiction.

http://wordwenches.typepad.com/word...-plumpness.html

The upshot of the piece is that one of the female writers, in a rare moment of soul searching, acknowledges that the historical novels that she and her peers write are grossly inaccurate and deliberately anachronistic in the depictions of their heroines.

Some choice passages:


How encouraging that she at least acknowledges the glaring discrepancy between what modern artists create and historical truth.

The post is illustrated with a number of graphics, in reference to one of which the author says the following:


The fact that the writer can use such celebratory phrases in describing the ideal of plus-size beauty means that she certainly would be capable of writing full-figured heroines as icons of loveliness. Indeed, she goes on to outline one such instance in which she has done just that:


Imagine if there were novels in which precisely such size-positive, pro-indulgence, curve-adoring attitudes were expressed. Such texts would go a long way towards reintroducing to today's readers the very concept of plus-size beauty, which is an unthinkable idea to much of the general public, brainwashed as it is by present-day anti-feminine, anti-plus aesthetic values.

The writer even identifies the precise moment in time when the traditional ideal of beauty was deposed in favour of the modern, alien, rootless standard:


The article concludes with a kind of mea culpa by the author, a moment of uncommon candour:


Imagine that -- an open admission: "We're distorting the past." Would that Hollywood could be this honest about its agenda.

Now, the reasons why both traditional aesthetic and traditional moral-philosophical values are suppressed and modern values put in their place in period pieces, both in literature and film, is similar: the authors' wish to suppress those timeless principles and all that they represent.

The simple fact is that historical values are dangerous to the worshippers of the religion of modernity. They know that should the public be exposed to all of the beauty that past ages held as ideal, they would reject present-day thinking and desire to recover the nobler cultural principles that we have lost.

The greatness of the past is a rebuke to the degeneracy of the present. No wonder it is suppressed. Everyone who admires full-figured beauty should do everything in their power to spread an awareness of what the true values of past ages were. Such knowledge made even the author of the linked blog post question her own tampering with history.

The more people realize that the androgynous standard is an aberration, a mere anomaly in time, an unnatural deviation from true, timeless principles of beauty, the weaker the hegemony of the emaciated ideal will be, and the more comfortable the public will become in rediscovering and embracing traditional ideals of full-figured femininity.