“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Disturbingly Fake Indigeneity

It's like the Celtic Twilight of the eighteenth century, so the aesthetic implication goes. These guys are a vanishing breed, like the Welsh. How charming. Big beards and prejudices.

(With the implicit connotation that a “way of life” (Raymond Williams's definition of culture) is vanishing. Charming, because vanishing.)

The equation of concepts and beliefs with cultural charm is the first disconcerting move of the show. The aestheticization (in a bad way) of sentences such as You should marry 16-year-old girls.

And these beliefs are still disturbingly in effect, no matter the length of your beard.

And you are not really an indigenous person if you have a big beard and say outrageous things.

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