First of all, sorry it's taken me so long to reply!! I don't think I got enough rest the weekend before this one, because it got to about Tuesday and I managed to lose all will to function (the less said about my Friday spent reading high school AUs from 8am to 2am the better).
But I'm glad you like the rundown! It's obviously very, very simplified, so it's a relief that it holds up to other people than me.
And yeah, absolutely! Someone elsewhere was talking about whether or not this particular type of response is new to today, which made me think about the trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover and the opening speech for the prosecution: "ask yourself the question, when you have read it through, would you approve of your young sons, young daughters… reading this book? Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servant to read?" People have been policing books for a long time, but I think it has shifted to, exactly, concern trolling. It's not a question about whether Fifty Shades should be on sale or not, but whether people are going to understand it. (Though I suppose the edge is very fine between the different types of paternalism, if there even is one; it's not as if Victorian gentlemen didn't have their own smut that they feared would corrupt the weaker minded.)
What's Mark judging? My acts of reading, interpreting and enjoying, or his own reading of what he thinks these things reveal about my superego? Where, precisely, is the locus of his indignation?
These are very good questions... Of course Mark's judgement of other people doesn't really achieve much apart from contextualise his own position.
no subject
But I'm glad you like the rundown! It's obviously very, very simplified, so it's a relief that it holds up to other people than me.
And yeah, absolutely! Someone elsewhere was talking about whether or not this particular type of response is new to today, which made me think about the trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover and the opening speech for the prosecution: "ask yourself the question, when you have read it through, would you approve of your young sons, young daughters… reading this book? Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servant to read?" People have been policing books for a long time, but I think it has shifted to, exactly, concern trolling. It's not a question about whether Fifty Shades should be on sale or not, but whether people are going to understand it. (Though I suppose the edge is very fine between the different types of paternalism, if there even is one; it's not as if Victorian gentlemen didn't have their own smut that they feared would corrupt the weaker minded.)
What's Mark judging? My acts of reading, interpreting and enjoying, or his own reading of what he thinks these things reveal about my superego? Where, precisely, is the locus of his indignation?
These are very good questions... Of course Mark's judgement of other people doesn't really achieve much apart from contextualise his own position.