We are in the year and month of 37th anniversary of the release of the fairy tale film “The Princess Bride”. Who is Dread Pirate Roberts and could he really be nearly 70 years old, like some of our other great teen idols from the 1970s and 1980s? Or, are some of our great film and music idols more like the Dread Pirate Roberts than we like to think – replaced every decade by a new, young Dread Pirate Roberts lookalike to play the Dread Pirate “person” ? In this way, the film tells us, the name of the Dread Pirate Roberts can continue to be attached to the ever-youthful face of a new actor or character. I wonder about the Dread Pirate Roberts model and its possible application in lookalikes across the entertainment industry.
As Sardenberg tells us, the personal is political; thus, her – or mine – personal embodied experience of being a woman is perhaps not just anecdotal or of his kindbut perhaps rather something closer to the archetype. And as I myself approach a capital 0 in more and more imminent years, I am led to wonder what such a model of glamorous entertainment would say about our society, our social order and our values? Are we so obsessed with youth that some of our superheroes in Hollywood, Bollywood, music and elsewhere have to be replaced, like character names, with new lookalikes every ten years to maintain the illusion (must -I say, illusion?) of a youthful eternity? Is our desire for youth linked to our own ability to dream of being younger in our own lives? Or does it reflect something more sinister, such as an obsession with ogling scantily clad young people in epic films, cinematic dance extravaganzas or on stage at concerts?
There are important books in social theory (as Anthony Giddens calls it) such as: On the genealogy of morality by Frédéric Nietzsche; Or From Grammatology by Jacques Derrida (with translation by Spivak and introduction by Butler). Perhaps it’s time to think about “On Gerontology.” Perhaps we can find activities more suited to a moral, ethical, and civilized society than a dangerous mystification of the line between the youthful desire of our aging selves and what is illegal and irrational for a civilized society, the desire of youth.
Fostering the innocence of young people and giving them the capacity to create a civilized and legitimate life for themselves is more “rational” in Nietzschean and Kantian terms, in the general sense of desire as being linked to first-order needs, and of philosophy or reason as being linked to first-order needs. relating to higher order thinking or the application of principles; and “interests, wants, and needs” (see p. 169) as defined and associated with each other in a more complex way than thinking only in terms of first-order needs.
I would say that it is unlikely that an obsession with youth – in the way I have just described – would be endorsed by Protestantism or Roman Catholicism. It is also not approved by rabbinical Judaism; the six to seven major schools of legal thought in Islam; nor, I would dare suggest, the range of Eastern Orthodox Christian churches and communities in the Mediterranean, the Middle East and North Africa, Eastern Europe and Russia. So why is it so prevalent today?
In other words, we have lost our roots, one way or another, in our search for (eternal) youth. The Dread Pirate Roberts is just one example – and one method – in our research. Ponce de Leon was, according to legend, obsessed with the search for eternal youth in the sense of a fountain or elixir to combat the aging of the body (and it turns out it wasn’t Ponce de Leon, historically, but another character). Our obsession with youth goes back, at least, to the Bolshevik movement’s historical focus on the same thing (as opposed to old regimes of all types, as well as his later efforts to control youth); and the transition from a pre-Vichy France which emphasized the authority of adults (see pp. 56, 154-155) to a global emphasis on the rights of youth (among other rights) after the Second World War. So we have some antecedents to this craze. And there is no mistake in emphasizing the rights of young people. However, seeking anything other than watching our young people on television and in music videos struggle in ways that could harm them decades later has neither become nor a necessity for the proper functioning of our civilization. Indeed, these young people may have no say in matters of artistic discretion as minors, or even as young adults. I’m not saying this against dancing; education of youth; nor juvenile freedom(s), correctly applied and legal.
That said, the shift toward gaga feminism, which in some way creatively and necessary disrupts existing categories, might go too far. This is all the more true as he encourages young people to stage, on stage or screen, such disruptions so that aging audiences can experience them vicariously. It is helpful for young people to use their own creativity, anger and joy. However, 1970s-type experiments imagined by adults (sometimes by generations who were adults in the 1970s) and imposed on young people are, in many cases, unhealthy. Neither are these new paths; such experiments were done (violently) in earlier periods, cultures and civilizations and were largely debunked as those cultures fell into decline. We will not recover by sinking, once again, into an era of crimes against children, adults, the elderly or, failing that, degradation (or “decadence”). Throwing our youth there to appease our personal ideologies is not a good path.
Perhaps we should look for something more legitimate and more edifying than the fact that aging people leer at youth to brighten up their youth. It might be better to focus on gentle aging. Perhaps a shift in focus is needed towards valuing older people (without the extreme alternative of allowing them to be despots over younger individual lives). Maybe we can try to find a healthy alternative that uplifts everyone without destroying our youth. Few societies seem willing to admit it, but a quick perusal of works on human sacrifice suggests that it was a secret and highly hidden, yet cross-cultural practice, in ancient history at least (more than information on this subject in a future opportunity). Perhaps this particular, more artistic and symbolic form of human sacrifice of our youth is neither fitting nor appropriate as a defining characteristic of our civilization. A culture of such concern is not one we want to be remembered for.
I would like to assert that we do not want to be called, years or millennia from now, the Generation of declineTHE Logan’s Generation Run, or the Generation Gaga (although the latter sounds good to some feminists for the recognition of women). I would prefer to be remembered as World civilizationOr Wilsonian peaceOr The rapprochement of arts, sciences and religionsOr Culture and Positive, Organic Law (in which almost everyone deliberately adheres to law and order in their daily practices rather than failing to resort to any repressive laws altogether when laws are broken). Any of these would be wonderful in my opinion. Or perhaps we could be called the Generation of individual self-control and civilized freedoms.
Like many others before me, “I have a dream”. It is not the organized degeneration (taken as a transitive verb) of our youth; by removing any real agency; and the disruption, disorientation and harm (morally, if not otherwise) of each generation thereby creating. Likewise, while it is important to take into account the opinions of young people, sometimes a little wisdom and experience from elders also counts. But these elders should be morally upright and exercise restraint in their actions and criticism, not the same ones who sell hedonism and social experiences to children. We can make a difference. In other words, we haven’t just upset the apple cart in our ideological solution to favoring (sometimes extremely harmful) youth cultures to the exclusion of all else. Somehow, in this cultural fixation, we posit that the sky (Tengri?) is below the Earth (Lady Madonna?) rather than above it; or that science and the “Big Bang” are not contiguous to Creation or do not arise from it.
Further reading on international electronic relations