The Cultural Paradox of Old Books (Or Why is Everything So Complicated?)

I honestly don't know why John Carter didn't do well in theaters.  Was it not close enough to the books?  Because there were definitely parts with strong emotional resonance, and I thought for one thing, that the way they dealt with accents was better than normal for a movie of this kind.  It was entertaining.  I liked it.  There.

Also, it had the kid from Spy Kids in it as Edgar Rice Burroughs.  So that's... I dunno... weird?

I started "reading" Problem Sleuth, a predecessor to Homestuck, but I don't like it as much as I like Homestuck.  The references though, I understand so many more of them already.

I'm still reading Self-raised, a book published in 1876.  It's still kind of like an American Dickens novel.  I just want to finish reading it.

Also, there is prudery.  So prude as to be an affront for folks of this day and age who can't stand wholesomeness.  Like, the people in that book are so proper, and so careful in evading impropriety, that I'm certain some people will find it offensive.

There's also stuff involving black servants that's unfortunately typical of the era.  They aren't slaves, but they are happy to subordinate themselves to the white protagonists of the book.  It's kind of a problematic thing, but it would also be hard to depict them as people in the same social and financial standing as the upper crust (the main characters include a member of the Supreme Court, British nobility, and a highly successful member of the Washington bar).  I am disappointed with the author for this depiction, but I'm not as disappointed as if this book was written later than a decade after the abolition of slavery in America.

It's such a strange mix, all that propriety and the treatment of people.  Nowadays we can say that people are people (with the exception of the unborn, apparently), and everyone pretty much agrees.  I should point out though that the villains of the story are punished because they treat the servants more like objects and less like human beings, and that the protagonists actually tend to treat them more like people than the servants themselves do.

In the previous book, there were poor white people with less social standing than black servants, which is an actual thing that happened in our history.  So is the question more one of class than race?

Ugh, cultural stuff hurts to think about.

Do it anyway.  I will too.

There.  There's like, social responsibility going on in this blog a little bit.  Or something.

-shrugs-