Golden Ages: an idea worth keeping around?
Chew, Chat, Change: Week 2
HOUSEKEEPING
Last week’s Saturday discussion on Metamorphoses was an experiment—not just in terms of content, but with the Discussion Thread format as well. In terms of the latter, I didn’t like it too much. It didn’t seem to encourage engagement any more than a regular post. So I’m moving forward with Substack’s more conventional structure instead. We’ll see how it goes.
If you missed the excerpt of Metamorphoses this week, clicking the button below will get you up to speed.
Golden Ages: Ovid’s vs. Ours
When we talk of Golden Ages, our descriptions often align with Ovid’s original concept. We think of them as periods that, “without coercion, without laws, spontaneously nurtured the good and the true.”
Especially in music, art, and literature, these moments in history (and the people that lived through them) are seen as being somehow freer and more creative than what (or who) came before and after. They’re set aside as ideal, their figures lifted up as examples and role models, their works worthy of canonization.
Modern “Golden Ages” include the music scene of the 1960s and film from the ‘20s to the ‘50s (thanks to sound and colour). But the example that comes up most right now is the loosely defined “Golden Age of TV.” Critics and viewers alike point to The Sopranos, The Wire, and other HBO shows from the early ‘00s as instigators of the Serious Television we continue to enjoy.
These categorizations of time are, of course, arbitrary and nostalgic. Good TV did not start in 2000, and the medium has produced plenty of crap since then. Remember all those Kardashian-like reality shows following celebs like Jessica Simpson and the Osbournes? Yeah…
If you want to discover your own blindspots, take a look at what you consider to be the “golden age” of anything.
Setting aside the ickiness of the filmmaker for a minute, Woody Allen’s 2011 comedy Midnight in Paris highlights the irony of this type of thinking pretty well. Frustrated with the idiocy and prentiousness of the people around him, Owen Wilson’s character stumbles into what he considers the Golden Age of art and literature—Paris in the 1920s—only to discover his heroes yearning for another bygone era.
It was easier for Ovid to fall for this trap. In our “Information Age” (notice the quotations), every piece of evidence used to elevate an era can be rebuffed by another, less appealing fact. The year 8 AD did not offer the same resources.
And yet, the concept lives on—and in doing so, tells us more about our own values, tastes, and culture than anything about the art or people we’re trying to praise: If you want to discover your own blindspots, take a look at what you consider to be the “golden age” of anything.
We’ve become well acquainted with the shadow side of nostalgia in the last ten years or so—especially in politics. The idea of making anything “great again” will forever be tainted with a particular stench. Post-Charlottesville, my thoughts on statues will never be the same.
Still, I hesitate to completely disregard romantic ideas about the past, because the opposite can be just as problematic. If we devalue history and its figures, it can lead to assumptions about progress I don’t believe in either: that we’re constantly moving in an upward direction. There are things we can learn from the people that came before us. The struggle for us is to decide whether the lesson teaches us what to do or what not to do.
In an odd way, this reminds me of Jonah Hill’s documentary, Stutz. In it, his therapist, Dr. Phil Stutz, suggests thinking of life as a series of pearls you’re putting on a string. Each pearl represents a decision you make or an action you take. And inside each pearl is a little turd representing the imperfect element of that decision or action.
I think we can all agree that some turds are bigger than others. But Dr. Stutz’s point focuses less on its size and more on its inevitable existence. You can’t avoid the turd. The turd is what makes you—makes us—human.
Obviously, this veers pretty far from the paradise Ovid describes. In a sense, though, that’s the point. It might be wise for us to think twice about what we label “golden” in our very unEden-like time. Whatever era, artist, figure, or movement you admire, remember: there’s a little turd in everything.
What about you?
What era or eras do you consider “golden?”
Can you spot the turd?
The idea of a Golden Age is still a popular one. Any thoughts on the others?
a)Silver?
b)Bronze?
c)Iron?
Which metal would you say best describes the age we’re in?
Isn’t it funny that in the “Golden Age” of TV, the best stories depict Iron-Age brutality?
“They lived on plunder: friend was not safe with friend, relative with relative, kindness was rare between brothers. Husbands longed for the death of their wives, wives for the death of their husbands. Murderous stepmothers mixed deadly aconite, and sons inquired into their father’s years before their time.”
Sounds like the plot of The White Lotus, Succession, The Sopranos, and about two dozen other shows (not to mention every Shakespeare tragedy), no?
Talk to me.
Share your thoughts in the comments below.
I think of films from the seventies as a "golden era." So many classics (e.g., Jaws, The Sting, The French Connection, Apocalypse Now, Chinatown, etc. etc. etc.). The problem of course -- the turd -- is all the absolutely atrocious movies I've never heard of that were made and people labored through.
By the way, been meaning to dive into your guys' work for a while and just now getting unburied. Subscribing now!
There is no such thing as a golden era. It is obviously in the eyes of the beholder. Even gold itself has been given a value by a certain society or societies. Hence, "gold rushes" in our part of the world where Europeans went crazy trying to dig it out of the ground. It used to be used as a monetary standard; it makes jewelry, and in a previous era was used to cover bad molars but various other metals glitter just as much. What's so golden about gold?