There is no better time than now.
So, we can't feel this nostalgia for the past. Yes, it was more aesthetic but all that beauty hides the fact that women were treated like subhuman and only very few could achieve things with much effort and privileges.
Sad.
Wahhhh
shareYou'd be surprised how far some women got in the past, despite the obstacles they ran into.
shareThe OP would probably need to study and interpret history objectively for that to happen.
shareWell, if your idea of "getting far" was to marry well and make the most of the advantages that came with that marriage, then yes. Some women could get very far indeed in past eras.
But since women can still do that today, why bother?
You're definitely right there; we have a very monochromatic lens with which we view history and forget that it was nuanced and that things weren't always as horrible as we perceive.
That said, I do think that there's a lot of untapped time-travel story potential with protagonists who wouldn't "fit in". It's been touched on here and there, and I think there is a film out now that has a black hero time-travelling (I'm pretty sure, anyway), but generally it's a huge story well that hasn't been drawn from.
Personally, I'd love to see it mined.
Many women back then did what they do now: Spread their legs and get their money. Things don't change.
sharePeople who romanticize the past and who wish they lived in another area inevitably think of what it'd be like to live as a rich and fabulous person in that era.
Well, the rich and fabulous have it good in every single era!
That's very insightful... yeah, travelling back to another era would become barbarous quickly (not to mention currency exchange and language barriers...)
shareI'd be curious to see what happened if I gave a time machine to a person who romanticized some era of the past, and I could give them a free trip to the era of their dreams.
I'd be VERY interested to see if their rose-colored glasses stayed on after the first time they needed to find a bathroom...
I'd use a time machine for very short trips, I think. There are lots of things I'd like to see. I'd probably hop back to see some of the original productions of Shakespeare's plays, for instance. I'd also zip back to create some wealth using my intricate knowledge of stock futures...
shareYou would need old/aged money unless the trips were back less than a year or two. A 2020 hundred won't work in 2015, but yes you have the right idea about short trips and creating wealth.
shareAllen pretty much always features rich intellectuals as his main characters. They are always well off no matter when they lived.
shareFace it, most TV and Movies focus on rich people because people
are used to and want to see it. I think they did some kind of study
of family dramas or sitcoms and found that the families shown on
TV made like many multiples of the average American family income.
They show it on TV and tell us we are the richest country in the
history of the world so we feel good about being screwed over and
saddled with a corrupt government.
True. I mean, let's be honest, who wants to watch movies about commoners like us? 😂
shareThey're usually just as good or better. Check out "Chilly Scenes Of Winter".
shareThat is a good movie. When it comes to rich people, they can be portrayed as one dimensional, as in this movie.
shareThat's kind of a reflexive reaction? I didn't say that or imply
it, only to mention and desribe it a little to differentiate and
analyze.
> Rich people are boring.
Makes no sense. First it makes no sense.
Hey, people identify as rich! Or richer. They see themselves in people who are living the lifestyle they'd like to be living.
Plus giving characters money is convenient to most plots, it gives them the time and money to go out and do stuff, where most of us don't do much except work and mind the kids.
While that's true to some extent, AmeriGirl points out that history wasn't always 100% harsh to women.
Yes, it would become pretty horrifying pretty quick, depending on the exact era and location, but I think it would be workable for a lot of history, depending on the affluence of the time-traveller.
Of course, all this is missing the point of the film, which is about living in the moment and loving your life as it is right now.
There's also a secondary point, it seems to me: all the people actually doing creative work in the film have an idealized nostalgia for some vanished Golden Age, which has inspired them, or at least helped to make them creative artists in whatever medium they prefer. And I've felt that same nostalgia when reading about (for example) the Romantic Poets, or any other artistic movement of the past. But I also realize that it's making a very selective reading of the past, just picking the best parts & deleting the bad. For Gil. recognizing this is what enables him to move forward. The Golden Past is a beginning—not a place to stay forever, but to use as a starting point. Don't live back there, but carry the best of it with you into the present.
shareYes, yes, for sure. I don't think Midnight in Paris is saying that the past cannot bestow wisdom or pleasure, but rather that it is just one thing we can enjoy, and we should be using the past (or our pasts) to propel us forward through the multitude of present moments that compose a life on its way passing by.
shareMy takeaway as well. :)
shareStill are for the most part.
If only people did not habituate to their own idiosyncratic level of pain, misery, station and even pleasure so easily and acceptingly.
If you believe that women's conditions in the past was "subhuman", then you don't understand history or your ancestors...
This is a very naive view, even based on materialist, contemporary terms of lack of effort and privilege..
Is that true? Anecdotal, perhaps, but I've known a lot of women who have the sort of romanticized idea of the past that Gil has in this film, although it is often for the "Jane Austen" period. As Otter points out below, however, it does always seem to be tied to being wealthy in those eras (or, at least, doing the "classic Austen" where one is not terribly middle class for long, since there are several dashing suitors waiting to sweep one off one's feet...)
I do understand your point, but I think there's more nuance than that.
I've commented once here already, I know, but I ran across the thread again, and it's an interesting one.
Yes, that's a good answer for Debbie Downer.
shareI get your point.
Except that it is true today as well, and even seems to be going backwards in certain spaces.
And, if you notice it is also true or minorities and men as well.
The whole of human history is a story written by selfish cruel jerks manipulating masses of people using any lies, trickery or force they can imagine, not to mention burning up the resources of the planet in an attempt to play god.