Values Dissonance/Literature: Difference between revisions
m
no edit summary
No edit summary |
mNo edit summary |
||
Line 216:
* [[Jonathan Swift]]'s ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'' depicts the Houyhnhnms as a perfect society based on Reason--infinitely superior to the narrator's native humanity anyway--but to a modern reader they're contemptible. Whether Gulliver's value judgments at that point are meant to be taken at face value or [[Unreliable Narrator|not]] may be questionable, but in any case Ted Danson didn't tell us the nice horses had a rigid racial hierarchy (among themselves, based on their coat colors) and were last seen contemplating genocide...
** Swift's proposition of a perfect society might fully well have seemed just as alien to his contemporary audience. Further elaborated in [http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/politics-vs-literature.htm this essay] by George Orwell.
* In-universe example: there are a few places in the [[1632]] series where the values of the "downtimers" and those of the "uptimers" Clash. Noteworthy is the example of ''mutual'' Values Dissonance when modern-day schoolteacher Melissa Mailey is shocked to see refugee-matriarch Gretchen Richter hitting any of her younger siblings who doesn't obey her promptly. Melissa is of course reacting with modern sensibilities towards corporal punishment. Unusually, the author shows Gretchen's reaction as a case of Values Dissonance as well -- what kind of neglectful woman fails to properly discipline children and lets them just run riot? That would ruin them! Amusingly, this tension is resolved when Gretchen sees Melissa ordering around her uptimer students, and comes to the conclusion that Melissa objects to corporal punishment not because she wants to let kids run riot but because she is so personally formidable that she has never ''needed'' to smack a kid to make them listen to her. Which of course is what starts Gretchen on the path of learning that there are other
** Also, the "uptimers", whose view of 17th-century people is heavily colored by the image of the prim, uptight Puritan, are quite startled to find out just how frank - and bawdy - "downtimers" can be in discussing sexual topics and using so-called "barnyard" language. On the other hand, the "uptimer" habit of casually taking the Lord's name in vain often causes sticky moments with "downtimers", for which this is a serious no-no.
* Malory's ''[[King Arthur|Le Morte d'Arthur]]'' is decked in this trope.
| |||