Austen City Limits
Todd Flanders
October 1, 1996
Ratings skyrocket as lesbians marry on "Friends." Heroin hits the cover of Newsweek and Trainspotting garners way-up thumbs. The nihilistic preachments of Nine Inch Nails and Pearl Jam are so mainstream that Styx and Supertramp are today's "alternative."... Yeah yeah, same ol' same ol'. We have been slouching toward Gomorrah for some time now. Is it really news?
Jane Austen's "Emma" Beats Demi Moore's "Striptease." That's news.
There is a new longing afoot for manners, for virtue, for civility. New because the contemporary yearning for a return to more wholesome ways is not simply a fringe phenomenon among those extremists the media warn us about social conservatives and the religious right. No, as the wag said wistfully, nostalgia just isn't what it used to be.
Suddenly, it's hip to be square. Stories from Bill Bennett's Book of Virtues are broadcast prime time on PBS (yes, PBS). Miss Manners proclaims that she is out to rescue civilization, and even a fervently secularist organ like our local Boston Globe carries her propaganda and so can be charged with complicity. Gays are virtually normal and would like nothing more than to get married, settle down, and raise kids. Everybody left and right. Democrat and Republican, talks sternly about responsibility. Jerry Garcia is dead.
What gives?
The Jane Austen renaissance epitomizes the phenomenon. Her works are chiefly about manners. They showcase courtliness and promote the whole catalogue of Aristotelian moral virtues. They suggest a link between principle and taste. And they have been so omnipresent on screen of late that they have taken on a contemporary feel. I |am reminded of a cartoon showing hordes descending on a multiplex to see Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma. ...
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