This Is the Stuff I think About When I Should Be Job-Hunting

[moon_custafer]

Might be the strong coffee, or missing my pill this morning, but my mind's trying to collate some ideas that have been knocking around my head recently.

This morning I rewatched the trailer for The Miners' Hymns, a documentary on 1930s Northern mining towns and their brass bands/unions/religious and friendly societies - there's a strong emphasis on parades and banners; and I wondered if these were descended from the annual Corpus Christi plays performed by the craft-guilds in that same part of the world some centuries earlier. This essay hints they might be, in noting that Coventry's Godiva parade may have started not long after the play were banned, but I didn't come across anything else.

Is it just me, or has there been a big recent revival of interest in UK culture and customs? I've noticed it with British Sea Power, a contemporary rock band whose music contains themes of environmental concerns, nostalgia for Blitz Spirit, and a dash of British neo-pagan mysticism. I' feel like Nu-Who also embraces this phenomenon - perhaps trying to reclaim nationalism from the far-Right? Does this relate to the revisionist-nostalgia of steampunk? How can those of us who like this sort of thing stay on the path of "reviving DIY, craft and appreciation of history without blinding oneself to all the -isms?" I suppose by constant mental self-checking just like with everything else. Certainly London's Tweed Run as photographed by Susie Bubble appears encouragingly heterogenous.

Would appreciate notes from those who are living in the UK and/or are real live academics.

Comments

[donald hutton (from livejournal.com)]

I can't tell if there's been a big revival in an interest in UK culture because I'm inside my neo-Victorian world all the time anyway.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

It seems to me as though there has, but I doubt my own viewpoint as well.

[leave-harmony.livejournal.com]

I'm neither, but I think you're right.
I've always been an anglophile, but I've noticed in the past few years some things have become more prominent, easier to find, that sort of thing.
Either there's a camera on me 24/7, or there's an upsurge in mainstream interest....

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Think is, what I'm talking about is more like Anglophilia *in the UK *- sort of "Yay us! Check out our cool history and traditions!"

[leave-harmony.livejournal.com]

Well, there have certainly been a few fandom secrets to the effect of, british person is really pissed about the interest in british culture abroad. Get yer hands off our heritage, that kinda thing. So maybe part of it is sorta reactionary....yeh, we know we're great. WE KNOW IT HARDER THAN YOU.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Well, earlier this evening I was inveigled into agreeing to write an article for a Dr. Who fanzine - don't think I feel confident enough yet to publish this line of inquiry; instead I'll be musing about 'The God Complex.'

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I can't help but say hello and comment, as English/a BSP fan/Whovian since forever/interested by folklore.

I like the idea of saying: here we are. We're British. This is our culture. Come see; come add to it. Trying to have an identity that isn't polluted and perverted by bigots. And isn't afraid to be malleable. BSP say it well in Waving Flags.

There is an indie record label, Ghost Box, that draw on folklore, old weird fiction, and '70s tv for inspiration, though their music is folktronica (ish). They portray this slightly time-warped England, what might be called "nostalgia for the future". It's appealing aesthetically, I'm just not sure if it's a dig or some retro-romantic yearning. I'm wary of looking backwards overmuch. And more wary of cultural isolationism.


*constant mental self-checking*

Yes. Well said.

I wonder why (at least as a sub-culture, if not as a fictional genre) steampunk seems much bigger in the States than in Britain?


- Ash

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

I wonder why (at least as a sub-culture, if not as a fictional genre) steampunk seems much bigger in the States than in Britain?

Perhaps it's related to the famous observation "Europeans think a hundred miles is a long distance; Americans think a hundred years is a long time?" i.e the 19th century seems more exotic here?