Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Cocteau's Identification of the French Hubris

A few of you readers will understand my interest in this graf:

Once again the universal French mission civilizes the oriental savages! Stravinsky himself, the exotic Russian primitivist composer of The Rite of Spring, is saved by submission to "Latin order." Recent scholarship suggests that Cocteau is here engaging in a discourse common to early twentieth-century French imperialism: the "wrapping" of native cultures within the "high culture" of France provided a way of retaining the exoticism of primitivism for consumption while at the same time subordinating those cultures to the Empire's.29 Thus "wrapped" and packaged, redeemed by Latin order, Stravinsky is welcomed back into the fold.

The "High Culture of France," indeed. By no means is that hubris limited to the early 20th-Century Frenchies.

1 comment:

krshorewood said...

The last thing you sheeple would understand is a nation of workers who stand up for themselves.