High forum art! With appropriate context restored, and some [explanatory notes inserted in bracketed red text—for I was too subtle]:European culture in 1808: [...nude statute of a beautiful woman, Pauline (Bonaparte) Borghese, in a classical pose as Venus...]Fun fact: Pauline had an affair with Paganini.[nullius now adds: A painting of Paganini with a beard was deliberately hereby selected. Paganini was a man. How manly? He fucked Napoleon’s sister.
For her part, the aristocratic voluptuary Venus usually had a taste for soldiers—warriors, as Nietzsche said: men of violence—but she loved men of violins, too!Oh, my: The subject line has a Nullian onion-layered multiplicity of meanings. Violence (done) to violins. Or: From violence, to violins. Either way bespeaks passion, in some sense. Paganini’s violins set Pauline on fire.
]
THIS SPACE IS INTENTIONALLY LEFT NULL.
Modern, democratic European culture Eurovision (like “Satoshi’s Vision”?) in 2014:[—snip image of countercultural arson against the arts: An androgynous bearded thing in women’s clothes, Conchita Wurst, holding the trophy for the 2014 “Eurovision Song Contest”—] If a similar competition as the "modern democratic Eurovision" would have existed back in 1808, do you really believe that "the people" would have voted for Paganini?
I don't think so.
Alas! I have been caught out with my cunning, and quite intentional attempt to slip by a juxtaposition of
high culture and
popular culture. I did that to be succinct, for I doubt that the
unmitigated savages fine folks here would understand all the nuances of my point—not without a five thousand word essay that
nobody would read.
In lieu thereof, I will pose for you a question:
Why are so many classical music pieces named after folk dances? Especially from the Baroque. Just for instance, the gigue (‘jig’). There are not a few J. S. Bach instrumental movements named “Gigue”, but who was
dancing the jig to them? ;-)
High culture and popular culture form a feedback loop...
E.g., vide audi BWV 1011:
Convenient legal download link outside the U.S., where this sound recording’s copyright has expired (DO NOT CLICK, IF YOU ARE IN THE “LAND OF THE FREE”!!), unfortunately globbed together as a single 25-minute MP3. The whole layout of the movements is derived from ballroom dances related to folk dances; and most of the movement names are somehow derived from folk dances:
[ed. I think there's even a realistic chance that some other singing bearded woman would have won the competition in 1808 anyway]
Zeroth of all, that is not a “bearded woman”: It is a man in woman’s clothes.
And first of all, no. Not outside of a circus-style freak show—though strictly speaking, that may be anachronistic when considering 1808.
Either you have a terribly low opinion of commoners, or your view of history has been distorted by postmodern pseudohistory. Orwell’s
observation was astute:
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”Now, given that my example of today’s pop-“culture” was Conchita Wurst, I will draw on a German counterexample. I think that way back when, the popular “Eurovision” of guildsmen was embodied by the long and illustrious tradition of the
Master Singer—which in turn inspired high-cultural works.
(I have not reviewed any of the audio downloads from that page—of which there is currently only one small clip; I cannot attest the quality thereof.) Other examples, not dissimilar, could be drawn from other social strata, and other European countries; parallels could be drawn from not a few non-European cultures.