[BRIEF NOTE] Can empires be fun?
Mar. 12th, 2006 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldNight Watch made me wonder if empires can ever relax and let their people have fun.
Consider that, to Western observers, Soviet cultural exports belonged almost exclusively to the domain of high culture, associated with names like Solzhenitsyn and Shostakovich. High culture is certainly capable of providing critiques of totalitarianism, as these two names demonstrate. High culture isn't populist, isn't associated with materialism, with dissent critical or otherwise, with the satiation of base needs. Imperial states need to be strong, and seek to promote popular cultures which are ostensibly high-minded and confine low culture to the margins, popular cultures which encourage uniformity. Dracula was, after all, written in the 1890s after the democratization of Britain had begun to cut into the classical rationale for empire-building. Likewise, post-Soviet Russia's most famous cultural exports as of this moment might well be TaTu and Night Watch. After empire, people relax.
Thoughts?
Consider that, to Western observers, Soviet cultural exports belonged almost exclusively to the domain of high culture, associated with names like Solzhenitsyn and Shostakovich. High culture is certainly capable of providing critiques of totalitarianism, as these two names demonstrate. High culture isn't populist, isn't associated with materialism, with dissent critical or otherwise, with the satiation of base needs. Imperial states need to be strong, and seek to promote popular cultures which are ostensibly high-minded and confine low culture to the margins, popular cultures which encourage uniformity. Dracula was, after all, written in the 1890s after the democratization of Britain had begun to cut into the classical rationale for empire-building. Likewise, post-Soviet Russia's most famous cultural exports as of this moment might well be TaTu and Night Watch. After empire, people relax.
Thoughts?
