Discussion for article #223261
Sounds like a load of rubbish .
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I thought Twilight was already subtitled “Nothing Good Comes From Sex”
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Sounds like a TV show.
Makes me wonder just how dark and twisted TV and movies will need to be in 20 years to keep satisfied a public that demands ever darker “entertainment”.
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Given the look of the female characters, I don’t think it’s accurate to say the series is anti-sex so much as it’s a soft core production trading in virgin-whore tropes, plus the usual magic/fantasy/demon elements. See how long till they add some zombies and vampires.
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The Puritans weren’t obsessed with sex in the 17th century. That would be our Victorian heritage, from the 19th century.
Certainly the Puritans weren’t as “libertine” as the 21st century (I don’t mean anything derogatory by that term), but it was the 19th century where we learned to fear and desire sex so. It was Freud and the Vienna school that taught we were all sexual creatures fundamentally. The Puritans had no such concept about humanity.
So the whole premise of the show, historically, is a joke. And the comment on the editor’s blog that Puritans represented religious fundamentalism is equally an anachronism. Fundamentalism arose in the early 20th century. There’s a great deal about Xian fundamentalism that the Puritans would think was complete nonsense.
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What channel is this on again?
Maybe they will have an episode about the reparations that were awarded in an amazingly timely fashion.
They were the fundamentalists of their time. They didn’t believe in celebrating Christmas as a holiday, or that any other religions should be tolerated within the colony. It was a place where you could have your nose cut off for blasphemy, for crying out loud.
As for the show, I haven’t seen it but historical accuracy aside, it seems like the author is taking exactly the opposite message from it - it sounds more like it’s about how forced repression of sex by society causes people to become deeply fucked up, in large part because it can never be fully successful.
They were puritanical, but not interested in “the fundamentals.” They were not the “fundamentalists” or their time, because there was no such thing.
They were colonists who wished to establish their own culture, and tried hard to do so. Didn’t last very long. Bradford started writing about it in 1620; by 1647, the cohesion he sought was falling apart. What they rejected was not modernity, but the Catholic church (hence “Puritans.” They wanted to purify the Anglican church, which, after Elizabeth, was a Protestant church with Catholic rites.)
Fundamentalism is really a different concept. It’s a rejection of modernity, specifically of then modern (early 20th century, late 19th) Biblical scholarship coming out of Germany. The modernity fundamentalists rejected was the application of reason to scriptures, in a nutshell. Precisely the kind of reasoning the Puritans embraced (granted, the reasoning of the 17th century, not the 20th). The Puritans prided themselves on setting aside “superstitions” (which mostly meant Catholic practices and holidays like Christmas). If you read Cotton Mather’s accounts of the “witch trials,” they really aren’t as sensationalist or superstitious as popular culture would lead you to believe. Mather, as leader of his community, seemed more intent on tamping down hysteria and maintaing control than looking for Satan under every bed and broomstick.
And the idea of forced repression of sex causing problems is almost pure Freud. Which would be the 19th century, not the 17th.
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For Puritans they are kind of showing a lot of boob.
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Where do you think the Victorians got their ideas? The Puritans prized themselves for their piety and took disapproving views on display of skin and secular influences. Views analogous to those of present day fundamentalist Muslims. The Restoration may have driven Cromwell and the Puritans from power, but many of the attitudes, just as in our society, lived on.
For a show that ostensibly finds illicit sex sinful, they sure do spend a lot of time dwelling on illicit sex … visually
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