PROGRESSIVISM: A Slow March
By Trevor K. McNeil
An Odd Sense Of History
The younger generation has an odd sense of history. A recent example of this phenomenon is the apparent assumption among today’s young progressives that Progressivism in media emerged about five years ago. Many pointed to the 2018’s Black Panther as the first movie based on a comic book that featured a black lead character. This flies in the face of Blade (1998) starring Wesley Snipes. Or, identifying 2019’s Captain Marvel the first female superhero movie when there were several before it, most notably 2017’s Wonder Woman. More than this, Progressivism and Feminism in media predates the 21st century and indeed film itself.
Like A Club
One of the most famous cases of Progressivism in media, even if it is constantly misunderstood, is Mark Twain‘s Huckleberry Finn (1884). Huckleberry Finn is full of racial slurs that would put people into conniptions today. I believe as many others, that Twain was using such words, with unbridled repetition, in order to literally beat people over the head with their vulgarity. Using the words, which Twain knew even then were wrong, like a club to make people see the error of their ways.
Today’s Standards
Some modern readers assume that because Twain uses such harsh words that he is promoting them, as the real characterization of the black main character. Despite having the moniker “Nigger” Jim, a common word when the book was written, the character himself is depicted as nothing other than sympathetic. “Nigger Jim” was a good friend to Huck, and by all accounts a good man. The book came out twenty years after the end of the Civil War. Slavery and the result of the slavery system was an overwhelming social issue that effected people of all strata of American life.
Grim and Foggy
Mark Twain’s contemporary over in England, Charles Dickens was also no stranger to social issues. These days Dickens has a bit of a reputation, even among Progressives, as being grim and depressing. Which is fair enough, but also misses the greater point. Namely that industrialism was crushing the poor to death and child labor is a really bad idea that doesn’t end well for anyone.
Bill Sikes
A key example of the evil of the period Dickens was trying to point out was Bill Sikes. The main villain of Oliver Twist (1839), Bill Sikes is a stone cold psychopath, running a gang of child thieves with an iron fist and casually beats his girlfriend to death when she irritates him. A stark criticism of the sort of cut-throat capitalism emerging in Britain at that time.
Hang On a Minute!
Some people still remember that feminism pre-dates #MeToo. What is less known is just how far back the ideas of feminism go. The brilliant Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen was famous for his enlightened views. Ibsen was one of the first to publicly verbalize the terrible treatment of women in the Victorian era. Ibsen is most famous for his 1879 play A Doll’s House. A proto-feminist work written 30 years before the emergence of the suffragette movement. The play tells the story of Nora Helmer, an apparently happy young housewife who, after a serious misfortune, discovers the shallowness of her existence and walks out on her husband. An instance referred to at the time as “the door slam heard around the world.” Ibsen didn’t stop there.
To the Bitter End
In 1891 Ibsen published Hedda Gabler. No less progressive than A Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler is a searing character study that treats its female protagonist as a full person with strengths, foibles, complexities, psychoses and desires, including aspirational and sexual. Something unthinkable in the late-Victorian period.
Pre-Determined Fate
Some critics have found fault with the end in which, spoiler alert, Hedda shoots herself in the head. A brazen act of on stage self-violence that shocked Ibsen’s urbane audience. It also serves as a punctuation to one of the main themes of the play. Specifically that, no matter how much it might stifle her or how hard she tries, Hedda cannot escape the fate that the powers of society, embodied in the lecherous Judge Brack, have set out for her. In her mind, death is her only escape.
Original Progressive
Surprisingly, Progressivism is alive in the pages of Shakespeare. Written when women were legally possessions and people from the next town over were considered foreigners, there is a lot by the Bard that would resonate with progressives today. The most controversial is that of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Some ‘literalists’ would call it an anti-Semitic play, it can easily be argued that the opposite is true.
Is It Really Anti-Semitic?
Not only by the famous speech about “if you prick us do we not bleed?” Reinforcing the basic humanity of the Jewish people and giving Shylock a motivation for his murderous plot. There is also the portrayal of the other Jewish characters in the play, none of which are particularly negative. The only real example of the “villainous Jew” is Shylock himself and even that is rife with complications and mitigating factors.
Not Just Black and White
Race is another issue of some complexity in the Elizabethan era. Partly because the conception of race as we now know it, is heavily informed by the trans-Atlantic slave trade which did not exist in 1500’s Britain. A fact which make race relations in Othello a bit different from what modern audiences would assume. It is also telling that, within the text, the only person who has a problem with the visiting Moor being darker than them is Iago. A murdering, scheming psychopath who is unambiguously a villain. A surprisingly progressive general attitude for the 16th century.
Much Ado About Nothing
A similar example comes up in the wacky comedy Much Ado About Nothing. Now known as basically the prototypical RomCom, more famous for its quips and misunderstandings. There is an instance in which Claudio says of Hero while tearing her down: “I’d rather she be an Ethiope” An unmistakably racist statement which might have been problematic if said by a likeable or clever character like Benedick. Claudio, however, while high-born, is generally seen as a self-centered jerk with no redeeming qualities.
Always With Us
It is easy to have a dim view of history. Human rights and general equality were not at the top of the agenda for many societies until relatively recently and there are still some that lag far behind. There have, however, long been people who recognized the problems with such systems and fearlessly pointed them out.
Want to read more Trevor K. McNeil?https://www.calamitypolitics.com/2019/04/27/sectarianism-in-europe-fear-of-foreigners/
