Slumming it

Have we really not changed that much over the last hundred years or so? I really wonder if the Victorians are really that different from you or I? It seems that there are still echoes if the Victorians in today’s culture. For instance the section of the reading this week that discussed the concept of “slumming” that now a days people still seem fascinated by. In today’s culture we see the hipsters of New York slumming it in the East Village. Experiencing the “tough life” through their father’s pocketbook. Is that not the same concept that we have for the Victorians who would only really want to experience another life in order to maybe brag about it, or to live the bohemian lifestyle… without all of the problems, sickness, lack of heat and the conveniences of their privileged lifestyle. Then how appropriate that we would then could even “slum” it in the opera house through the troubled lifestyle of the bohemians in La Bohème or in the article the lucky aristocrat who could slum it in her own upstairs parlor at a spinet piano with some parlor songs. In a way, this reminds me of the first few articles we read in the class where we unveiled the fascination that the Victorians had for mystery and the exotic. The ability to slum it and experience an exotic lifestyle seems to fit directly into this concept. How appropriate it seems that even today we are obsessed with the strange, horrific nature of the exotic. Now we experience it through movies instead of the sideshows of the 19th century. One thing I wish we had also drawn from the Victorians was the interest and knowledge and appreciation for classical music. I guess it may be another study all in itself the culture that has now developed around popular culture and the glorification of these icons and the rejection of classical music from our generation. Maybe if opera became exotic… which it is getting in some productions, we would have the same draw to it that we see in our culture the strange and abnormal that we see in other aspects of our cultural entertainment.