Are you saying it is good that older art pandered to its era’s sensibilities, but it is bad that current art panders to ours? It seems to follow that the bad pandering today becomes good pandering after some amount of time?

It is a classic challenge with art: whether to view it in the context of its time or as self contained and removed from its context. Dunno if either view is better; they serve different purposes.

But I do think it’s notable that art from the same era, created by people with similar backgrounds, can vary widely in how much it parrots what we consider to be “warts” from the era.

Compare Jan Eyre and North and South: authors with similar social contexts, yet one perpetuates racist/colonial stereotypes and doesn’t question Victorian ideas about class, and one is much more modern in its view of gender and class.

I’m not sure I would say that part of what makes Jan Eyre good is its unquestioning colonialism. It’s a great book, no doubt, but its prejudices are a weakness, not a strength.

>Are you saying it is good that older art pandered to its era’s sensibilities, but it is bad that current art panders to ours?

Art can be good whether it panders to sensibilities or not. There are many more factors involved than that. For art involving social critique it's best to not pander, but not all art is like that.

But once it's created, it should be left to reflect its era, its creator, and the actual semtiments he had and wanted to express. Not retrofitted with later moral posturings.

>Compare Jan Eyre and North and South: authors with similar social contexts, yet one perpetuates racist/colonial stereotypes and doesn’t question Victorian ideas about class, and one is much more modern in its view of gender and class.

They are not redducible to one another though, as they cover different aspects of life, from different angles and viewpoints.

We should preserve Bronte's viewpoint though, not erase it or reject it, or keep the plot and change it's views and morals to our taste.

I'm not advocating book burning or anything. I'm just saying that we can look at Bronte and say "she had some good ideas about women's place in the word, but was totally blind to the racist / colonialist themes she adopted". It doesn't make her bad, but it does make her less of a forward thinking person than Gaskell.

> We should preserve Bronte's viewpoint though, not erase it or reject it, or keep the plot and change it's views and morals to our taste.

Eh, this is more complicated to me. If you were producing a modern play/movie of Jane Eyre, would you keep the psychotic creole woman locked in the attic, unchanged?

>Eh, this is more complicated to me. If you were producing a modern play/movie of Jane Eyre, would you keep the psychotic creole woman locked in the attic, unchanged?

Sure. I'd want to retain art as an ark of its time. The idea is to present the work of the writer, not to use their mere basic plot as a starting point.