If there's one thing outcast teenagers love, it's the Middle Ages. As far as I know, no one's ever tried to figure out just where this rampant "medievalism" came from, and why it exerts so tremendous a hold over the lives of - i hesitate to say millions of teenagers, so slight and barely-noticed/beneath-contempt is this curious non-movement, but i suspect it's right up there with any other weird subculture, numbers-wise. But where'd it come from? And more importantly, what does it mean?
This fascinating article - http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i44/44a00801.htm - reveals that many teenage-medievalists grow up to be medieval scholars - a more remarkable fact than it might seem, since teenage-medievalism has relatively little to do with the actual Middle Ages. (Witness the amusingly mistitled Renaissance Faires.) It draws more on relatively ahistorical inspirations - Tolkien, role-playing games, third-hand watered-down Arthurian legends, and even "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."
Still, even ahistorical representations like this have deep resonance; why does the medieval world appeal so much to the social outcasts of our schools? I suspect the real answer has something to do with its remoteness from our own lives - its otherness. Now, I write about this stuff with the vaguely horrified sympathy of someone who was bordering on becoming this sort of person in 8th grade, and immediately abandoned it upon entering 9th grade (whereupon I instantly turned into the sort of (male) teenager who carries around a copy of "The Bell Jar" and aspires to someday turn into a Manic Street Preacher). As far as I can recall, I just liked the sense of dropping out of this world and moving into an older, richer, somehow (in an uncanny way) more familiar one. But there couldn't have been much of a deep connection, considering how quickly I dropped that interest. I'd studied medieval stuff back in 6th grade without being intrigued at all.
What resonance does that world have for people who remain in it well into their 20s - or, scarily, beyond? I suspect that the deeper, richer, more familiar "world" comes to eclipse the real one, which perpetually failed to live up to the standards of fantasy. In the world of teenage-medievalism, which plunders history and culture at random, one can - however briefly - escape the increasingly desolate, depressing real world altogether.
Or, hell, maybe there's a simpler explanation. Certainly the slightly stilted, ancient syntax of the medieval world appeals to many above-average-intelligence kids; certainly it did to me. More later...
1 comment:
I completely agree. The "middle ages" appeal to escapist man- and womanchildren because of their common association with fairy tales and sorcery and, therefore, because of their ability to grant them more power and importance than would the real world. This would be especially true for that demographic who, for whatever reason, is unable to achieve and real-world power or notoreity among high school peers.
The escapism of medieval fantasy allows teenagers to make something of themselves before they are really able to do so in the real world. Of course, getting too enamored of that escapism also eventually prevents them from making something of themselves later, since they spent their teen years absorbed in role-playing games and what-have-you. So they become even more deeply entrenched in their fantasy world, wherein they're important and accomplished. Vicious cycle, etc.
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