I'm not exactly sure when I began to lose interest in modern culture. Possibly this malaise dates back to Remembrance of Things Past being unpoetically and tediously retitled as In Search of Lost Time; a truer translation of Proust's original, no doubt, but clearly lacking that certain je ne sais quoi.
As world-shattering events go, it's hardly the publication of Tyndale's Bible, but it bothered me considerably. Since then, my eyes have grown tired of rolling at every inescapable reinterpretation, reimagining or reworking of whatever defenseless canvas or book today's artisans can claim for their own. I'm waiting for some self-important, brush-wielding vandal to paint a dessert course into da Vinci's Last Supper. "Well, I think after the bread and wine the disciples shared a Halawa cheesecake but the church suppressed that because they didn't want to employ a pastry chef at every Mass."
Soon there will be a Divine Comedy without an Inferno (too triggering) or Paradiso (unfair privilege). Virgil will be replaced by Sappho and Dante himself will be forced to spend eternity in Purgatorio being chastised by Beatrice for the crime of 'mansplaining' his midlife crisis. Abandon hope all ye who enter here, indeed.
Writers have always re-edited and updated their own works, of course; painters have always painted over scenes they've come to consider surplus to the tableau. But at least they did it themselves to their own creations. Nowadays, any old hack can rewrite the most treasured of texts so they conform to contemporary values, however ruinous such revisions prove to be. Why not remove the face from Franz Hals' The Laughing Cavalier and thrust your own moronically grinning visage through the hole? Hey presto, you are now the new Marcel Duchamp.
But don't expect me to give a Cubist turd for such a zero-sum zeitgeist. I prefer to remember things past in all their imperfect splendor.
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