Echoes

To work and to be heard, stories need to be relevant. It's not important if a novel was written five-hundred years ago or the day before yesterday, what it matters is its ability to talk to us. A classic becomes ‘a classic’ or a new novel succeeds when they tackle our current concerns.

In the 21^st century Jane Austen is still adapted to the screen because the absurd pressure of a woman having a good marriage continues to exist. A Room of One’s Own has possibly sold more copies since the second-wave feminism than in Virginia Woolf’s lifetime. The pain of current African American communities can be copied word for word from a James Baldwin’s novel written in the sixties. And the disdain of Trump rejecting to shake Pelosi’s hand harks back to Telemachus telling his mother, Penelope, to shut up after she asked the court poet to perform a different song.

I thought of this after watching Jojo Rabbit, where a ten-year old boy (think of any easy victim nowadays) is obsessed with Hitler (Trump, Brexit). His fascination has been nurtured thanks to a propaganda machine (Fox News, Twitter, Facebook et al.) carefully designed to brainwash him. He firmly believes everything he’s heard about the Jews (women, immigrants, black minorities, LGBT+ groups) although in reality they’re an abstract entity: he’s not sure if he’s ever seen one.