Romance tends to favour the exotic and the nostalgic. For Americans, that means the geneological past, and the far away. I'd say "for Canadians" too, but the point is that the money-rich American market is where the romance market is aimed.
I do wonder if there are issues that might be defined as a "diaspora mentality"?
I'd say, undoubtledly. I think we can see it historically - a similar mentality to medieval Europeans writing about Alexander the Great, or the glory days of King Arthur's legendary Britain. (The latter hasn't gone away. Or, come to think of it, the former.) I wonder if displaced Saxons c. 1100 were making up similar stories in their Byzantine exile. Or the Norse in Kiev.
In North America (and I can't speak for Australia/NZ but I'd bet it's the same) it isn't just the Scots background but also the Irish. I wonder if it's cross-cultural - i.e., after a few generations, or a few dozen generations, will the Lebanese and Vietnamese immigrants be telling similar stories of their imagined homselands? I have seen it, a very little bit, with the Chinese.
And oddly enough, I've not really seen it with French Canada, which tends more to look at the future, and to see France not so much as a romanticized homeland, but an alternate oppressor. Much more like the attitude of the multi-generational Scots-Americans to the English.
Maybe that's it: the Americans fought a big war with the English, and so won't romanticize them (at least, not in the same way) so they romanticize the Scots instead, making them fellow-victims.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-12-12 05:14 pm (UTC)I do wonder if there are issues that might be defined as a "diaspora mentality"?
I'd say, undoubtledly. I think we can see it historically - a similar mentality to medieval Europeans writing about Alexander the Great, or the glory days of King Arthur's legendary Britain. (The latter hasn't gone away. Or, come to think of it, the former.) I wonder if displaced Saxons c. 1100 were making up similar stories in their Byzantine exile. Or the Norse in Kiev.
In North America (and I can't speak for Australia/NZ but I'd bet it's the same) it isn't just the Scots background but also the Irish. I wonder if it's cross-cultural - i.e., after a few generations, or a few dozen generations, will the Lebanese and Vietnamese immigrants be telling similar stories of their imagined homselands? I have seen it, a very little bit, with the Chinese.
And oddly enough, I've not really seen it with French Canada, which tends more to look at the future, and to see France not so much as a romanticized homeland, but an alternate oppressor. Much more like the attitude of the multi-generational Scots-Americans to the English.
Maybe that's it: the Americans fought a big war with the English, and so won't romanticize them (at least, not in the same way) so they romanticize the Scots instead, making them fellow-victims.