[SFRA-L] Wells TTM question: Elio and Morlock appeals

[Richard Erlich]

Getting in even later (and probably getting repetitive) ...

If meaning is created in the interaction of audience(s) and text(s);  
and, if audience members are multiply-situated; and, if  
identification can get quite weird — as we see in practical politics  
as well as art — then this is an especially intriguing question for  
what to make of TIME MACHINE.
	A mischievous hypothetical: What would/did Teddy Roosevelt make of  
Eloi and Morlocks? Or, say, a rich jock football player in Dallas or  
Fort Worth (or a gentleman-thug rugger from Richmond's 2011  
equivalent)? Or a Columbian feminist artist with Trotskyite leanings,  
an Olympic bronze in women's soccer, and a good deal of money?

Rich

On 17/10/2011, at 4:47, Sue & Bruce Rockwood wrote:

> I come into this discussion on the tail end of the tale, but this  
> question of the working class reader reminds me of E. P. Thompson's  
> The Making of the English Working Class.England had a vital labor  
> movement, which included labor education on a local decentralized  
> level, so I would not be surprised if workers read Wells.  
> Thompson's book got him a chair at Warwick, one of the new  
> universities Labor created I believe, and he came out of this labor  
> education movement.
>
> Maybe if we offered educational programs for laid off workers, who  
> knows what we could accomplish.
>
> Bruce Rockwood
>
> On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 10:52 AM, Easterbrook, Neil  
> <n.easterbrook at tcu.edu> wrote:
> I know some of you are Wells experts (hear me, Andy?), and I want  
> to pick yr brain. I suspect that I could easily research this, but  
> just at the moment I'm too busy (ok, too lazy).
>
> Abt TTM: I've told my students that the setting of Richmond is  
> significant, since then it was a wealthy town adjacent to London  
> (what we would call a suburb, and so I make allusions to parallel  
> areas of Fort Worth and Dallas), and this is then important to know  
> who specifically the Eloi are descendents of: the residents of 1895  
> Richmond (and then more generally, the landed and wealthy  
> classes...). (As it happens, my students are the general equivalent  
> of the residents of 1895 Richmond.)
>
> Which, given the events of 802701, configures the novella's  
> audience as current residents of Richmond, the future Eloi.
>
> But I don't know enuf abt either the specific Heinemann  
> publication, serialization, or reading habits & markets of 1985. I  
> know abt the explosion of pulp publication, the increase of public  
> literacy and schooling, and so forth, especially as these are  
> central to the development of sf (as for example, analyzed in the  
> fine discussion of the opening chapters of Luckhurst's _SF_).
>
> My specific question: very roughly, what percentage of Wells' 1895  
> audience would have been future Morlocks rather than future Eloi;  
> said another way, was TTM read also by members of the working  
> class; said a third way, is the construction of the "ideal" reader  
> as a member of the upper-class merely a narrative convention or an  
> empirical fact?
>
> Thanks in advance for allowing me to morlock yr brains (yum-yum,  
> and just in time for lunch).
>
> --Neil
>
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>
>
>
>
> -- 
> ""We believe we teach students before we teach subjects." And then  
> we try to live that every day."
> - Chris Lehmann quoting Nel Noddings.
>
> Operor plures res.
> Nunquam trado navis navis.
>
>

________________________________________
Richard D. Erlich, Film Script Analyst
Port Hueneme, CA 93041-3447
	IMDb: <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3887370/>
	Blog: <http://open.salon.com/blog/richard_erlich>




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