Take, for instance, the danse macabre genre of art developed in Europe in the early 1400s. In these didactic images, skeletons dance both with each other and with living people, offering two lessons: life is brief, so be pious; and life is brief, so dance. “Those metaphorical skeletons exist in our minds now,” Wright said. And that’s a good thing. Awareness of mortality “motivates people to live accordingly. And that seeps into art.”
The end of the superhero’s reign
We may see a resurgence of smaller, human stories about relationships as well. It’s often posited that the popularity of superhero movies grew out of September 11: “People wanted to feel like America was invincible, could take on terrorism, and could win,” Wright argued. Today, though, we see viral videos of Italians singing to each other from balconies and New Yorkers shouting thanks from their windows to health care workers. “We are realizing that nobody is invincible when it comes to illness, and also how important it is to be surrounded by people you love.”
The previously invisible
Underrepresented communities tend to be made visible by pandemics. “Even if you lived in a small town and wanted to pretend that nobody you’d ever met was gay, you couldn’t really ignore that after AIDS,” Wright said. After the worst of the crisis, there was a spike in media and films about the gay experience in America. Years later, as the gay-marriage debate raged, then vice president Joe Bidentold Meet the Press, “I think Will & Grace did more to educate the American public more than almost anything anybody has done so far.”
Today, Wright said, people are starting to understand that “society really requires the skills of people who work in grocery stores and pharmacies, nurses, groups of people that we’ve been underpaying for a really long time.” Expect to see more protagonists who wear uniforms or aprons. Will that kind of visibility eventually help such workers earn a livable wage?
Wright was hopeful but doubtful, guessing that many Americans will want to forget about this scary, sad time as soon as possible. (Among them, of course, is our current president.) “Americans only like stories where they emerge as the victors,” Wright said. “Americans don’t like to think about things like the Spanish Flu”—one of the only pandemics in history that didn’t produce a spate of art representing the national or international psyche, Wright said. For that, we can probably blame the suppression of press reports of the disease by officials determined to boost morale—and governments that kept attention focused on World War I. Only years later did the average person understand the severity of the disease and its spread.
In Angels in America, Wright noted, playwright Tony Kushner “touches on how America is not a good country for sick people. He writes that Ronald Reagan ‘takes a slug in his chest, and two days later, he’s out West riding ponies in his PJs.’”
Today, most Americans are staying home in their PJs. Only time will tell how victorious we ultimately will be, and whether the coronavirus will inspire true social change. Until then, we can turn to art from plagues past to remind ourselves that our ancestors have faced times like these. “Know that you’re not alone. Humanity survived,” Wright said. “We’re still here, and we keep going.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
