PBS’s Poldark Is Haven for Disenfranchised TV Viewers
Families still like to turn on the screen in the evening after an exhausting day. Mindless viewing seems easier than reading. But most primetime television has become a punked-up wasteland of attempts to normalize dysfunctional liberal values, hasn’t it?
Just when viewers were beginning to rebel against the dreariness of programming options, along comes BBC with a new season of Poldark on PBS. Ross Poldark is a return of the Romantic Hero in literary tradition: an emphasis on the loner who stands against a decadent society that no longer thinks for itself or pursues noble visions of any kind.
Except for Islam perhaps, most religions these days find little to fight or die for. Best to slowly erode into secular versions of social fellowship and entertainment, with founding principles only lightly held.
Poldark is the hero of a rural, small town world set right after the American Revolution. Winston Graham’s Poldark novels were begun at the end of World War II and immerse the reader in the same rugged, ocean-bound Cornish landscape that is the backdrop for the PBS Doc Martin series.
Historical fiction takes people back to simpler times when traditional values were rarely questioned. The Poldark series focuses on a very modern problem, however, because of its setting at the birth of the Industrial Revolution.
Nouveau riche industrialists back then were little different from many lottery winners today, making lots of money but with few educational or traditional anchors, making for shallow identities and values.
The rise of very wealthy fortunes in the computer industry is similar in its ability to transform society away from the past. Lots of easy cash flow, but lacking the moral guidance of centuries of religious and cultural heritage.
Families having an abundance of disposable income fall easily into the liberal mindset. With so much money, the cost of something is hardly worth acknowledging. Sale racks are avoided as if everything were free for the taking, based upon desire alone. Embracing the welfare world of unearned handouts makes a lot of sense in this context. So does giving away “free” taxpayer money.
