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Cottagecore and the Ethics of Retreat

photograph of a Texas homestead at dusk surrounded by wilflowers

Over the past few months, many Americans have turned to bread-making to stave off the boredom and helplessness of quarantine. The craze for bread-making eventually reached a point where flour mills were unable to keep up with the sharp increase in demand for their product, leaving grocery store shelves barren. But bread-making is just one strand of a much more intricate lifestyle movement which began taking shape about a year before coronavirus.

Cottagecore,” as the trend is called, is partly an aesthetic and partly a set of ideals for “the good life.” The word “cottage” references country living as embodied by the self-sufficient and aesthetically pleasing cottage, and the slang/suffix “core” indicates a genre or category. Much in the same way that people are dedicated to certain genres of music, online communities have sprung up around certain aesthetics; one popular example is the “academia” aesthetic, which celebrates elements from 19th-century fashion and architecture that have become associated with higher education (think old leather books, marble busts, and tweed blazers).

Cottagecore also has an online community, and a glance through the cottagecore tag on Tumblr or Pinterest will give you a good idea of its aesthetic interests: frolicking goats, woven baskets bursting with ripe tomatoes, rough-hewn wooden furniture, and of course, loaves of bread. Everything is bathed in a golden haze of sunlight, or at least in a sepia-toned filter. But cottagecore also encompasses fashion, art, and even entertainment. For example, a budding genre of video games has both capitalized on and helped further cement the aesthetic and philosophy of cottagecore. In smash-hits like Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon, and to a lesser extent, the Animal Crossing series, the player leaves behind a hollow life in the city to start over in a close-knit rural community. Gameplay elements include conversing with and sometimes even romancing the locals, operating a self-sufficient farm (often through a variety of cottage-industries, such as farming, fishing, baking, and raising animals), and basking in the pristine beauty of nature. There isn’t a way to win or lose these games, or a villain the player must defeat in order to advance the plot. The closest thing to an antagonist in Stardew Valley is a Walmart-esque corporation that the player is gently encouraged to drive out of business in favor of a mom-and-pop general store.

As the Stardew Valley example shows, cottagecore is at least partly rooted in anti-capitalist sentiment. It presents an escape from the drudgery of industrial urban life, a sort of reverse rural-flight of the imagination. As Shania O’Brien optimistically puts it,

“This budding aesthetic movement paints the picture of an idyllic landscape and prioritises the simple pleasures in one’s life. Cottagecore turns its nose up at sixteen-hour workdays, at the fast-paced anxieties of late-stage capitalism, at toxic masculinity. It rejects the connections we make under these systems, labelling them inauthentic facsimiles of genuine relationships.”

At first glance, it’s difficult to discern what might be morally objectionable about a pretty moodboard on Pinterest, or what is morally objectionable about the philosophy behind that moodboard. However, indigenous people have pointed out that cottagecore is overwhelmingly white, and often unknowingly perpetuates settler colonialism. Specifically, critics argue that the aesthetic idealizes the American homestead as a beacon of self-sufficiency rather than the legacy of brutal Westward expansion. It’s worth interrogating why so many are tempted to romanticize rural life, and whether or not retreating from the problems of capitalism is worthwhile or desirable.

While cottagecore is certainly a trend of the moment, idealizing the countryside has been a common practice throughout human history. In response to the industrial revolution, many 19th century artists, like Jean-François Millet, began taking peasant life seriously as an artistic subject. The genre of “rural naturalism,” which depicted an ideal version of farmers and laborers going about their daily lives, reflected the artists’ sense of alienation from nature as well as a growing urban market for sentimental depictions of peasant life. The late 19th-century Arts and Crafts movement, which was spearheaded by socialist artists, also celebrated individual craftsmanship over the products churned out by urban factories.

Rural idealism in art is perhaps best embodied through Thomas Cole’s five-painting series titled The Course of Empire, completed in 1836. The first painting depicts an untouched and frightening wilderness, which is transformed by human cultivation into a tranquil rural paradise in the second painting. This second painting is clearly meant to represent the ideal state of mankind, which is a sharp contrast to the next two paintings in the series. These depict a decadent and immoral urban environment, as well as its apocalyptic destruction. The final painting shows the ruins of the now-unpopulated city, suggesting that desolation is inevitable when humanity leaves rural Arcadia behind. Although Cole’s series depicts a pseudo-Roman city, it was created explicitly to critique 19th-century American capitalism, and clearly reflects growing fears about urbanization and the decadence of empire.

America has always had a unique and explicitly political version of rural idealism. Thomas Jefferson, a foundational proponent of agrarianism, wrote in 1785 that “Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country & wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands.” This statement was echoed by prominent American naturalist A.J. Downing, who succinctly explained in A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening in 1841 that “There is a moral influence in a country home.” Living in the country simply made you a better person, because you stood at a remove from the vulgar commercialism and social mixing of the city.

As Jefferson saw it, rural life isn’t isolated from the nation, but integral to it. Country, after all, can mean either a tract of rural land or a state, and thinkers like Jefferson sought to collapse the distinction between the two. In that sense, one could argue that modern rural escapism isn’t so much about retreating from reality as it is about taking part more fully in political society. However, this example also reveals a paradox of self-sufficient rural living. Jefferson’s farmer is both self-sufficient and tied down by civic responsibilities, both in society and outside of it. Also, of course, Jefferson has conveniently ignored the existence of the slaves who did the actual planting and tilling on his plantations, and the indigenous populations who lived there before him. Much like European artists of the 19th century, Jefferson is clearly promoting a certain kind of rural living as ideal with a self-serving political agenda. For artists and politicians alike, rural people were considered the “true” citizens of the state, the stable and honest antithesis to the cultural confusion of modernity.

20th-century escapees to the countryside certainly saw their rural retreat as political. The 1960s saw droves of educated middle-class city-dwellers retreating to rural communes with hopes of creating socialist utopias, as Jenny Odell touches on in her book How to Do Nothing. However, Odell found that the communes of the 1960s “exemplify the problems with imagined escape from the media and effects of capitalist society, including the role of privilege.” She explains that these communes, though ostensibly committed to egalitarianism and the rejection of privilege, often replicated the very structures they sought to escape. Women ended up doing all the dishes and menial housework, and because communes were primarily white, very few people of color were able to take part in the utopian project. Once again, it becomes apparent how difficult it is to truly escape society by returning to “the simpler things.” Furthermore, only those with privilege are able to enact their fantasies of escape. One famous historical example of this is Marie Antoinette’s Hameau de la Reine, a highly aestheticized mock peasant village built on the grounds of Versailles where the queen (who could be considered an early proponent of cottagecore) would pretend to milk cows and grow cabbages. Rural escapism almost always involves some element of privilege, evidently. Ironically enough, shots of the queen running through meadows and playing shepherdess in her hamlet, as depicted in Sophia Coppola’s 2006 Marie Antoinette film, are very popular in the cottagecore community.

The cottagecore movement borrows a vague moral sensibility from 19th-century agrarianism and marries it with socialist idealism, embodied especially by the communes of the 1960s. Much like those communes, cottagecore isn’t especially interested in those who already live in rural communities, unless they’re romanceable options in a video game. The “noble peasant,” an invention that was problematic to begin with, has disappeared from this configuration, because cottagecore is more about the desires of citydwellers than the needs of the communities they yearn to join. Cottagecore is political in that it is a response to alienation, an attempt at mapping out possibilities for a life without capitalism. But it still has a ways to go before it can truly live up to O’Brien’s description.

It’s unlikely that the damage of colonialism will be significantly worsened by Pinterest mood boards and jars of sourdough starter. There is also no evidence that young people are actually acting out their fantasies of rural retreat, so clearly cottagecore is more of a sensibility than an actual spur to change. As Odell argues, the impulse to mentally retreat from capitalism is both admirable and deserving of skepticism. As she says, “Some hybrid reaction is needed. We have to be able to do both: to contemplate and participate, to leave and always come back, where we are needed . . . To stand apart is to take the view of the outsider without leaving, always orientated toward what is is you would have left.” Much in the same vein, O’Brien suggests that “You can aesthetically participate in cottagecore, but more importantly, you can also incorporate its sentiment into your praxis by engaging in mutual aid, in environmental politics, in feminist activism. It is pointless to dream about wildflowers and serenity when you are doing nothing to bring that world closer.” Escapist fantasies can be an impetus to change, so long as they allow us to find new and more authentic forms of connection with others.

Artist, Art, and Appreciation: Where Is There Space for Morality?

photograph of Polanski at Cannes

Roman Polanski, who confessed to drugging and raping a 13-year-old in 1977 and has had a new rape case brought against him this year, did not attend the Césars on February 28th. Protests denounced the 12 nominations his film, titled “J’accuse” and known in English as “An Officer And A Spy,”, received.

“By supporting the aggressors, by celebrating the aggressors, one does not allow the victims to speak out. Their word is denied,” Celine Piques of women’s activist group Osez le Feminisme said.

The entire academy announced their plans to step down following this year’s ceremony in response to disagreements over how to handle cases like Polanski’s. He has only avoided prosecution for his confessed crimes because he fled the US in the 70s; he is still wanted in the US.

“Distinguishing Polanski is spitting in the face of all victims. It means raping women isn’t that bad,” Actress Adele Haenel told The New York Times earlier this week. When Polanski won for best director, boos and shouts spread across the audience, and Haenel walked out, accompanied by others.

Despite the messages of the protestors, the history of resistance against working with Polanski, and France’s Culture Minister speaking out the day of the Césars to say that awarding Polanski with a Cesar would “send the wrong signals,” Polanski continued to characterize his absence from the awards as an attempt to avoid a “public lynching” by feminists.

Putting Polanski’s victim complex and reprehensible tone-deafness aside, we can attend to a common struggle that humans and cultures experience when it comes to valuing art.

It is a hallmark of societies since the Neolithic period that we produce art. Visual art, physical art, music – we are creative creatures that appreciate beauty. Further, so long as folks have theorized, we have come up with views about why we create art, what it is that makes things beautiful, and whether there is distinctive value in such objects and activities.

Cases like Polanski and “J’accuse,” and a disappointing number of others (R. Kelly, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, the list goes on), brings to the fore the question of how our moral evaluation of the creator of art influences or assessment of the art itself. This isn’t a simple question, however, and some distinctions serve us well in tackling the question.

First, there are different ways that something can be valuable. An action, object, or person, can be valuable because it serves a purpose and thus be instrumentally valuable. Or, such things can be valuable because they have moral worth: they could help someone in need, reduce harm, or contribute to a flourishing life. They could be morally valuable. They could be valuable because they are beautiful, or elevate our aesthetic experiences or understanding; this is roughly what we mean to capture when we say that something has aesthetic value.

At the Césars, the protestors claimed it was morally wrong to publicly appreciate Polanski’s art because of our moral evaluation of him as a person. Let’s consider the possible interactions of moral value and aesthetic value.

Some art is revealing in its engagement with immorality in its very content. For instance, part of what makes the work of art valuable is the immoral nature of the work itself: the anti-heroes or villains that play central or significant roles, or immoral actions that are key to the plots. Through exploring the more terrible parts of our natures and horrible things that humans can do, we may gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and each other. For some, the immoral content of a work (its lack of moral value) will impact the aesthetic value of the artwork. Most, however, can acknowledge the value in, say, the villainous Raskolnikov, or disgusting Humbert Humbert, or bullying and two-faced Snape.

However, perhaps it makes sense to be troubled by art with immoral content. If it has immoral effects like bringing out immoral aspects of the audience, or promoting immoral ends, we may have pause about the attitudes we see as appropriate to have towards the art. This conclusion rests on the empirical claims that appreciating or engaging with art that has suspect moral content does promote such ends, however. And there may be a spectrum of appreciation involved with recognition of aesthetic beauty that makes such empirical research difficult. When we recognize the narratives of Dostoevsky and Nabokov as immoral,should that diminish our appreciation of their beauty or technique? Or does it perhaps have implications for the behaviors we ought to consider morally appropriate to take up in relation to such works of art? In other words, there are, roughly, two stances here: we can take aesthetic value and moral content to be independent, or we can take aesthetic value to depend on the moral value of an artwork.

This brings us to another important part of assessing appropriate ways to engage art: its context. Art has performative force, whether it be visual art, performance art, music, or what have you. The context in which it exists is part of its nature and when we characterize the meaning of a work in order to determine the aesthetic or moral attitudes that are appropriate to have towards it, these features must be taken into consideration as well. A painting that is critical of a political leader has different meaning if presented in the square outside the building housing the governing body (where it may constitute a threat), or in a textbook. A piece of music by a classical composer performed for family and friends may not carry the same social messaging as the same music selected as the highlight of an orchestra’s season, where the historical lack of diversity in such selections can make this choice controversial.

These aspects of a work of art, the content and context, can affect how we value it. Or, we can attend to these aspects to consider what attitudes it is appropriate to have towards the art itself. (Or perhaps these amount to the same thing – what is the difference between “valuing” and having an attitude toward something?)

With these distinctions in mind, let’s return to the Césars. A third and controversial issue is how the features of the creator can affect the value of the art. The debate over the extent to which the author’s intention affects the meaning of a piece will continue to loom over discussions of art, but for cases where engaging with the art amounts to engaging with the creator, and praising or celebrating the art means elevating the creator in the community, profession, or culture, the question is less theoretical.

To, as a community, celebrate art by a powerful and immoral creator is, to many, morally reprehensible. This is distinct, it seems, from the judgment that the art is immoral. Rather, it is closer to a judgment about whether it should have been produced in the way that it was.

The film was the product of more than just Polanski’s efforts. A full cast, production team, and crew of people put forth extensive work in order for this artwork to be released and then nominated at the Césars (though they did not attend). Jean Dujardin, who was nominated for best actor in this film, was among those who worked on “J’accuse” and did not attend the ceremony. However, he posted on Instagram, “By making this film, I believed and I still believe I made more good than harm.”

Dujardin seems to have made the judgment that the aesthetic value of the art outweighs the negatives of working alongside, appearing to be indifferent to the wrongs of, or being part of celebrating the work of, Polanski. These are three ways of assessing the “harm” Dujardin could speak of. The “good” presumably is the work of art, which, according to the Césars, is a good film. But the cost of the good film is having a self-avowed sexual criminal in a position of power and influence in the film community for colleagues to work among. The cost of the film is to have those without the power and choices Dujardin has appear indifferent to such harms in order to succeed professionally, and for the outward effect of this appearance for other victims of gender-based violence to receive this appearance of indifference from the film industry. And the cost of the film is to have other films, not facilitated by people with this history, further marginalized by the communities that celebrate art.