September 2024

Senior lecturer Mark Rothery writes about his recent interactions with the media, and what that means for historical research. Mark also discussed some of these themes on TALKRadio –select the 4:30-5:00 clip and go to three minutes in. 

On 4^th February this year the new Times Online history correspondent published an article called ‘Snowflakes are not only a Modern Phenomenon’ (I won’t give this copy by including a link). This article, and the several others that followed, were based on my research with Professor Henry French, at the University of Exeter, into the male anxieties of younger sons of the landed gentry in eighteenth and nineteenth century England published in The Historical Journal last year.

It is flattering when people outside the academy are interested in your research. This particular topic of anxiety is, of course, the focus of public attention at the moment. Lots more people are talking about it and, perhaps, suffering from it than previously. I’ve commented elsewhere on this blogspace about the subject.

The trouble with this kind of dissemination, though, is the politicisation of interpretation. If you read our article (which I hope you will) you’ll see that we never used the term ‘Snowflakes’ and we certainly do not support the use of this term in reference to our research.

‘Snowflakes’ refers to the idea that ‘this generation’ of young people (millennials) are privileged in a way that ‘previous generations’ were not. Their anxieties are merely expressions of a struggle to ‘cope with life’ or ‘cut it’, reflections of their ‘mollycoddled upbringing’ and ‘over-sensitivity’. Such perceptions of millennials belong to the right of the political spectrum, particularly in foregrounding ‘sensitivity’ to ‘identities’ such as gender and sexuality.

Wikipedia defines it better than me: ‘Snowflake is a 2010s derogatory slang term for a person, implying that they have an inflated sense of uniqueness, an unwarranted sense of entitlement, or are overly-emotional, easily offended, and unable to deal with opposing opinions. Common usages include the terms special snowflake, Generation Snowflake, and snowflake as a politicized insult.

Read on the most basic level and from a particular political perspective (the Right-Wing) our article could be interpreted as being about ‘snowflakes’. The younger sons we studied were privileged, they did have a sense of entitlement, they expected to do well out of life and some of them whinnied at the thought of working for it.

Our explanation for their mentalities and behaviour, however, was not that they were ‘snowflakes.’ We argued that they were suffering from anxiety – specifically ‘male anxieties’ generated by the risk that they might not attain the attributes necessary to be considered ‘elite men.’ In other words they were not anxious because they were ‘snowflakes’ but because of the particular ways in which ideals of hegemonic masculinity places pressure on men to be men – a gender anxiety. Their elite and privileged position was, in fact, the problem for them. Being privileged does not absent you from anxiety.

The ‘Patriarchal Dividend’ (inR. W. Connell’s words) that accrued to aristocratic men through gender and gender hierarchies produced anxieties amongst those that could not, or were at risk of not achieving, dominance. Since younger sons did not inherit the family estates and wealth they were one of those ‘at risk’ groups among the landed elite.

The media (and indeed anyone else) is free to interpret the work of historians in any way they choose to. The interpretation of the Times Online of our article was not about the historical focus of our work at all. It was based on a political and politicised view that ‘the younger generation’ are weak, their claims of anxiety are bogus and constructed, the whole issue of mental health in recent years has been exaggerated and ‘snowflaked.’ ‘Just get on with it – stiff upper lip’ you hear the article cry. History is being used for wider political purposes here.

Snowflake by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

The idea of ‘snowflakes’ really is nonsense. There is no such thing as a particular type of attitude and behaviour among generations. All the research ever conducted on anxiety (whether by scientists or social scientists or historians) confirms that it is real and always generally widespread. It would be tough to prove a ‘rise’ or ‘decline’ in it historically and I’m not sure what the point of that would be.

But we can certainly identify periods when public discourse was more anxious and when people talked more about anxiety. Discussions around state security and public safety in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks are one example – invasion fears in Britain during the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War are others.

Anxiety is not something made up and fabricated. It has a physiological (amygdala) as well as a psychological root, it focuses often on just the kinds of things that young people are anxious about today – status, attainment and achievement, relationships, finding a place in the world, happiness.

I and my co-author take anxiety very seriously. We see lots of it around us at University, both amongst students and academic staff. Students suffer with the extra and different pressures of the fees system in our present HE environment. They are away from home often for the first time and they are trying to find their place in the world at the same time as studying a challenging subject. They are not ‘snowflakes’, they are human beings with emotions.

What we found in our research was evidence of anxiety, not of snowflakes. The Times online correspondent found ‘snowflakes’ because he was looking for them. And herein lies the problem with ‘Historians and the Media.’ We search for and report on what we consider to be the facts – we look for truth and meaning in the past in order to understand humans and human society.

Most often the inherent value of our research is not what journalists want – they want research that supports their world view and (they assume) that of their readers/viewers/listeners and their interpretations are often, as a result, way off-target. By using terms such as ‘snowflake’ journalists exacerbate the problems they vilify and seek to eradicate. We historians hopefully make more positive contributions.

Look out for a forthcoming blog on a radio broadcast with NLive radio station on which I discuss the wider implications of History and the Media with Dr Drew Gray and Dr Paul Jackson (the show is due to be broadcast on the evening of 4^th March)

[No spoilers!]

I’m a big fan of the Alien film series. I have been hooked every since watching Alien 3 in the cinema as a teenager, and the original 1979 film is one of my all-time favourites. So I was excited to see Alien: Romulus, which is currently on general release. After several disappointing sequels and prequels (and the less said about the Alien versus Predator films the better) I was encouraged by the positive response to the new film from critics and fans alike.

I am not going to review the film here – suffice to say it’s one of the better ones – but watching the film got me thinking about the relationship between the Alien series and history.

If you have watched the films, you will know that they have created a huge and complex world, which engages with bigger questions about the nature of mankind and its place in the universe. There are 9 films and counting, with a TV series on the way, plus countless books, graphic novels and short films that flesh out the story.

This involves a very long timeline. The original Alien movie was set in 2122, and the last film in the chronology is Alien Resurrection which takes place over two centuries later. The ability to clone characters and the long distances involved in cryosleep space travel mean that the films are not limited by conventional human lifespans.

The prequels take place in the twenty-first century, as we learn about the origins of xenomorph creature and the Weyland Yutani corporation. But they also extend into prehistory, since they explore the popular theory that life on earth was seeded by an alien civilisation. All told, the Alien universe extends over millions of years.

To my mind, this journey into prehistory was a bit unnecessary. There is quite enough going on with regard to the human condition in the first four films, without trying to explain the origins of mankind. It also leans in to ‘ancient aliens’ conspiracy theories, which often give credit for complex ancient civilisations to extraterrestrial visitors, rather than to indigenous peoples themselves (with all the racism that this implies).

What interests me far more is the way that history informs the production design. The xenomorph creature and the alien craft and landscapes were famously designed by H. R. Giger, who created a nightmarish world replete with disturbing Freudian imagery, in keeping with the film’s theme of reproduction. As well as organic forms, Giger drew on gothic styles when creating cathedral-like interiors. This added to the otherworldly and spooky atmosphere of the films, and grounds the style of the alien worlds in the medieval period. (A nice nod to this is the ‘xenomorph’ gargoyle at Paisley Abbey.)

Gargoyle at Paisley Abbey: Wikimedia Commons.

This medieval aesthetic nearly came to its logical conclusion in the original designs for Alien 3, which was going to be set on a wooden planet populated by monks, before the production went in a more conventional direction.

Giger’s style was influenced by artists such as Hieronymus Bosch, and his art often involved chaotic combinations of human and inhuman bodies engaging in dreadful acts. This also informed the design of later films where he was not involved. The space station in Romulus has the painting by Michel Serre depicting the plague in Marseille in 1720. It includes horrors such as a baby suckling on a dead mother, a reference to events later in the film.

Detail from Michel Serre, View of the Hôtel de Ville of Marseille during the Plague of 1720 (1721): Wikimedia Commons.

By contrast, the design of the humans’ world is grounded in the 1970s. The spacecraft Nostromo would have looked futuristic in 1979, but was also recognisably of the present. This was not a sleek, clean vision of the future like in Star Trek, but rather a ‘polluted future’ where things are grimy and don’t work. Nostromo is a mining vessel so the look and feel is very utilitarian.

The team behind Alien: Romulus have made a conscious effort to make it look like the original film. It is set in 2142, between the action of Alien and Aliens. The tech in the film has a very 1970s feel to it, with chunky keyboards, computer disks and glowing cathode ray tubes. A key reason why the production design was so effective in the original film was because the blocky human tech contrasted with the sinewy and gothic contours of the alien and its world, and Alien: Romulus continues this tradition.

It’s another reason why the prequels were incongruous, as they were set before the original film but had much more advanced tech, including touchscreens and holograms, and sleek sterile interiors. Alien films only really work when they have a sense of history.

Matthew McCormack