1984, Farenheight 451, Brave New World, and similar books lose a lot of their "oomph" when you grow up seeing the same material covered in a much better fashion since your a kid. The evil, oppressive, facist goverment is pretty much a stock villain nowadays, back when those books were written this wasn't the case. It's sort of like when you look at the cyberpunk books written by guys like William Gibson, or "classic" anime like the origina "Bubblegum Crisis" and can't figure out what the big deal was. Back when those things came out the corperate subculture as we know it now was just developing, and the idea of evil companies with their own inherant internal world was new. While it arguably didn't start there things like "Genom" inspired fiction that moved into the mainstream.HT_Black said:
Not familiar with "Twilight Princess", however I'm familiar with a lot of arguements about Pedophilia. If you look at things like the movie "Pretty Baby" people have been addressing the topic in one way or another for a while.
Even if disturbing and reprehensible, I think understanding differant mentalities is important. See, one thing that a lot of people tend to forget for example is that people today are ridiculously long lived compared to previous generations. A complete fat slob who doesn't take care of themself can live 60, 70, or even 80 years. People breaking 100 years are not as uncommon as they once were. It's hard to realize that in previous generations people might have died from natural causes at the age of 30. Generations moved quickly, and people were a lot differant then both physically and mentally. When you look at things from that perspective having a wife who is like 12 or 13 years old is proportionate to the lifespans, and girls CAN breed that young (albiet with some problems, which probably contributed to early child mortality rates). Consider also that not all societies have progressed, some have pretty much remained culturally stagnant for hundreds if not thousands of years. Every once in a while you see articles about how people still live throughout Asia, Africa, and even a few obscure parts of europe where time seems to have stood still. In China for example you have huge, modern cities, but then entire sprawling messes of thatch huts where people live fundementally the same way they did around the time of the dark ages, and even share lodging with their livestock (which is how SARS got started). The Middle East is also pretty stagnant as the theocratic goverments went through a lot of effort to prevent change (sort of like Christians tried in Europe, except there the theocrats more or less succeeded). Some of the more barbaric customs (forcing women to marry their rapists, stonings, etc...) exist because that is how they have done things for thousands of years. From that perspective, even with long lifespans from some access to medicine and the like customs involving child brides in those places aren't that surprising. After all if it's been okay to marry off 12 or 13 year olds for 5,000 years, why stop now? Not saying it's right (I believe quite the opposite) simply that it's interesting when you consider it, and it helps to get a grasp of what your dealing with when it comes to certain issues. Japan in paticular is a nation that has gone through a LOT of cultural growing in a very short period of time due to the loss of World War II and the influance of American culture/occupation. In the scope of things child-brides have only become a taboo fairly recently, a lot of people see all the pedophile stuff in Anime and the like and just don't "get" that there are conflicts between the way things always were, and the changes coming with a greater degree of knowlege, civilization, and education. Intellectually the Japanese understand the Pedophilia is wrong and why it needs to be stopped, culturally and emotionally on the other hand there is still a bit of pressure there, with young wives/lovers being a status symbol, and childlike apperances being an accepted standard of beauty. I've read a bit about it there in paticular.
At any rate the point of that huge, and probably disturbing and nearly incoherant paragraph, is that if "Twilight Princess" is what it sounds like from your description, the point of having you read it was simply to gain a perspective on things like that. Understanding how other cultures see things or why they might still practice backwards customs can be important. Leading you to understand something, does not mean that the person having you read it actually expects you to agree with, or practice it. Sort of like how reading Nazi propaganda can give you insights into history, but nobody expects you to embrace Hitler's philosophy even if what your reading tries hard to sell the ideas.
