Word: cults
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...cult has grown up around Georgette Heyer's regency romances. Its members are secret addicts who, when pressed, will admit shamefacedly that, yes, they do read Heyer. It takes some courage: A regency romance--and Heyer holds undisputed title of queen of the genre--has neither the suspense of a good spy story or the nose-to-the-ground clue-tracking of a murder mystery, and has no social significance whatsoever. Heyer deals exclusively with the frivolous world of England's Upper Ten Thousand at the turn of the nineteenth century, and any similarity between the world of social conventions...
...them sex, even when expressed through the use of branding irons, must be beautiful. This, of course, runs counter to the spirit of the novel, which insists that O's mistreatment-at the château where her lover takes her for initiation into the joy-through-pain cult-becomes pure (and purifying) agony...
...goes without saying that Rome, as the capital of Christianity, was destined to become a thesaurus almost indescribably rich in these cult objects. Money, talent, raw materials and the competitive pride of rival orders abounded there over the long centuries and spread through the churches of the neighboring Papal States. Despite theft and fire and the plunderings of tourists from Alaric the Visigoth to Hitler's Waffen SS, a stupendous amount remains. In this show, more than 500 examples have been assembled by a group of scholars headed by Art Historian Paolo Cercato...
...even Columbus described the Caribbean in phrases taken from Latin poetry describing the mythical Golden Age. It was culturally impossible for him, or his immediate followers, not to do so. The woodcuts and paintings of the time reflect that Arcadian vision, which would duly be modulated into the cult of the Noble Savage. By 1505, only five years after Cabral's discovery of Brazil, the first American Indian had made his way into a European painting: a Tupinamba chief, crowned with feathers, included as one of the Wise Men from the East in a Portuguese nativity...
...growing opposition to the Moon cult focuses primarily on worries about what it is doing to the minds of its young converts. In Dutchess County, N.Y., District Attorney Albert Rosenblatt is investigating complaints from parents that their children have been "brainwashed" in high-pressure courses at the church's Barrytown training center. Rosenblatt also wonders why so many Moon cultists require emergency-room treatment at a local hospital...