Talk:Textiles in folklore

"Cultural propaganda"

When the German queen of Romania, the excellent and admirable Elisabeth von Wied, has herself photographed in Romanian national dress, of course this is "cultural propaganda". To deny it, saying that "royalty usually adopted national dress", and that even to notice this blatant example of cultural propaganda violates a neutral point-of-view, is somewhat outside the mainstream of an ordinary culturally-educated response to this very interesting image. When the Windsors are photographed in kilts at Balmoral during World War I, this is also cultural propanganda, is it not? it would be equally foolish to deny it. To delete it is a form of censorship that scarcely offers an reputable example of a neutral point of view. Now, I suppose we may expect to see one of those disreputable "disputed" tags pasted across this article? --Wetman 07:59, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree this is far from a neutral point-of-view. I'll see if I can improve the wording. Fuzzypeg 13:41, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Per Wetman I have readded this. Please do some more reading on the subject before you remove it. - FrancisTyers 14:11, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I misread Wetman's comment, and somehow thought he was in favout of removing those words. I think I just automatically read most of what he was saying as irony - the term propaganda is of course pretty loaded, connoting "false" or "misleading". I'll do my homework now, and read about Elisabeth von Wied to see why this "excellent and admirable" woman is associated with such a negative word as propaganda. Thanks, Fuzzypeg 03:00, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, having read about Elisabeth von Wied, I'm still confused. But my interest is piqued. What is the point in insisting that this photo is "cultural propaganda"? Why this particular wording? I can see how some might interpret it as propaganda under certain situations - she is the Queen, and she's presenting herself in a very particular way - however monarchs and their wives often assume quite odd manners of dress. Is wearing an ermine cloak and a crown propaganda?

I'm not actually attempting to argue anything at the moment, just wondering what further reading I need to do on which subjects to understand it. Fuzzypeg 03:10, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Propaganda is not necessarily a negative word. As far as I see it, basically:

1. Cultural propaganda - Why is she wearing the get-up? To seem more or really Romanian. Why was the photograph taken? For propaganda purposes.
2. Strong mythic overtones - National myths that exist in all national ideologies. The Queen of England is a German, etc. The whole idea of "royalty" is a myth.

Perhaps Wetman has some other explanation, but I think the caption works quite well. - FrancisTyers 08:55, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Removing Original Research tag

I couldn't see any discussion here relating to this tag, and reading through the article I could see only one sentence that raised possible alarm bells (after the cultural propaganda mention was removed): that of the male weavers possibly usurping the female role. So I have removed the {{originalresearch}} tag. If anyone wants to put it back, please leave an explanatory comment here. If you only disagree with small sections of the article, then it would be more appropriate to employ the {{fact}} tag (placed after the offending sentence or clause). Fuzzypeg 14:00, 25 April 2006 (UTC)