It was the way people behaved in those days
It was called civilization.
If popular culture is to be believed, at that time brutal honesty, aggressive assertiveness and an "I don't take no *beep* from nobody" attitude were not so highly valued as they are today.
Popular culture of the time instead tended to encourage restrained, civil behavior and meeting provocation with icy politeness or dry wit rather than direct confrontation.
No one was expected to be a doormat; there were limits to civility. If your behavior crossed a certain line, which everyone understood because codes of behavior were clear and fairly rigid, then women would simply cease to know you and encourage their friends to do the same. You would no longer be invited to or welcome at your former friends' social events. Men might also do that, and you would find your reception at your club to be anything from chilly to threatened expulsion if you failed to do the honorable thing and resign. They might also give you a manly bash in the nose if your offense was sufficiently serious and personal.
No doubt people in real life deviated from this all the time, but it's what the culture taught as ideal behavior instead of leaving it to reality TV stars to teach people how to behave.
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kenny-164
10 years ago
Essex,
Good post. I agree.
People today overrate confrontation as a virtue.
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andreifuf
10 years ago
It was partially because for centuries many people had carried weapons to protect themselves. Duels had been usual too. I usually tend to attribute excessive politeness of the 18th and 19th centuries to the possession of swords by many men, and to the possibility of duel on a daily basis. Someone's honor really counted. If you wanted no harm to come to you, you had to be extra careful and polite to avoid being killed. This kind of attitude outlined manners on a long term, and their use continued even after the era of duels. To me, manners are more or less slowly disappearing completely as a direct consequence of the cancellation of both duels and weapon possession.
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bedrock1960
10 years ago
I suppose the OP would have preferred the film if the characters used the F word in every sentence, the women dressed like sluts and were twerking all over the hotel, and every character was rude and coarse and used drugs. Another clueless moron who thinks that anyone who isn't needlessly belligerent, spouts profanity, shares nude photos of themselves to the world and generally behaves like a vulgarian with arrested development must be a "phony". If having dignity, self control, a vocabulary of more than 50 words and respect for others is considered phony, this planet is going down the drain even faster than I thought.
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pc-daisy
9 years ago
Sorry for very late response, but just wanted to say well done, or I should write "well written"!.
It is so hard to convince people of younger generations that you can't view everything through the 21st Century filter.
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