Romanticism is an epoch. But at the same time, Romanticism is also an attitude that is not limited to this era.

What does “romance” actually mean? Where does it come from? What does romance have to do with my self-image and why?

Today, the term is used in a variety of ways.

The petty-bourgeois trivialization, the open fire, candlelit dinners, happy families, pastel-coloured images of “everything-is-beautiful-mother-nature” accompanied by kitsch music are examples of the vulgar-romantic soft-wash clichés of a modern consumer world and entertainment industry that devalue concepts.

Anyone who uses the term “romanticism” nowadays is ridiculed. They are dismissed as naïve, as “not-to-be-taken-entirely-seriously”, somewhat eccentric fantasists, at best as “dreamers”. Public media vilification, ridicule through devaluation, mockery and derision seems to be the most effective means (alongside the so-called “market laws”) for the ruling mainstream to take action against those who think differently in order to continue to impose its versions of the controlled diversity of the ever-same without interference. The term “social romantic”, for example, is well known when it comes to a person who dares to question the capitalist system and is closely related to other fighting terms such as “do-gooder”, “eternally stubborn”, “eco”, “denier of progress”, “Russia-understander”, “cultural pessimist”, “esoteric” or “conspiracy theorist”. Anyone who is labeled in this way is UNCOOL and who wants to be uncool? In this context, it is interesting to observe how coolness, hippness and conformity can be recognized in the most excellent way as vicarious agents of global neoliberalism.

Is romance uncool? In part two, I try to provide answers to the questions posed in the introduction.