I just picked up a book from the library called Sinners about a woman in 16th century Rome that hates her dad and wants to kill him.
But she’s a daughter in a rich family so she might as well be a Disney princess. There is also all the other tropes like this guy she can’t help being attracted to even though she doesn’t want to.
My biggest issue reading this book is I’m just like, “you’re rich, what’s your fucking problem. Boo hoo you hate your dad. You made it to adulthood in the 16th century in a comfortable existence.”
These stories are never about the peasants or people who work for these rich assholes. It’s always some wealthy woman that likes reading as if to be a stand in for the reader. It really goes to shoe what a bourgeois medium the novel is
Is all historical fiction like this or have I just picked up a generic example?
Most media in a market society tends towards slop. The aim of media production under capitalist production is profit, and entertainment, themes, etc only matter to the money-people insofar as they see a potential effect on profit margins.
Those with the most money to consume media are the better paid workers and middle classes. The values and ideas promoted in the media will therefore gravitate around those themes and morals which get the most sales, and those media which condemn or criticise capitalist values (making the viewer feel uncomfortable with, e.g., individualist consumerism) drive these wealthier viewers away and domt make them buy as much shit.
Under capitalist production there is a tendency also to increase the constant portion of capital (e.g. copyright, licensing CGI programmes, buying computers to render stuff) at the expense of variable capital (e.g. writer, costume designers, researchers.)
As everyone invests in these constant capitals to make their media-product as big a spectacle as possible, to drive up sales, any increased profit (relative surplus value) from, e.g. good CGI letting you fire workers, disappears and consequently capital has to find a new spectacle to mine relative surplus value from, or fire some workers and work the rest harder to keep up the rate of profit.