And now we come to the "Burn her! She's a witch!" portion of the discussion, where I throw in my two cents worth:
History is the events of the past as seen, or better yet, interpreted, by subsequent researchers (they call themselves historians). The biggest flaw in the study of history is to cherry pick elements and examine them out of their original context. Horrendous obscenities and atrocities committed in the past may be better understood (not excused) if we had a better comprehension of the contextual reasons why they occured. It does not excuse the crimes of the past, but at least we may gain some idea of why they happened.
And what does this say about current events? All my younger colleagues were highly distressed to hear that some strict Islamist cultures still do not approve of women participating in reading. My classmates were insensed and wanted to support a women's reading group against the wishes of her society. Here is were I get all politically incorrect: I said, in front of the whole class, including the prof who was very much in favour of this initiative, that us supporting the women's reading group was to her society as abhorent as if outsiders supported pedophiles and the inclusion of child pornography in our society. I'd like to hope this argument made some of them stop and think. I'm sure others think I support fundamentalist Islam and kiddie-porn (alas, we aren't all deep thinkers!) This illustrates current events in their cultural settings.
There is a very famous film clip out of early Nazi Germany which depicts book burning. It is somewhere on YouTube. We saw it in class when we were discussing censorship. I could not bear to watch it. Why? My colleagues teased that I was sensitive to the destruction of the written word. (This is only part of it.) What that video meant to me was showing the roots of evil. Remember, this was early in the Nazi regime, before kristallnacht, and before the world knew of the horrors to come. How could those people, cheerfully stoking the fires with the texts from Jewish authors, know that actions like this would eventually escalate and result in the holocaust? If they knew, would they have gone along with it? (I hope not) How will we recognise similar signs in our own times? And if we could recognise them, would we be brave enough to stand up to the forces behind them? Would you? Would I? For me, I don't know if I am that brave, and that is what upset me so.
But let's discuss Disney's version of Pocahontas. Very bad. Very bad, indeed. Worst one I have seen (and I am a fan of animated feature films). A much better "first contact" animated feature was "Road to Eldorado" by Dreamworks. (Music wasn't half bad either; and the rhetoric was very low key.)
You are allowed to like opera and Disney, but there is good Disney and there is bad Disney: good includes Tarzan and Lion King. The list of bad Disney is too long to recount now.
I'll end my incoherant rant here for now. It's late.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2010-12-19 05:20 am (UTC)History is the events of the past as seen, or better yet, interpreted, by subsequent researchers (they call themselves historians). The biggest flaw in the study of history is to cherry pick elements and examine them out of their original context. Horrendous obscenities and atrocities committed in the past may be better understood (not excused) if we had a better comprehension of the contextual reasons why they occured. It does not excuse the crimes of the past, but at least we may gain some idea of why they happened.
And what does this say about current events? All my younger colleagues were highly distressed to hear that some strict Islamist cultures still do not approve of women participating in reading. My classmates were insensed and wanted to support a women's reading group against the wishes of her society. Here is were I get all politically incorrect: I said, in front of the whole class, including the prof who was very much in favour of this initiative, that us supporting the women's reading group was to her society as abhorent as if outsiders supported pedophiles and the inclusion of child pornography in our society. I'd like to hope this argument made some of them stop and think. I'm sure others think I support fundamentalist Islam and kiddie-porn (alas, we aren't all deep thinkers!) This illustrates current events in their cultural settings.
There is a very famous film clip out of early Nazi Germany which depicts book burning. It is somewhere on YouTube. We saw it in class when we were discussing censorship. I could not bear to watch it. Why? My colleagues teased that I was sensitive to the destruction of the written word. (This is only part of it.) What that video meant to me was showing the roots of evil. Remember, this was early in the Nazi regime, before kristallnacht, and before the world knew of the horrors to come. How could those people, cheerfully stoking the fires with the texts from Jewish authors, know that actions like this would eventually escalate and result in the holocaust? If they knew, would they have gone along with it? (I hope not) How will we recognise similar signs in our own times? And if we could recognise them, would we be brave enough to stand up to the forces behind them? Would you? Would I? For me, I don't know if I am that brave, and that is what upset me so.
But let's discuss Disney's version of Pocahontas. Very bad. Very bad, indeed. Worst one I have seen (and I am a fan of animated feature films). A much better "first contact" animated feature was "Road to Eldorado" by Dreamworks. (Music wasn't half bad either; and the rhetoric was very low key.)
You are allowed to like opera and Disney, but there is good Disney and there is bad Disney: good includes Tarzan and Lion King. The list of bad Disney is too long to recount now.
I'll end my incoherant rant here for now. It's late.