Theater bans Gone With The Wind for being "Insensitive"

[straggler]

22 minutes ago, grey ghost said:

 

How do you feel about celebrating shameful historical events and people cause I oppose government censorship also.

There are many, many shameful things in history. Our values and sensibilities change constantly. Take something odious like Triumph of the Will, which is as shameful as anything can ever possibly be. It dwarfs anything offensive about GWTW, which featured among other things the first Oscar for an African American actor. But even with Triumph I would never support banning the film. And the thing is so what if Triumph celebrated Hitlerism? We as a contemprary audience can watch it and understand it as an historical document. People are so hysterical right now that they are acting like the audience (ie their fellow citizens, their neighbors) are mindless and will magically catch the hate virus. That we will watch Triumph and become nazis or watch a Lost Cause relic like GWTW and come away thinking "well slavery was not so bad." These are frankly uneducated assumptions about the supposed lack of sophistication in others. 

 

My hot take is simple. Right now we are having a moral panic, mass political hysteria that has been ongoing since the election. People need to chill out. And they need to have some basic faith in their fellow man and neighbors. What they cannot do is give into mobs, which is what social media seems to produce more than anything. If the theater had said they don't want to show a film anymore, generally fine. But here they are pandering to hysteria, like when the Dukes of Hazard was pulled off the air. Heck if a local communirty wants to take down a statue, then they need to take a second to catch their breath and do it legally and without the braying mob. Everyone just needs to take a step back and calm down.   

Edited August 27, 2017 by straggler

[grey ghost]

2 minutes ago, Chaz said:

GIRL. I didn't say SHIT about your Wikipedia link. I was referring to YOUR words. 

 

 

31 minutes ago, Chaz said:

History is written by the winners. 

 

And Wikipedia, apparently.

 

[Spidey Freak]

9 minutes ago, Noctis said:

Of course they do. But a hijab will never be progressive for women. It objectifies her. 

Hmm disagree. If the woman herself is comfortable with her hijab, then that's her own agency and choice and taking that away from her would be the antithesis of progress.

 

 

[SLAM!]

1 hour ago, Cmasterclay said:

You can't erase them, but you shouldn't celebrate them with flags or memoralize them with statues. They belong in a museum and in history classes.

 

I'm not saying 'celebrate the mistakes'. I'm saying 'preserve the history'. How can we learn from our history if there is no history to learn from?

[lab276]

1 minute ago, slambros said:

 

I'm not saying 'celebrate the mistakes'. I'm saying 'preserve the history'. How can we learn from our history if there is no history to learn from?

 

[Fancyarcher]

I'm of two minds of this. On the one hand GWTW is a very much a film of its time & it should be looked at within the context of when it was made. At the same time this film does glorify the south, so I can understand why people would be upset about it showing in a major theater, especially with the recent awful events that have transpired. 

 

As for this argument you guys are having, I think a lot is good being said, but a lot more ridiculous things are being said in general, though. Yikes!

[grey ghost]

19 minutes ago, straggler said:

There are many, many shameful things in history. Our values and sensibilities change constantly. Take something odious like Triumph of the Will, which is as shameful as anything can ever possibly be. It dwarfs anything offensive about GWTW, which featured among other things the first Oscar for an African American actor. But even with Triumph I would never support banning the film. And the thing is so what if Triumph celebrated Hitlerism? We as a contemprary audience can watch it and understand it as an historical document. People are so hysterical right now that they are acting like the audience (ie their fellow citizens, their neighbors) are mindless and will magically catch the hate virus. That we will watch Triumph and become nazis or watch a Lost Cause relic like GWTW and come away thinking "well slavery was not so bad." These are frankly uneducated assumptions about the supposed lack of sophistication in others. 

 

My hot take is simple. Right now we are having a moral panic, mass political hysteria that has been ongoing since the election. People need to chill out. And they need to have some basic faith in their fellow man and neighbors. What they cannot do is give into mobs, which is what social media seems to produce more than anything. If the theater had said they don't want to show a film anymore, generally fine. But here they are pandering to hysteria, like when the Dukes of Hazard was pulled off the air. Heck if a local communirty wants to take down a statue, then they need to take a second to catch their breath and do it legally and without the braying mob. Everyone just needs to take a step back and calm down.   

 

Now is not the time for apathy.

 

A very large segment of the population feel the neo nazi rally was justified, they support banning millions of Muslims being banned from countries who never attacked us, they support a crackdown on migrants who are proven to help local economies, and they treat the confederate flag as a symbol more noble than the US flag.

 

Your rhetoric that Americans are reasonable and foward thinking is very pre-Trump.

 

We should not be calm. We should not be comfortable.

 

 

Edited August 27, 2017 by grey ghost

[DAR]

Calm reasonable and rational is what should prevail.

 

Reality is calm rational and reasonable doesn't get discussions going

[Sal]

2 hours ago, JB33 said:

Whatever. I just hate faux outrage, which is what I perceive a lot of this to be. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. I'll also stick to the shit in my own country (First prime minister's name being removed from schools) since, admittedly, I'm not as familiar with issues surrounding the US and their confederate history. 

 

Here's the thing about most of those statues...

 

They weren't PUT UP right after the civil war.  They were put up at two different points, in the 1930s, with the repeal of Jim Crow and in the 50s during the civil rights movement.  This makes it pretty clear that their existence has nothing to do with wanting to preserve history.  They exist because at the time they wanted to send a message to people who supported civil rights, to intimidate them into silence.  And as far as I can tell, the majority of effort to take them down is just centered around putting them in museums anyway, so it's not like they're destroying history or some ridiculousness like that.

 

re: GWTW, I think context here may be important.  Were the showings in response to the current stuff going on?  If so, I can see why it might be uncomfortable.

 

In general I think it's an instance where it needs an introduction slapped onto it to say it's not indicative of current values/thought, so people don't go getting the idea to glorify some of the stuff in it (as WB did with releases of racist cartoons a while back, to put them in proper context).

Edited August 27, 2017 by Sal

[straggler]

12 minutes ago, grey ghost said:

 

Now is not the time for apathy.

 

A very large segment of the population feel the neo nazi rally was justified, they support banning millions of Muslims being banned from countries who never attacked us, they support a crackdown on migrants who are proven to help local economies, and they treat the confederate flag as a symbol more noble than the US flag.

 

Your rhetoric that Americans are reasonable and foward thinking is very pre-Trump.

 

We should not be calm. We should not be comfortable.

 

 

Actual neo-nazis are miniscule in number. Not sure where the "very large segment" comes from, and there is a marked difference between the right to march (think Skokie) and agreeing with the march. But you hit the nail. The Left thinks all Trump voters are neo-nazis and KKK sympathizing rednecks while the Right thinks all Democrats are ISIS loving communist tools. With those type of caricatures it makes reasonable discussion impossible. We need to recognize that in politics there can be reasonable disagreement. But everyone seems to be adding fuel to the fire. 

[cookie]

22 minutes ago, Sal said:

 

Here's the thing about most of those statues...

 

They weren't PUT UP right after the civil war.  They were put up at two different points, in the 1930s, with the repeal of Jim Crow and in the 50s during the civil rights movement.  This makes it pretty clear that their existence has nothing to do with wanting to preserve history.  They exist because at the time they wanted to send a message to people who supported civil rights, to intimidate them into silence.  And as far as I can tell, the majority of effort to take them down is just centered around putting them in museums anyway, so it's not like they're destroying history or some ridiculousness like that.

Technically most statues were put up in the early 1900s when Jim Crow was in the up and coming but the motives were the same. Often the greater racial tensions were, the more would be built.

 

Edited August 27, 2017 by cookie

[grey ghost]

53 minutes ago, DAR said:

Calm reasonable and rational is what should prevail.

 

Reality is calm rational and reasonable doesn't get discussions going

This is double speak.

 

You're implying reason and calm are synonymous when the person saying "calm down" was basically saying, let's not be so quick to remove things that glorify the confederacy.

 

This kind of "calm" helped Trump win the election. This "both sides are ridiculous so why vote, why protest, why care" approach to white nationalism.

 

There's nothing wrong with saying, "wait, this Nazi and pro-slavery stuff needs the right historical context".

 

 

Edited August 27, 2017 by grey ghost

[grey ghost]

58 minutes ago, straggler said:

Actual neo-nazis are miniscule in number. Not sure where the "very large segment" comes from, and there is a marked difference between the right to march (think Skokie) and agreeing with the march. But you hit the nail. The Left thinks all Trump voters are neo-nazis and KKK sympathizing rednecks while the Right thinks all Democrats are ISIS loving communist tools. With those type of caricatures it makes reasonable discussion impossible. We need to recognize that in politics there can be reasonable disagreement. But everyone seems to be adding fuel to the fire. 

"The Post-ABC survey finds overwhelming majorities across party lines saying it is unacceptable to hold white supremacist views, while 9 percent overall say such views are acceptable."

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-shows-strong-disapproval-of-how-trump-responded-to-charlottesville-violence/2017/08/21/4e5c585c-868b-11e7-a94f-3139abce39f5_story.html?utm_term=.ae5a5c8c6d37

 

So a population almost twice as big as the Asian-American population "openly" think neo nazism is perfectly fine. 

 

The key word is openly.

 

 

[grey ghost]

Again, we're not asking ideas and history be banned but that they be put in the proper conext.

 

When 42% of Americans think the Civil War wasn't about slavery it's clear these statues are not about teaching history but rather teaching a distorted view of history.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/12/civil-war-still-divides-americans/amp/

[JB33]

2 hours ago, Noctis said:

I think the point when I realized the Left went off the deep end in the States was when Linda Sarsour was given such a massive platform and one of the posters was of a woman wearing the hijab. Why on earth would the hijab be glorified when it's so blatantly misogynistic and its core principal is that a woman should be covered up so that she would not attract the gaze of a man? It emphasizes that women are sex objects...disgusting stupidity by the left when I saw that utter abomination Linda Sarsour (who had repeatedly stated she was in favor of Sharia) rallying women in her defense...

 

 

I know!! It's ass backwards isn't it??

[AndyK]

28 minutes ago, grey ghost said:

Again, we're not asking ideas and history be banned but that they be put in the proper conext.

 

When 42% of Americans think the Civil War wasn't about slavery it's clear these statues are not about teaching history but rather teaching a distorted view of history.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/12/civil-war-still-divides-americans/amp/

 

There are some calling for Christopher Columbus statues in NYC and Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square London to be pulled down.

 

Presumable people would want the statues in Rome pulled down as well.

 

Who needs ISIS when when we can do their work for them?

[Amadeus]

Its a masterpiece the world deserves, but not really what IT needs right now

[Water Bottle]

3 hours ago, Chaz said:

The majority of the South fought to keep the federal government from telling them what to do. They had no stake in slavery because they were all poor white people. 

Most of the poor white people didn't volunteer but were conscripted. And regardless of why they fought, the war was 100 percent about slavery. It's the only reason it happened. 

 

The only thing the south was worried was that the federal government would tell them to end slavery. That was it. 

[straggler]

1 hour ago, grey ghost said:

"The Post-ABC survey finds overwhelming majorities across party lines saying it is unacceptable to hold white supremacist views, while 9 percent overall say such views are acceptable."

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-shows-strong-disapproval-of-how-trump-responded-to-charlottesville-violence/2017/08/21/4e5c585c-868b-11e7-a94f-3139abce39f5_story.html?utm_term=.ae5a5c8c6d37

 

So a population almost twice as big as the Asian-American population "openly" think neo nazism is perfectly fine. 

 

The key word is openly.

 

 

We need to be careful with polls. The poll is a survey of 1014 adults. Of that a total of nine (9 out of 1014) expressed the view that it was acceptable to hold neo-nazi views. Of these only 3 said they believed this strongly. Further, the question is ambiguous. There is no attempt to clarify what is meant by "acceptable." They did not ask for example "notwithstanding the legal right to hold such views, do you approve of such views." Saying something is acceptable and having approval for it are not the same thing. The question should have been "do you personally approve of those views."  

[Barnack]

13 minutes ago, Water Bottle said:

Most of the poor white people didn't volunteer but were conscripted. And regardless of why they fought, the war was 100 percent about slavery. It's the only reason it happened. 

 

The only thing the south was worried was that the federal government would tell them to end slavery. That was it. 

In that era ?, not sure conscription worked that well.

 

The United States first employed national conscription during the American Civil War. The vast majority of troops were volunteers; of the 2,100,000 Union soldiers, about 2% were draftees, and another 6% were substitutes paid by draftees

 

http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/political-science-and-government/military-affairs-nonnaval/confederate-army

At the outset, the South had more volunteers than it could arm and equip, forcing the army to turn away some 200,000 volunteers that it would soon sorely miss. In June 1863, the army peaked at almost 475,000 men; it declined steadily thereafter. By comparison, some 2.3 million men served in the Union army, with more than 1 million in uniform in 1865. As martial enthusiasm waned in late 1861, the Confederate government was forced to resort to conscription for the first national draft in American history. On 16 April 1862, the Confederate Congress enacted the First Conscription Act, which declared all able‐bodied, unmarried white men between the ages of eighteen and thirty‐five liable for the draft. One‐year volunteers already in the army were enjoined to serve for two additional years but were allowed to return home on a sixty‐day furlough and to elect new field‐ and company‐grade officers. The Second Conscription Act of September 1862 and the Third Conscription Act, adopted seventeen months later, extended the ages of liability from seventeen to fifty, although exemptions greatly weakened the draft law. The stigma of conscription induced potential draftees to volunteer before they were called, so that only 82,000 were actually conscripted.