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Jun. 10th, 2020 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Watched Big Hero Six finally on ABC tonight. They are doing movies. Disney is advertising it's streaming channel on ABC by showing various movies on it.
I loved it. I found it very comforting. I needed something comforting.
2. So, they are tearing down statues of racists again.
[Note this is by no means the first time they tore down statues in the US - they did it about three years back in 2017? All the Confederate Statues were torn down in a flood of protests through the deep south. (If you follow the link above - you can see where.) And in sympathy, New York and various Northern States and Communities tore down their racist statues as well. (There aren't any in Greenwood Cemetery that I know about. Just a War Memorial to the Union Soliders who fought in the Civil War.) This lead to a nation-wide debate on whether preserving the statues was required in regards to historical narrative or if doing so, merely preserved racist sentiments and a racist agenda. A potential compromise - was to put the statues in museums where they could be preserved for historical purposes. Some even argued they were art - an argument that was quickly put to rest when it was revealed that they were all taken from a mold and kind of similar, and not all that artistic in character. All of this lead to a bunch of protests and counter-protests in the Southern US, culminating in that really horrible incident in Charlottsville where a White Supremacist rammed his car into a woman during a peaceful counter-protest (the counter-protest was against the Neo-Nazis and KKK) - later shown in the movie BlackKKlansman. Note then as now, the violent protestors were the White Supremacists, with few exceptions. So, as you can see this has kind of been building up for a while now. ]
Anyhow, I bring that up because what is interesting and encouraging about the tearing down of statues this go around is that, well, for one thing the US isn't alone, other countries have decided to do it too. And it's not just Confederate assholes, but "all" slavers, racists and genocidal leaders throughout history that are getting torn down worldwide. Personally, I don't think these people should have been honored or commemorated in the first place. But, hey, better late than never, right?
My favorite?
Last night, Christopher Columbus statues in two separate American cities were destroyed. In Richmond, Virginia, protesters tore down a Columbus statue, set it on fire, and then dumped it into a lake.
Roughly eight hours away in Boston, meanwhile, a separate Columbus statue located in the city’s North End was beheaded overnight.
Hee Hee. This kind of made my day. I despise Christopher Columbus.
3. NASCAR Bans Confederate Flags at All Its Events and Properties
Why they didn't do that before now, I've no clue. The Confederate flag should have been banned in the 1800s, after the Civil War.
I remember a black co-worker and her husband (who is Hispanic and a War history buff) visited Gettysberg, PA. She reported being uncomfortable.
When they went to a restaurant they were stared at. There were confederate flags in a Souvenir shop, along with other racist items. And one of the diners they went into had a Confederate flag hanging on the wall. It unnerved her. She'd never seen that. I told her that it didn't surprise me and I'd seen it. That a good portion of Middle White America was racist.
I remember her eyes getting big and she told me that she'd never seen it before. That when she went down there it was the first time in her life that she felt black. Or was aware of her skin color. She'd not been aware before then.
I'd like to live in a world where I'm not aware of skin tone or race. Where it doesn't matter. I do not see that happening in my life time, but I have hope. It's tiny, but it is there. DW gives me hope - why? Because I interact with people who use alias, and really don't see each other's skin tones, or races or creeds or genders, and we treat each other as well people. That's what I loved about the ATPOBTVS fan board for the most part - I felt as if what I looked like didn't matter. I don't want to be defined or identified by my race, ethnicity, religion/creed, sex, size, gender, sexual orientation, etc. It shouldn't matter. And I can't begin to tell you how much I hate that it does.
I have hope that one day we'll evolve beyond it. But probably not in my life time.
4. HBO Max removes Gone with the Wind from streaming service
- most likely until they can figure out how to add disclaimers to it - like they did with the Looney Toon Cartoons. Disney has similar issues and has removed similar content - such as Fantasia (which was redone several years ago), and Song of the South (which you'll never see - and I've mixed feelings about. Song of the South is a bit like Huckleberry Finn and old Mickey Mouse Cartoons and Looney Tunes.)
Gone with the Wind is kind of interesting. It's based on - a popular historical novel of the early 1930s, not quite a romance, although definitely romantic elements. It's not a very good novel - I couldn't get through the first fifty pages. The appeal of that book is lost on me. The movie however was a work of art, it's also very racist in places, and it romanticizes slavery and the old south. It also depicts the Klan as good guys, and the Union soliders as bad guys. Blacks are either dumb or bad.
I remember a friend of mine telling me that she adored Gone With the Wind and as a child had a birthday party with that as the theme, and had invited her black friends to it - but for some reason they refused to come and wouldn't talk to her. She didn't understand why. I responded, "eh, you know it's incredibly racist, right?" She didn't. It hadn't occurred to her at all.
And I watched it in the big theater with a woman from Texas, and we had a long discussion about it and racism, and how racism had in many ways hurt the South. How embedded it was in Texas and in her culture. And how clearly Gone with the Wind got that across - that mentality.
The film "Gone with the Wind" is important because it depicts how ingrained racism is in our culture and that mentality, of how insidious it can be. Hattie McDaniel was the first black woman to win an Academy Award and she got it for her role as Mamie in Gone with the Wind.
Hattie McDaniel (June 10, 1893 – October 26, 1952) was an American actress, singer-songwriter, and comedian. She is best known for her role as "Mammy" in Gone with the Wind (1939), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the first African American to win an Oscar.
In addition to acting in many films, McDaniel recorded 16 blues sides between 1926–1929 (10 were issued), was a radio performer and television star; she was the first black woman to sing on radio in the United States. She appeared in over 300 films, although she received screen credits for only 83.
McDaniel has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood: one at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard for her contributions to radio and one at 1719 Vine Street for acting in motion pictures. In 1975, she was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and in 2006 became the first black Oscar winner honored with a US postage stamp. In 2010, she was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.
That tells you a lot about how ingrained racism is in our culture. And what a big deal it is to remove Gone with the Wind from a streaming channel, particularly if you consider that Gone with the Wind was shown constantly at Thanksgiving, and Easter on television when I was growing up. Every year it would come on as a special presentation, like clockwork. It and The Wizard of Oz, The Ten Commandments, and The Sound of Music. It was considered a classic and a beloved film. My grandmother bragged about reading it in one day - even though she didn't like it very much and found the book less than memorable.
I loved it. I found it very comforting. I needed something comforting.
2. So, they are tearing down statues of racists again.
[Note this is by no means the first time they tore down statues in the US - they did it about three years back in 2017? All the Confederate Statues were torn down in a flood of protests through the deep south. (If you follow the link above - you can see where.) And in sympathy, New York and various Northern States and Communities tore down their racist statues as well. (There aren't any in Greenwood Cemetery that I know about. Just a War Memorial to the Union Soliders who fought in the Civil War.) This lead to a nation-wide debate on whether preserving the statues was required in regards to historical narrative or if doing so, merely preserved racist sentiments and a racist agenda. A potential compromise - was to put the statues in museums where they could be preserved for historical purposes. Some even argued they were art - an argument that was quickly put to rest when it was revealed that they were all taken from a mold and kind of similar, and not all that artistic in character. All of this lead to a bunch of protests and counter-protests in the Southern US, culminating in that really horrible incident in Charlottsville where a White Supremacist rammed his car into a woman during a peaceful counter-protest (the counter-protest was against the Neo-Nazis and KKK) - later shown in the movie BlackKKlansman. Note then as now, the violent protestors were the White Supremacists, with few exceptions. So, as you can see this has kind of been building up for a while now. ]
Anyhow, I bring that up because what is interesting and encouraging about the tearing down of statues this go around is that, well, for one thing the US isn't alone, other countries have decided to do it too. And it's not just Confederate assholes, but "all" slavers, racists and genocidal leaders throughout history that are getting torn down worldwide. Personally, I don't think these people should have been honored or commemorated in the first place. But, hey, better late than never, right?
My favorite?
Last night, Christopher Columbus statues in two separate American cities were destroyed. In Richmond, Virginia, protesters tore down a Columbus statue, set it on fire, and then dumped it into a lake.
Roughly eight hours away in Boston, meanwhile, a separate Columbus statue located in the city’s North End was beheaded overnight.
Hee Hee. This kind of made my day. I despise Christopher Columbus.
3. NASCAR Bans Confederate Flags at All Its Events and Properties
Why they didn't do that before now, I've no clue. The Confederate flag should have been banned in the 1800s, after the Civil War.
I remember a black co-worker and her husband (who is Hispanic and a War history buff) visited Gettysberg, PA. She reported being uncomfortable.
When they went to a restaurant they were stared at. There were confederate flags in a Souvenir shop, along with other racist items. And one of the diners they went into had a Confederate flag hanging on the wall. It unnerved her. She'd never seen that. I told her that it didn't surprise me and I'd seen it. That a good portion of Middle White America was racist.
I remember her eyes getting big and she told me that she'd never seen it before. That when she went down there it was the first time in her life that she felt black. Or was aware of her skin color. She'd not been aware before then.
I'd like to live in a world where I'm not aware of skin tone or race. Where it doesn't matter. I do not see that happening in my life time, but I have hope. It's tiny, but it is there. DW gives me hope - why? Because I interact with people who use alias, and really don't see each other's skin tones, or races or creeds or genders, and we treat each other as well people. That's what I loved about the ATPOBTVS fan board for the most part - I felt as if what I looked like didn't matter. I don't want to be defined or identified by my race, ethnicity, religion/creed, sex, size, gender, sexual orientation, etc. It shouldn't matter. And I can't begin to tell you how much I hate that it does.
I have hope that one day we'll evolve beyond it. But probably not in my life time.
4. HBO Max removes Gone with the Wind from streaming service
- most likely until they can figure out how to add disclaimers to it - like they did with the Looney Toon Cartoons. Disney has similar issues and has removed similar content - such as Fantasia (which was redone several years ago), and Song of the South (which you'll never see - and I've mixed feelings about. Song of the South is a bit like Huckleberry Finn and old Mickey Mouse Cartoons and Looney Tunes.)
Gone with the Wind is kind of interesting. It's based on - a popular historical novel of the early 1930s, not quite a romance, although definitely romantic elements. It's not a very good novel - I couldn't get through the first fifty pages. The appeal of that book is lost on me. The movie however was a work of art, it's also very racist in places, and it romanticizes slavery and the old south. It also depicts the Klan as good guys, and the Union soliders as bad guys. Blacks are either dumb or bad.
I remember a friend of mine telling me that she adored Gone With the Wind and as a child had a birthday party with that as the theme, and had invited her black friends to it - but for some reason they refused to come and wouldn't talk to her. She didn't understand why. I responded, "eh, you know it's incredibly racist, right?" She didn't. It hadn't occurred to her at all.
And I watched it in the big theater with a woman from Texas, and we had a long discussion about it and racism, and how racism had in many ways hurt the South. How embedded it was in Texas and in her culture. And how clearly Gone with the Wind got that across - that mentality.
The film "Gone with the Wind" is important because it depicts how ingrained racism is in our culture and that mentality, of how insidious it can be. Hattie McDaniel was the first black woman to win an Academy Award and she got it for her role as Mamie in Gone with the Wind.
Hattie McDaniel (June 10, 1893 – October 26, 1952) was an American actress, singer-songwriter, and comedian. She is best known for her role as "Mammy" in Gone with the Wind (1939), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the first African American to win an Oscar.
In addition to acting in many films, McDaniel recorded 16 blues sides between 1926–1929 (10 were issued), was a radio performer and television star; she was the first black woman to sing on radio in the United States. She appeared in over 300 films, although she received screen credits for only 83.
McDaniel has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood: one at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard for her contributions to radio and one at 1719 Vine Street for acting in motion pictures. In 1975, she was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and in 2006 became the first black Oscar winner honored with a US postage stamp. In 2010, she was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.
That tells you a lot about how ingrained racism is in our culture. And what a big deal it is to remove Gone with the Wind from a streaming channel, particularly if you consider that Gone with the Wind was shown constantly at Thanksgiving, and Easter on television when I was growing up. Every year it would come on as a special presentation, like clockwork. It and The Wizard of Oz, The Ten Commandments, and The Sound of Music. It was considered a classic and a beloved film. My grandmother bragged about reading it in one day - even though she didn't like it very much and found the book less than memorable.
NASCAR
Date: 2020-06-11 01:22 pm (UTC)Imagine a remake of the 1980's show Dukes of Hazard. Wouldn't be a Confederate flag on the car anymore showing how "cool" and Southern the Dukes were, would there? The car horn wouldn't play Dixie. Would they even call the car "General Lee?"
Re: NASCAR
Date: 2020-06-11 02:19 pm (UTC)But yeah, I agree. My mother recently told me about a discussion she'd had with her friends - all between the ages of 75-90, and they stated how they all went out of their way to teach their kids not to be racist, even though their parents had been. They wanted their kids to be better than they were and not be taught that. These women were talking in South Carolina, and several were from the area.
Each generation is far less racist than the last - and the activists are in their teens and twenties, they are the millenials and they are larger than the Baby Boom generation at the moment.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-11 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-12 01:09 am (UTC)