Can we forgive old movies?

[Badger]

4 minutes ago, Doc Shadow said:

Just because someone is a nerd doesn't mean they like all things nerdish. 

 

I hate both Tolkien and Harry Potter, and have no intention of ever seeing the 3rd Star Wars trilogy.

 

I was mostly joking.  But you still know what LOTR is.

 

Anyhow except for Tolkien, we agree.

[Ndreare]

Trying to delete

[CrosshairCollie]

I'm not sure I'm grokking all the terms right, but understanding why something was how it was and 'forgiving' it are two different things to me.

 

Yes, I understand why it was considered acceptable to portray minorities in those ways back in the 30s/40s/50s.  Socially acceptable and right are not synonymous to me.  It was still wrong, vile, disgusting, pathetic, and moronic.  I don't think those things should be forgiven; I would have no problems with them being locked away, brought out only in the context of showing how backwards and pathetic we were, something to inspire shame and revulsion to ensure it never becomes acceptable again.

[Lucius]

On ‎11‎/‎29‎/‎2017 at 12:34 PM, massey said:

 

I have to quibble with you on something.  The 3/5 compromise was a good thing.  It was intended to limit the voting power of the southern states in the US Congress.  We have proportional representation according to population in the House of Representatives.  The 3/5 compromise was a move against slavery.

 

 

 

That is, at best, half the story.

 

Yes, it limited the voting power of the states with large enslaved populations. It ALSO limited the amount those states had to pay in taxes.

 

That's why it was a compromise. Those states lost a little influence in terms of congressional delegates, but the levy against their states financially was reduced as well.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

And three fifths of a palindromedary

[Vondy]

History and its assorted cultural products do not require our forgiveness. The very notion is egocentric, ethnocentric, and benighted. Our contemporary approval or dissaproval is subjective and largely superfluous.

[Sundog]

I disagree, Vondy. As cultural artifacts they may not need our permission to exist nor our forgiveness, but to remain an active and useful part of our cultural paradigm today they certainly do. We can and do choose to jettison those parts of our cultural past we no longer admire or outright revile, and for good or for ill we will continue to do so.

[Ragitsu]

31 minutes ago, Sundog said:

I disagree, Vondy. As cultural artifacts they may not need our permission to exist nor our forgiveness, but to remain an active and useful part of our cultural paradigm today they certainly do. We can and do choose to jettison those parts of our cultural past we no longer admire or outright revile, and for good or for ill we will continue to do so.

 

That is precisely why rose colored glasses will never go out of style.

[BoloOfEarth]

A few years back, someone posted a link in the Pulp Hero thread for downloading Hugo Gernsback's Air Wonder Stories, a monthly magazine that ran from July 1929 through May 1930.  I eagerly pulled copies down for me to read - and have to admit that while I enjoyed the plots of old, I was a bit put off by the racism and sexism / misogeny displayed in various stories.  I understand that that was just how things were back then, but was still disappointed.  After a while, I just stopped reading them.

 

This thread reminded me of this bit from LearningTown, where a character has a dream featuring his childhood idol, the former host of his favorite childhood show:

 

[Vondy]

 

58 minutes ago, Sundog said:

I disagree, Vondy. As cultural artifacts they may not need our permission to exist nor our forgiveness, but to remain an active and useful part of our cultural paradigm today they certainly do. We can and do choose to jettison those parts of our cultural past we no longer admire or outright revile, and for good or for ill we will continue to do so.

 

Firstly, you concede my entire argument when you say "As cultural artifacts they may not need our permission to exist nor our forgiveness." End of debate. They exist and they do not require our forgiveness.  Rather, you introduce a fallacious premise  "but to remain an active and useful part of our cultural paradigm today they certainly do." What does remaining an active or useful part of our culture, or whether we choose to engage with them or incorporate them in our own product have to do with forgiveness? Absolutely nothing. Forgiveness is irrelevant. You clearly do not understand the term. Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you. You do not have to release feelings of resentment or vengeance over a cultural artifact you find offensive to engage with it or have it serve a meaningful role in your life. Strong negative reactions and value objections are also perfectly valid reactions to art. 

 

I will even go a step farther and say refusal to engage with media that does not reflect contemporary values and offends personal sensibilities is brittle, cowardly, censorious, and petty minded. It is demonstrative of a person who is stunted emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. I am a better person for having read Mein Kampf and listened to and analyzed every single one of Hitler's speeches. That I find him a vulgar and odious example of humanity who espoused ideas that were anathema to my own values does not change that. It should be required reading and, quite frankly, I don't give a damn if it triggers anyone. The censorious desire of critical theorists to identify objectionable aspects of a cultural product and then engage in reductionism while ignoring both its holistic content and historical context is the path of prideful and posturing counter-intellectual morons who wish to sanitize culture in the name of making it safe for adult child-beings who will never develop into mature, moral men and women.

 

We are made better when we are confronted and challenged by things outside of our comfort zones. Indeed, the only way to test the mettle of our own values is through confrontation with ideas and art that exists beyond our moral horizons. What is more, you cannot jettison the cultural artifacts of the past. They are what the emerging cultural artifacts of the present find their roots in. You can pretend they aren't there, but then, what are you? An enlightened ostrich with its head in the sand? A moral censor pursuing Aristotle's love of lies? Is that a laudable goal? Our history is a part of our culture. All jettisoning it does is increase ignorance, and all that does is increase discord and hate.

 

And, not to sound too trite, but one who does not know ones history is doomed to repeat it. Without the context and content of the past you cannot understand the context and content of the present. Nor can you evaluate whether things are better or worse today than they were then, or even to say why that is so. Without having done these things you simply remain a child living according to received theoretical moral tradition rather than a resilient full-fledged moral actor on the stage of life. We may find some cultural artifacts objectionable. We may decide some cultural artifacts should not be emulated in contemporary art. But how does one find that? Not by jettisoning it. Not by expunging it from the cultural record. No. One discovers that by engaging it. In that it continues to have paramount value.

 

The current cultural trend towards historical sanitization, reductionist criticism, and politically narrow brittleness is both intellectually and morally degenerate. A strong person hailing from a strong culture can engage art beyond their contemporary, cultural, and moral horizons. They can engage art from other cultures, and other time-periods on their own terms and have their own individual emotional responses. In reflecting upon their reactions, their culture, and their values, they might even become more self-aware, better realized, and morally clarified beings.  And it might all start with being morally aghast and aesthetically agape at Fu Manchu... whether they forgive Sax Rohmer or not.

 

This discussion could do without the presumption that our forgiveness is meaningful or relevant.

 

 

 

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Is it really necessary to remind people that if they ignore history they are doomed to repeat it?

[Old Man]

 

6 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Is it really necessary to remind people that if they ignore history they are doomed to repeat it?

 

Are we not living through Stupid Watergate right now?

 

Vondy's right in that the past is immutable* and needs no forgiveness.  I think forgiveness is the wrong word--I'd use "acknowledgement".  We can still appreciate, for example, the spirit of independence and self reliance conveyed by Robert E. Howard's unedited Conan, while also acknowledging that it's, like, kind of racist.  We can all appreciate the values espoused by Golden Age superheroes while acknowledging that they're almost all white men.  And so we can appreciate the spirit of the Old West portrayed in old '50s and '60s Westerns while acknowledging that their portrayal of Native Americans was rooted in ignorance and bigotry. 

 

As long as we're aware of the values differences between now and the time an old movie was made, old movies will be fine.  Indeed, they may be instructive, serving as examples of what our society did when it was young and stupid.  A window into an age that was backwards in some ways, but not all.

 

 

 

* Depending on who controls the present, of course.

 

 

[Greywind]

2 hours ago, Sundog said:

I disagree, Vondy. As cultural artifacts they may not need our permission to exist nor our forgiveness, but to remain an active and useful part of our cultural paradigm today they certainly do. We can and do choose to jettison those parts of our cultural past we no longer admire or outright revile, and for good or for ill we will continue to do so.

 

So you agree with the extremist Islamists that took sledgehammers to temples?

[Old Man]

I'm not sure how you got that from what he said. 

[Sundog]

16 minutes ago, Greywind said:

 

So you agree with the extremist Islamists that took sledgehammers to temples?

 

Well, first, you're conflating recognizing an action or trend and agreeing with it. My acknowledgement that something exists does not in any way form an endorsement or positive promotion of that thing.

 

And second, you're confusing an attempt to destroy the past with a refusal to acknowledge aspects of the past. The latter is entirely a mental thing, and certainly does not require sledgehammers.

 

[Ragitsu]

44 minutes ago, Greywind said:

 

So you agree with the extremist Islamists that took sledgehammers to temples?

 

The most peculiar things are coming out of left field these days...

[Sundog]

2 hours ago, Vondy said:

 

 

Firstly, you concede my entire argument when you say "As cultural artifacts they may not need our permission to exist nor our forgiveness." End of debate. They exist and they do not require our forgiveness.  Rather, you introduce a fallacious premise  "but to remain an active and useful part of our cultural paradigm today they certainly do." What does remaining an active or useful part of our culture, or whether we choose to engage with them or incorporate them in our own product have to do with forgiveness? Absolutely nothing. Forgiveness is irrelevant. You clearly do not understand the term. Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you. You do not have to release feelings of resentment or vengeance over a cultural artifact you find offensive to engage with it or have it serve a meaningful role in your life. Strong negative reactions and value objections are also perfectly valid reactions to art. 

 

I will even go a step farther and say refusal to engage with media that does not reflect contemporary values and offends personal sensibilities is brittle, cowardly, censorious, and petty minded. It is demonstrative of a person who is stunted emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. I am a better person for having read Mein Kampf and listened to and analyzed every single one of Hitler's speeches. That I find him a vulgar and odious example of humanity who espoused ideas that were anathema to my own values does not change that. It should be required reading and, quite frankly, I don't give a damn if it triggers anyone. The censorious desire of critical theorists to identify objectionable aspects of a cultural product and then engage in reductionism while ignoring both its holistic content and historical context is the path of prideful and posturing counter-intellectual morons who wish to sanitize culture in the name of making it safe for adult child-beings who will never develop into mature, moral men and women.

 

We are made better when we are confronted and challenged by things outside of our comfort zones. Indeed, the only way to test the mettle of our own values is through confrontation with ideas and art that exists beyond our moral horizons. What is more, you cannot jettison the cultural artifacts of the past. They are what the emerging cultural artifacts of the present find their roots in. You can pretend they aren't there, but then, what are you? An enlightened ostrich with its head in the sand? A moral censor pursuing Aristotle's love of lies? Is that a laudable goal? Our history is a part of our culture. All jettisoning it does is increase ignorance, and all that does is increase discord and hate.

 

And, not to sound too trite, but one who does not know ones history is doomed to repeat it. Without the context and content of the past you cannot understand the context and content of the present. Nor can you evaluate whether things are better or worse today than they were then, or even to say why that is so. Without having done these things you simply remain a child living according to received theoretical moral tradition rather than a resilient full-fledged moral actor on the stage of life. We may find some cultural artifacts objectionable. We may decide some cultural artifacts should not be emulated in contemporary art. But how does one find that? Not by jettisoning it. Not by expunging it from the cultural record. No. One discovers that by engaging it. In that it continues to have paramount value.

 

The current cultural trend towards historical sanitization, reductionist criticism, and politically narrow brittleness is both intellectually and morally degenerate. A strong person hailing from a strong culture can engage art beyond their contemporary, cultural, and moral horizons. They can engage art from other cultures, and other time-periods on their own terms and have their own individual emotional responses. In reflecting upon their reactions, their culture, and their values, they might even become more self-aware, better realized, and morally clarified beings.  And it might all start with being morally aghast and aesthetically agape at Fu Manchu... whether they forgive Sax Rohmer or not.

 

This discussion could do without the presumption that our forgiveness is meaningful or relevant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm actually mostly in agreement with you. Our tendencies to selectively edit the past  to avoid painful connotations are not positive, and in extremis can lead to such absurdities as the person who is willing to remind the populace that a problem exists or existed being taken as being the actual problem.

However, I would warn you against being too quick to claim a victory, because I do not in the least concede your argument, seeing as your argument is at odds with the purpose of this thread and what we are actually talking about.

You see, you are using the wrong definition of "forgiveness".

We are not speaking of feelings of resentment  or vengeance at all, those would be entirely pointless - how can one seek vengeance upon or resent an inanimate object? Rather, we are speaking of, in the older terms, forgiveness of sins. Or if you wish to strip away the flowery language, acknowledgement and agreement to acknowledge but either ignore or grudgingly accept certain aspects now viewed as mistaken in order to also accept the positive contributions of the body of work as a whole. And THAT sort of forgiveness is very much an important aspect, because if we, the general viewing public (as opposed to we historians and filmophiles, who are and will always be a tiny minority) can't do that, we, the viewing public will not watch those films.

And the moment that occurs, said film ceases to be part of the general culture. It has been jettisoned.

I happen to agree with your words regarding refusal to engage with difficult subjects and challenging ideas. I also know that my agreement and $5 will buy you a cup of coffee. The general viewer will accept being challenged, will accept difficult subjects...but ONLY if they are also being entertained. And if they can't forgive the sins of older movies enough to still be entertained by them, they won't watch those movies. So forgiveness of old movies is very much an important question.

[Greywind]

23 minutes ago, Sundog said:

 

Well, first, you're conflating recognizing an action or trend and agreeing with it. My acknowledgement that something exists does not in any way form an endorsement or positive promotion of that thing.

 

And second, you're confusing an attempt to destroy the past with a refusal to acknowledge aspects of the past. The latter is entirely a mental thing, and certainly does not require sledgehammers.

 

 

Not at all. Both tend to be denials of the past. The past is there to learn from.

 

Black face is considered racist. Meanwhile, white face can be considered comedy. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381707/?ref_=nm_knf_i1

 

Now, older motion pictures, while containing content that can be considered questionable by today's standards, they are still art. And refusing to allow them to be shown, citing those questionable aspects, is, in effect, taking a sledgehammer to them.

 

Those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

[Greywind]

11 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

 

The most peculiar things are coming out of left field these days...

 

That's because they rarely cut the weeds back there.

[Ragitsu]

Cinephiles, Sundog. Cinephiles ?.

[Sundog]

Acknowledged.?

[Sundog]

8 minutes ago, Greywind said:

 

Not at all. Both tend to be denials of the past. The past is there to learn from.

 

Black face is considered racist. Meanwhile, white face can be considered comedy. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381707/?ref_=nm_knf_i1

 

Now, older motion pictures, while containing content that can be considered questionable by today's standards, they are still art. And refusing to allow them to be shown, citing those questionable aspects, is, in effect, taking a sledgehammer to them.

 

Those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

 

Yet, history has, and continues to be, a litany of instances wherin the current actor proved incapable of learning from the past, even in the case where we are quite certain he knew of it.

[Cassandra]

It's not the movies, it's the people who made the movies.

[Ragitsu]

31 minutes ago, Cassandra said:

It's not the movies, it's the people who made the movies.

 

What are you getting at?

[Starlord]

It means that IF there had been a Highlander 2 I would forgive Highlander 2, but not the people who made Highlander 2.  Fortunately that movie doesn't exist.

[Greywind]

Wasn't there a porn parody by that title?