History - Blog Posts
i want to start immediate conflict MWAHAHAHA
Some dude in 2020: You should not judge a historical figure, a man from the past, by the modern ethics! He was a product of his time. 500 years ago his actions were completely normal! It’s present-ism, we can’t judge… bla-bla-bla…
People from 500 years ago: Oh my, this guy is such a bastard, a genocidal butcher, a total piece of garbage. Let’s keep records of this douche so people from the future shall hate him too.Â
it’s sort of funny that the current cultural idea of the flapper dates not from the 1920s, but the 1950s when costume designers took the radical, gender-fluid, sexual, sexually liberated ideas and fashions of the 20s and made them sexy. as in sexual objectifying.
because 1950s and fuck female agency.
it’s interesting learning which homophobic ideas are confusing and unfamiliar to the next generation. for example, every once in a while i’ll see a post going around expressing tittering surprise at someone’s claim that gay men have hundreds of sexual partners in their lifetimes. while these posts often have a snappy comeback attached, they send a shiver down my spine because i remember when those claims were common, when you’d see them on the news or read them in your study bible. and they were deployed with a specific purpose — to convince you not just that gay men were disgusting and pathological, but that they deserved to die from AIDS. i saw another post laughing at the outlandish idea that gay men eroticize and worship death, but that too was a standard line, part and parcel of this propaganda with the goal of dehumanizing gay men as they died by the thousands with little intervention from mainstream society.
which is not to say that not knowing this is your fault, or that i don’t understand. i’ll never forget sitting in a classroom with my high school gsa, all five of us, watching a documentary on depictions of gay and bi people in media (off the straight and narrow [pdf transcript] — a worthwhile watch if your school library has it) when the narrator mentioned “the stereotype of the gay psycho killer.” we burst into giggles — how ridiculous! — then turned to our gay faculty advisors and saw their pale, pained faces as they told us “no, really. that was real” and we realized that what we’d been laughing at was the stuff of their lives.
it’s moving and inspiring to see a new generation of kids growing up without encountering these ideas. it’s a good thing. but at the same time, we have to pass on the knowledge of this pain, so we’re not caught unawares when those who hate us come back with the oldest tricks in the book.
One of my favourite bits of media history trivia is that back in the Elizabethan period, people used to publish unauthorised copies of plays by sending someone who was good with shorthand to discretely write down all of the play's dialogue while they watched it, then reconstructing the play by combining those notes with audience interviews to recover the stage directions; in some cases, these unauthorised copies are the only record of a given play that survives to the present day. It's one of my favourites for two reasons:
It demonstrates that piracy has always lay at the heart of media preservation; and
Imagine being the 1603 equivalent of the guy with the cell phone camera in the movie theatre, furtively scribbling down notes in a little book and hoping Shakespeare himself doesn't catch you.
I'm Compiling a List of Band of Bros Goofs/Edits/Etc
Feel free to contribute! No hate intended, it’s my favorite show after all.
1. Webster was never with Liebgott when Liebgott went on his little mission (with Speirs’ orders) to kill the German man in charge of the concentration camps. That was a guy named Moone, who indeed refused to shoot the guy.
2. Winters wasn’t exactly the super amazing, humble, quiet guy that was portrayed. I mean he was, but he wasn’t. In Winters’ own words, he could be arrogant sometimes and actually disliked Speirs (or, at least, strongly disliked how Speirs conducted himself at times), not that Winters still wasn’t absolutely fantastic. Everyone adored him.
3. Speaking of Speirs, Winters has said he actually had not been planning on Speirs to relieve Dike at Foy. When Winters turned to yell at someone, Speirs just happened to be there and Winters sent him on his way. Winters was prepared to literally just about send anyone.
4. Speaking of Dike, Dike wasn’t the terrible guy he was portrayed to be. I mean, he could be flaky, but he won the bronze star for rescuing three injured soldiers under heavy fire and another for leading the protecting of a road/pathway/bridge with a bunch of random men from various companies in Holland. At Foy, as he charged, he was shot in the shoulder and went into shock, freezing up, unable to do anything, probably because he was too busy thinking about how he almost died (a good leader would still, undoubtedly, move on).
5. Eugene Roe’s grandmother was not a faith healer, nor was he that gentle. The actual Roe was known to be a little more rough and tumble, but always dependable. The men loved him.
6. On D-Day, in Band of Brothers, it is portrayed that Guarnere shot down an entire German patrol, horses and all. This did not actually happen. Guarnere didn’t even have a gun, like Winters, until after the patrol was taken out.
7. John Hall does not land near Winters during D-Day. He joins up later at some point.
8. Winters actually did have a heavy Mennonite background (I feel as though it’s implied otherwise, though not explicitly stated)
9. In Holland, Winters never shot the kid who smiled at him. It was a full grown man, who did indeed smile at him. Winters also said, if he had seen the train scene beforehand, he would have told them to take it out. He wasn’t “affected in that way” by the killing he had to do.
10. Albert Blithe did not die of his wounds after episode 2. His family came out to say that he lived well afterward, but died of a stomach ulcer.
11. Joe Liebgott, though he did know German, was actually not a Jew.
12. When Webster is reunited with Easy Company after his injury, they were never cold to him. In fact, they were ecstatic to have him back and welcomed him with open arms. He was well-liked among the men.
I show you my brightest smile to wish you an happy new year !Â
Thank you so much for your support and kind words. It’s mean a lot for me !Â
May 2017 be a sweet and creative year !
Spontaneous trip to the British museum!!!
