The way I analogize to 1800s abolitionism in the US is to ask people how society feels about veganism today. Not as a strict moral equivalence but for the level of ambivalence, mockery, and outright disdain toward freeing a group society broadly considers chattel.
Comment on What are examples of anachronisms you've seen from movies depicting historical settings?
Eq0@literature.cafe 17 hours ago
Something that constantly grinds my gears is (main) characters being anti-slavery while the slave trade is up and running in the historical context. I assure you: most people were pro-slave or didn’t care. Being anti-slavery was an extreme political opinion and wouldn’t be considered small talk.
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Eq0@literature.cafe 16 hours ago
That’s my rough equivalence as well!
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 17 hours ago
Highly context dependent, I guess, but the South seceded just because Lincoln was elected, even though he explicitly said he wasn’t going to end slavery, so enough people must have been talking about it to spook the slavers.
?
Eq0@literature.cafe 17 hours ago
Yeah, in that context it would make sense, I’m mostly talking about media where it’s just dropped in to show the good morals of the character, while having no consequences of meaning outside of that
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
Yeah, but that’s kind of just how people are. I bitch about stuff all the time, but I don’t do shit about it.
The type of person who would go to Kansas or Spain are always in the minority.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 13 hours ago
This is one of the things that makes me fucking adore the Temeraire series: the protagonist has a father who is staunchly abolitionist and yet the protagonist himself doesn’t really think about it at all, until quite a bit later in the series when he starts realizing that slavery isn’t just some theoretical thing in “the colonies”.
Meanwhile the dragon protagonist goes “um, isn’t that absolutely horrifying? am i missing something here??” when he learns about the existence of slavery
NightOps@nord.pub 17 hours ago
That reminds me of a war movie I’ve watched, when Josh Hartnett’s character said “I think WWII has just started” during the attack on Pearl Harbor. In reality, people would just call consider it a “war” (referring to the European theater) or “Jap invasion of America” marking the US entry into the conflict (the term WWII was not coined yet until after).
betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Reminds me of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s dying words: “I’ve been shot! Time for the First World War.”
Anchorxiety@reddthat.com 17 hours ago
I would pay good money to see that line uttered in a movie about the incident. Or just have characters constantly state the obvious like the audience had never heard of WW1 before.
"Gentlemen, Germany has invaded France. By God, this could become a multi year war of attrition and thousands could die!”
betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Make it a musical and I’m in.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 17 hours ago
My kid’s second grade class did a short version of All Quiet on the Western Front that bizarrely included the line
Eq0@literature.cafe 17 hours ago
Hilarious talking about WWII before the end of the conflict! At the time, WWI was called “the Great War”, surely not “part I” of anything
NightOps@nord.pub 17 hours ago
There’s another anachronism from that movie around 34 minutes in: you can literally see the USS Arizona memorial in the background as pictured and circled below: hGXgAE8SiDqgAn9.png It’s a nitpicky detail Michael Bay left in the final cut, since that wasn’t built until 1962 (After the war!).
wjrii@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
I understand that the movie is quite awful, and I haven’t seen it. Is this shot worse in motion, or did they consistently try to hide it with the handrails? If the latter, it’s not really all that bad for on-location shot.