The Big Picture: Relics

[DSQ]

A good point well made there.

Mailbag question:
I recall that way back when you reviewed the first Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes film you mentioned that you hadn't seen any of the BBCs modern-day Sherlock series. I was wondering if you have seen any or all of the 6 TV-Film "episodes" since then and, if so, what your thoughts are on the modern day retelling and the series production as a whole.

Aaaand you just asked my question. Next series starts filming early 2013, it's gonna be a long wait~ ;A;

OT: Very well put Bob, people forget how powerful language and the arts can be in shaping how we think of other cultures, other counrties and other 'races'.

Since you said TV is something you don't know about I won't ask you about Downton Abbey even if I dearly want to, I would like you opion on adaptions and the increase of the overt adaption in film and TV these days.

In the past when adapting a book or a play filmmakers would be, most of the time, more coy about their sources and sometimes audiences would only find out it was a loose adaption in the credits, but now adaptions shout to the rooftops they are adaptions even if they know that many fans of the orginal will never be pleased and that staying to close to the soruce can mean the film can't be as artisic (in the way only films can) as they would like to be.

Is it just about money and publicity? Or has somthing happened in the studios that have ment that the bosses just won't bet on a unknown property?

 

[Something Amyss]

Interesting timing on this episode. Just yesterday, my father sent me information on the prevalence of the "monster" (in loose terms) in America and how expectations of monsters in the new world shaped early colonial beliefs about the Native population of the Americas.

It's not exactly the same, but it does sort of mirror the logic going on here. Just...Backwards.

The Temple of Doom was easily always my least favorite out of all three Indiana Jones movies.
Because there were only three
ONLY THREE.

Uggh. that reminds me, did you see that ridiculous fan film where he fights aliens? I think it's called the Rise and Fall of Indiana Jones and the Spiders From Mars.

Sadly, no Bowie.

 

[Something Amyss]

Actually im not sure this is/was the case. Thing is the people who lived near these ruins or in the same area at least had nothing similar themselves. It may well be logical to think that the locals might not have been responsible as if they were why would they have subsequently abandoned them for seemingly worse conditions. I dont know if this was the case because i aint studied it but i dont think its fair to say that it was blatant racism which brought these things about. Not saying it wasnt or that the locals werent responsible just sayinf that it isnt fair to say that was the reason without explanation of where these ruins did infact come from. Also considering these ruins usually are the handy work of locals in the stories, if they are made by people, means it might not infact be as racist as depicted. There was racism going on and it was pretty terrible but I just see holes in this.

Of course, you're trying to retcon history by applying today's filters to things.

 

[RaffB]

Good Episode as Normal


Question:

What one Comic/Book/Film/Random Hallucination would you like made/remade into a film?

Personally, I want a decent film version of Hellblazer. The Constantine film with Keanu Reeves was OK, but seem to lack the feel of the comics..

 

[daxterx2005]

interesting information.
Thanks bob

 

[Ukomba]

Probably had less to do with the decedents being black and more to do with the decedents appearing to be more primitive than the people who built the ruins originally. The same thing happened with American ruins like the Mayans. Since the existing culture seems to be a step backwards from the older culture it makes people wonder what happened. This isn't a racial thing. There are ancient lost cities discovered in places like China and India, but since the culture there was as or more advanced than the ruins no one questioned their origins. Of course since the cultures in America and Africa were more primitive and looked down uppon it likely did color the line of reasoning going forwards.

 

[XDravond]

Very good episode quite obvious but still good and, I admit, I've thought "who built this" (about ruins etc.) but now realize I shouldn't be asking the question that way. I should ask (because it's that part that interests me..) "why did the people who built this abandon it and where did they go?"
Almost same question but so very different answers...

For the mailbox:
Do you read books(non comics...), and if you do what kind and/or authors?
And how can so many really bad movies get funding (like Uwe Bols...)?

 

[maconlon439]

Bob, I admired your stance that Star Wars Episode 1 was merely average bordering on bad instead of the "Worst Thing Ever" a lot of people claim it to be. I think that too is a victim of what I called the Ghostbusters 2 effect in other posts in these forums.

So my mailbag question is what Sequels/Prequels/Adaptations have received the most undeserved hate from fans?

 

[anian]

I'm sorry, but I think this episode totally missed the target. It just looking into things too much. Or to put it in net speak and to show my stress: "WTH!?" and "This is bull!"
How the hell did this thought process come to be!?

Sure racism was present, but seriously look at it from the perspective of coming to an exotic uncharted lands (or poorly charted) and having no clue about the history of the place but you see a bunch of nomads and (let's face it, and this I'm not using as a insulting term) primitive agricultural tribes - would you expect to find a big lost stone city? The hell you would.
In for example Europe, there are ruins, but there are also contemporary buildings on a massive scale, in southern and central Africa not so much (at least not at those times).
I guess thinking Acropolis in Athens or the Pyramids in Egypt are amazing work and I still find it hard to understand how they did it way back then...then that makes me a racist?

And with all that, the whole of Europe shows that history of a civilization is not always consistent in progress - for example the knowledge from the ancient cultures was even lost until renesansse and such. Cultures disappear all the time, the only problem (and mistake) would be to think there wasn't something before the current dominant culture that is seen - that does not make you a freaking racist.
Some times it is a whole different culture. You have to assume if there's a big city a few miles from you, all tangled in bushes, but you live in a hut, that you probably don't even know the city is there or are not occupying because of some other reason, it does however imply that you are not directly connected to it - does that mean you culture got more advanced or not, not really important, it points to being a change in your culture for sure.

The authors you mentioned wrote stories about "lost civilizations" and "lost cities" as much as on Mars or somewhere else. Thing is it's UNKNOWN and EXOTIC. And what is it to a regular person living in North American and European cultures? Well Africa and South and Central America and Eastern Asia. Most have never been there and the cultures are really different.
They didn't talk about lost cities (unless underground I guess) in Europe, because people knew what was in Europe, Europe was charted and explored and familiar.
Besides that, those were basically adventure and fantasy novels, that's not really racism, though there is I guess racism in their writings.

Of course, you're trying to retcon history by applying today's filters to things.

And Bob was not? He actually said it himself racism was just there in those times.

 

[VZLANemesis]

Sadly at this point in history it was an assumption held by colonialists that Africa had no history.

Here's the thing though... When you find a civilization much inferior to your own, and later you find something far more advanced right next to them, why would you assume its made by them. Confusingly worded, but here's my point:

Small villages in africa and "subdeveloped" tribes and shit, make their houses of mud and tree branches and such, if you find buildings made out of stone and with much better architecture/stability and size, why would you ever assume it was made by them. A culture deciding to go backwards in technology is not the norm and as such that thought would completely be illogical.

Anybody care to discuss this?

 

[teebeeohh]

when i hear lost city i think of either
a) Atlantis
b) incan/mayan ruins in south america.
and even when i picture the people who lived in those places in my head they always have the skin colour i would consider dominant in that region
seems like i have been successfully unplugged from my racist cultural heritage, THANKS MUM AND DAD

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Well said, Bob. Those are the kinds of things you really don't think about...

As for questions, um... all I got is "What do you think of the 'My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic'" craze?

Though anything involving cliche fantasy tropes and what writers can do to spice them up would be good...

EDIT: How about the new DCU? Or even your favorite South Park Episodes?

 

[maninahat]

Nice video, and all very true.

An excellent example of anti-African architectural ignorance: reader, name a World famous African building that wasn't made by Egypt.

What if I told you that the chief contender for the biggest structure in the World was African? The wall of Benin is five times longer than the great wall of China, yet the odds are, you've never heard of it. The alarming thing is that few have, specifically because British Colonists knocked it down for the sole purpose of "punishing" the state.

Not only did we stereotype Africans as primitives, we forcefully manufactured that stereotype by destroying evidence to the contrary. What a legacy.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

@Spot1990, well, there's tons of evidence of ruins throughout Europe that people lived in hovels next to. Anyhow, there is a prolonged historical argument that happened from around 1800 to 1950 about the origins of Inca and Aztec ruins that exhibits this sense of racism. You can read through letters of white historians saying there is no way these locals could have built such wonders. However, I am not so sure the transition to pop-culture icons such as turn of the century adventure writing and the Indiana Jones movies is real. If I am searching for a "Lost City", wouldn't it be more fun if I had to go somewhere exotic to find it rather than my back yard?

Yeah as I said, it's not the best reasoning in the world. But people said the same kinda stuff about Newgrange here in Ireland. They didn't think we could have built it because based on our technology and culture at the time they didn't think we knew our arses from our elbows. It wasn't simply because "Irish people are stupid" they just couldn't see any evidence that Irish people of the time could've done something like that and by that logic more ancient Irish people certainly couldn't have.

Spot, I think you asked a good question. "We know their outlook was highly racist, but can we prove this specifically is a manifestation of that racism?" I don't know the answer to that, but I do have a guess: most likely. I'm a history major, and I've perused endless primary sources from many time periods. Take it from me- people don't hold that shit back. Or if they do, it's very, very new. We really don't need to psychoanalyze any 19th century historians. If they thought black Africans lacked the capacity to construct sophisticated structures, they probably just fucking said so.

Like I said, I don't actually know the answer to your question. But experience tells me you will probably find it in very plain bold language.

 

[Aerowaves]

Imagine how much it blew the minds of the Christian conquistadores to find fully living, breathing, functioning civilisations in South America that still worshipped a whole host of gods and who, in turn, were very much aware of the legacy left to them by still older, vanished, civilisations.

Also in terms of popular "culture" the concept of the Lost City is far older; see the already mentioned El Dorado in South America and the lost civilisation of the Christian king Prester John holding court somewhere in the wilderness of Africa/Asia that was fairly well-propagated as early as the Middle Ages.

I recognise the overall point of the video but I don't see how it follows. The Lost City, at least as I've always understood it, speaks to a hidden native nobility untouched by the excesses of the West and is not inherently "racist" so to speak, at least not how we'd understand it nowadays.

It is however, perhaps, inextricably bound up with the innately racial concept of the "other", which pre-dates the colonialist era and is probably, as Bob says, going to stick around for a hell of a long time.

 

[Gigano]

Sadly at this point in history it was an assumption held by colonialists that Africa had no history.

Here's the thing though... When you find a civilization much inferior to your own, and later you find something far more advanced right next to them, why would you assume its made by them. Confusingly worded, but here's my point:

Small villages in africa and "subdeveloped" tribes and shit, make their houses of mud and tree branches and such, if you find buildings made out of stone and with much better architecture/stability and size, why would you ever assume it was made by them. A culture deciding to go backwards in technology is not the norm and as such that thought would completely be illogical.

Anybody care to discuss this?

Well, the Europeans kind of had a precedent to understand this on, in the form of the rise and fall of the Roman empire. They only needed to look to the ancient aqueducts and the Colosseum in Italy, then look to the millennium between the years 500 - 1500 to see how far a society can fall from such a cultural stage.

Of course, since unlike the Italians the people they encountered elsewhere had no written history to speak of, and generally didn't live at the site of the ruins either, there was nothing to actually link them to these ruins. And their culture was even less advanced than the Italian one had been at any point, making the gap even wider.

Combine this with a pre-existing cultural fascination of "lost cities" dating back to the myths of Atlantis (...and arguably a pre-existing fascination with the strong Christian imagery of societies suddenly being wiped out as well, such as Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, and just the whole Flood thing), and they'd be quite likely to engage in such speculation; Absent any motive of racism.

It's pretty surprising that Bob mentions Atlantis - so well ingrained in our culture that he himself unconsciously links it with "lost city" - without pausing for a second to ponder whether that myth might've been the primary motivation for these fantasies when coming upon unknown ruins from a distant past. But I guess that'd kind of undermine his whole crusade against the racism he can apparently find everywhere.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

"move beyond it"

You mean by droning on about antiquated relics so as to draw attention to its existence?

I find this swath of social outcry about as predictable and impractical as the movie reviews.

Yeah dwelling on the past because it was part of the past because some minor degree of it still holds residual influence on the present really seems like the best way to "move beyond it" now doesnt it? Because every doctor will tell you the best way to heal a flesh wound is to periodically rip off the scab to remind you the wound is still there and see how much it has healed since the last time you checked, amirite?

This is not being socially progressive. This psuedo intellectualism actually stunts social progression because it is indirectly perpetuating ignorance to inflate ones self esteem unjustly about how socially progressive they are In focusing on an incredibly narrow view and remaining completely oblivious to the big pictures existence. In essence Faux enlightenment. Its becoming so common now that im starting to think that its generation defining.

It's pretty surprising that Bob mentions Atlantis - so well ingrained in our culture that he himself unconsciously links it with "lost city" - without pausing for a second to ponder whether that myth might've been the primary motivation for these fantasies when coming upon unknown ruins from a distant past. But I guess that'd kind of undermine his whole crusade against the racism he can apparently find everywhere.

I think you two have missed the point of what he's trying to say. He's not condemning modern culture for continuing to make films and stories based on a trope that was originally grounded in racism. He's pointing out how the racist attitudes of the past are still ingrained so deeply into human culture in ways that we don't even notice anymore. Another example might be the Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemimah brands in American grocery stores. Are any of these things bad? No. He said so himself. His point was that culture doesn't just rewrite itself from scratch every time people realize their attitudes about some issue were wrong all this time.

 

[orangeapples]

What was interesting, because whe you mentioned the idea of lost cities, my mind went to the Central and Southern Americas because because they have still standing castles and monuments...

So is that a case where my not reading has made me more open minded? Because here reading was a product of and a device to spread ignorance...

 

[T.rue]

Why ist the "Ancient Prophecy comes true"-theme so often used in fiction since it never happens in real life.

 

[Shadow_Kid]

The first thing that came to my mind was New York,

I guess my question is why do movies like to show New York city desroyed ?