The Big Picture: Relics

XDravond

Something something....
Mar 30, 2011
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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

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Nov 16, 2011
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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

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Sep 10, 2008
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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.


Zachary Amaranth said:
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

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Jan 29, 2009
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Vault Citizen said:
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

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Jun 17, 2009
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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

I am a banana!
Sep 11, 2009
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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

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Nov 8, 2007
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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

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May 24, 2008
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Spot1990 said:
grigjd3 said:
@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

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Sep 10, 2009
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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

Whose Eyes Are Those Eyes?
Oct 15, 2009
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VZLANemesis said:
Vault Citizen said:
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

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Mar 30, 2009
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viranimus said:
"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.
Imperator_DK said:
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

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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

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Mar 13, 2012
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Why ist the "Ancient Prophecy comes true"-theme so often used in fiction since it never happens in real life.
 

Shadow_Kid

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Jan 5, 2009
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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 ?
 

Creatural

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Nov 19, 2009
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First, Bob this was an excellent video and I'm glad you put it up. I do wish though you had talked about something with more relevance to today and how racism still affects people, like how black students in almost every country still do badly on IQ tests because of a racist bias that states black people aren't smart and it's been reinforced in these kids' minds. Fortunately, these same kids will do better on IQ tests as soon as it gets pointed out to them that some of that racist thinking might still be hiding in their brains somewhere so it's a fairly easy fix.

Second, everyone who keeps bringing up the point of "well, if you had seen huts and didn't see people living in castles wouldn't you assume that these people were primitive too?" I'm sorry, but your point doesn't really stand here. Firstly, there's an assumption already here stating that things Europeans have had (castles) are better than huts and that's not always true. In fact, most huts were better to live in than some of those castles because the air flow was better and castles had to stay in one place where as with huts and similar housing you could move with greater ease and this is a huge advantage in most of Africa. I don't know if most people are aware of this, but there are a lot of crops you can't grow in certain parts of Africa that actually stick around, so it makes it dangerous to try and stay in just one place to live your whole life because you don't have a guaranteed steady food supply. The places that did crop up as castles had things growing there in the past, as well as certain animals there, that weren't necessarily doing as well as they were then and those civilizations used to have a lot of trade to rely on that they later didn't have.

Had the explorers just bothered to ask some of the natives there they would have gotten some of these stories from them, but that would also have required them to have believed them and not dismiss them automatically based on their race, which most of them did. The racism also didn't just come from people thinking that oh these huts aren't like our houses so they must be inferior (though that is unfortunately part of it because colonists from anywhere tended to assume that if a civilization was different from their own it meant it was inferior), you have to keep in mind part of the racist movement from this time period unfortunately came from people making some creepy interpretations from their bibles. People literally thought at one point that people with darker skin were descendants of Cain (the first murderer in history according to that text, just in case someone doesn't know that). This is only one small part of that though, there were people also using evolution (in the later proper time periods - the lost civilization thing kept being a thing for awhile sadly) to also say that hey people with darker skin are inferior to those with lighter skin. This primarily came up though because these people again thought the group they were already part of was the best one (so a French person would think they're better than non-French people as would and English person think that only the English were superior) and with their superiority they thought they could either help those "under" them or use those same people to make themselves better and further their own evolution.

Also, everyone who is saying that the behavior of the people living in Africa was also savage and should give reason to the explorers to believe they were inferior needs to step back and examine themselves really closely. You're firstly assuming that all groups of African people behaved the same, they didn't, and secondly you're also saying that the more acceptable behavior of people for that time was that of the explorers. The explorers regularly did horrific things to the native people there and to their own people and implying that they were somehow more well behaved than all of the diverse cultures in Africa is not that great of an idea, that can make you racist and it also ignores how differently groups of people there actually behaved. Can we just not give into that type of thinking anymore?
 

ReiverCorrupter

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Jun 4, 2010
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Baresark said:
This is one of the most level headed assessments of what racism is/was that I have ever heard a voice say (besides the one's in my head). So many things are racist and based on racism that have nothing at all to do with any sort of negative connotation that it outright gives me a headache when this subject is brought up. For instance, take affirmative action. It is racist in the sense that it's a social movement that defines some people of a certain race (or gender or backround or religion) as more deserving of something based on that very thing. And how about this, if you are positively racist about a person then you are by extension negatively racist about other people who are not like them.
Pretty much. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_University_of_California_v._Bakke

Affirmative action is the laziest and most unfair way to try to correct social inequality. A capitalist society is a meritocracy. Academia is a meritocracy. Meritocracy is a good thing, it means that the person who is most qualified and most likely to be successful gets the job. The problem with affirmative action is that it gives the position to less qualified people, and by doing so you're taking the position away from someone who is more qualified. The funniest part about it is that it has quickly turned into a bragging rights competition over who has the most diverse staff/student body. Another major problem with affirmative action that we've seen is that sadly students from underprivileged inner-city communities are often completely unprepared for college and flunk out.

The answer isn't at the collegiate level. By then it's pretty much too late. The answer is to fix the broken primary school system so that everyone, no matter what their ethnic or socioeconomic background, has access to an education that will prepare them for college. But the American people just don't want to foot the bill.
 

_Russell_

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Jan 5, 2009
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Question for MovieBob
What?s your favourite comic story arc?

Asking what your favourite comic is seems a bit bland, so your most liked story arc or character development? And can you explain it in detail?
Or if not your favourite then an interesting or unique story arc/character development?

I?ve never really got into comics but I?m always been interested in and entertained by the ?COMICS ARE WEIRD? episodes, I?d like to see more of them. :D
 

Mr. Omega

ANTI-LIFE JUSTIFIES MY HATE!
Jul 1, 2010
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A trio of questions:

1: What are your thoughts on the 3DS eShop and Club Nintendo?

2: What is your biggest concern for the WiiU?

3: Can you think of a series (any medium) where nostalgia has actually been a liability for it?
 

machinemade

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Apr 29, 2010
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Norway's most well known cartoonist (Frode Øverli) was accused of racism because he did a comic strip about cannibals. He later went on record saying that there was no racial intention behind it and that he drew them that way because it is a well known cliché/stereotype/parody like Santa, Dracula and werewolves (meaning fictional characters).
This is the strip in question:

http://gfx.dagbladet.no/labrador/197/197571/19757111/jpg/active/x978.jpg

What do you guys think?