Thursday, November 21, 2019

Miss Cellania's Links

When Thanksgiving was a Fightin' Word. The holiday was a sticking point in the schism between the North and the South that developed leading up to the Civil War. (via Mental Floss)

Sweet Cat Walks Extra Slow To Stay Next To His Best Friend On Crutches. (via Fark)

A Calvinesque and Hobbesian Look at Impeachment. From Tom the Dancing Bug. 

Song of the South: the difficult legacy of Disney's most shocking movie.

Patients Missing One Brain Hemisphere Show Surprisingly Intact Neural Connections. (via Boing Boing)

The Flathead Beacon police blotter is a treasure trove of comedy. (Thanks, A different Carol!)

The economic debate over the minimum wage, explained. A higher wage does not reduce jobs because businesses are working with the minimum possible staff already.

Human Put in Suspended Animation for the First Time.

The Saga of the Cannibal Ants in a Soviet Nuclear Bunker. They inadvertently play out an illustration of heaven and hell.

A blast from the past (2012): 8 Thanksgiving Flowcharts.

6 comments:

Platoni said...

Thanks so much for the link on the ant colony in Poland. I had read about it a few years back when it was first revealed to the world. I would often think back on it. One of those dark situations we play out in our minds. Disturbing, but can't stop bringing it back for more. Like a portable horror movie.

I am glad they installed that high tech bridge to the outside world.

xoxoxoBruce said...

Scott Tobias interprets a lot of things From Song of the South, that are contradictory and clearly not obvious to everyone. "a wandering chorus singing traditional black songs", A group of farm laborers heading home at the end of the day, what would they sing, Freebird?

"Yet the rotten heart of Song of the South is the implication that such carefree days were easier to come by in the idealized world of the pre-civil war south." Where does it say this 1946 movie has anything to do with the pre-civil war south? Then the very next sentence... "Things are better for everyone, the film suggests, when men like Uncle Remus accept their subservience and benefit from the largesse of white plantation owners, even when they’re ostensibly free to leave at any time." Now we're after the civil war, but Tobias is making the assumption Uncle Remus is still on the plantation in 1946?

Sure, there are racial and cultural stereotypes in the movie, half of comedy is magnifying those stereotypes, Yakov Smirnoff for example.
Gone with the Wind is all stereotypes. Maybe those stereotypes should be reviewed so kids can understand why adults feel the way they do, rather than have the kids just mirror their parents prejudices.

Miss Cellania said...

Song of the South was released in 1946, but the story is set during Reconstruction, which was 1863-1877.

xoxoxoBruce said...

Where does it say that?

Miss Cellania said...

The only reference in the Guardian article is "Yet the worlds and themes of both reinforce a nostalgia for a plantation in the Reconstruction era, with its idyllic beauty and “bodacious” critters, its simple life lessons, and its harmonious racial hierarchies." Other sources say so explicity.
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2468463/song-of-the-south-the-story-behind-the-disney-movie-that-disappeared
https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/song-of-the-south-disney-you-must-remember-this/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_the_South

And the movie was based on the Uncle Remus stories of Joel Chandler Harris, who set them during Reconstruction.

xoxoxoBruce said...

OK, I stand corrected Uncle Remus is from 1886, however how many people watching the movie knew that. Disney has lifted plots and characters from a lot of folktales and children's fairy tales.