French block airlift of British troops to Basra

Stephen Harding wrote:
William Black wrote:


"Stephen Harding" wrote in message


Just like both sides of the
English civil war never doubted they were British.

I would doubt that any of them, with the possible exception of the king,
considered themselves anything but English, Scottish or Irish.

The idea of 'Britain' as a nation wasn't actually around to any extent then.


Yes of course you are correct.

I'm displaying my lack of conciseness in reference to a blur of references
available to people who live in "The British Isles" and Britain in particular.

So many terms to choose from, yet so many mistakes to be made in historical
and geographic context.



This is actually a matter of quite some debate among scholars.

"Whereas originally the name Cymry seems to have shared the same
British'/`Welsh' ambiguity of Britannia, Britones and so forth, by the
late eleventh century it is likely that Cymry was used solely to denote
the Welsh' and `Wales', being distinguished more clearly from the qually
long-established terms Brython and Prydain, which denoted `Britons' and
"Britain' respectively.(108) One could perhaps go further and argue that
the change in Latin terminology both reflected and helped to reinforce
an increasing assumption on the part of Welsh literati of a need to
distinguish more sharply between the twin elements in national identity,
namely, between a British dimension which defined the Welsh in relation
to the past and the future and, on the other hand, a Welsh dimension
which linked them to a specific territorial space in the present.(109)

British or Welsh? National Identity in Twelfth-Century Wales(*).

Author/s: Huw Pryce
Issue: Sept, 2001

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m02...?term=medieval

Vince

On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 07:45:30 -0400, Stephen Harding
wrote:

I don't deem anti-Americanism as offensive. I doubt many Americans do.
Disappointing to be certain coming from some sectors, but hardly offensive.

That's fine: you are free to draw the line wherever you want. If you
feel no emotional response to hostile and antagonistic prejudices
being expressed towards your nationality, that's fine. For you.

Meanwhile it's not up to you to define whether or not I should find
the same being expressed towards my nationality or culture offensive.
When it comes to it, I would personally listen to an American when it
came to defining or discerning what was offensive to an American - I
wouldn't just airily assert that it wasn't a problem in my own opinion
as if that closed the issue.

Anyone can be offended if they choose to. In fact, it's now quite popular
to be offended these days. Part of the culture of victimology in general.

I note your snippage of another such example of "victimology".

There are times to be offended and times to simply not like something and
brush it off as inaccuracies or propaganda or whatever.

When those inaccuracies are systematic, repeated and prevalent I feel
that that the basis for those inaccuracies and their acceptability
should be questioned.

Getting all bent
out of shape on the content of a Hollywood movie seems a waste of emotion
to me.

But as you say, it's your emotion, so expend it as you see fit.

Indeed I shall.

As I stated, it's a pile of ****, relying on the exploitation of
prejudice to entertain. Strangely enough, being on the sharp end of
that prejudice isn't particularly entertaining for some people.

Oh please! If the Patriot represents the "sharp end" of prejudice against
UK, then consider yourself fortunate you didn't live in the 18/19th centuries
when it more closely matched current anti-American sentiments.

Actually, the closest parallel would be in Northern Ireland, where
entrenched prejudice drives similar Manichean historical
interpretations centering one matters of national identity, colonial
occupation and suchforth. That's an extreme, but it indicates the
dangers that can follow the unthinking perpetration of such ancieint
prejudices in modern culture.

Meanwhile, we're all fortunate we don't live in the 18th/19th
centuries for a veriety of practical reasons, not least that childhood
mortality would see most of the contributors to this group dead or
burned at the stake for heresy and so on ad infinitum. Pulling the
frame of reference back to any historical period might well discount
many contemporary things by comparison, but that doesn't do much to
explain why a plot treatment that would be acceptable or laudable two
centuries ago is regarded as acceptable or laudable in a movie _now_.

You're not going to give it any points whatsoever are you.

Not after "Braveheart", but then I actually have to live in the
country that Randall Wallace and Mel Gibson liked to inflame
nationalist prejudice in. I am aware of the consequences of it. They
can fly back to Hollywood.

Robin Hood must be a very conflicted movie watching experience for you.
Who to side with?

Easy answer: nobody. Maybe you should move away from this automatic
emotional need to identify with one agency in an adversarial conflict.

Robin Hood easily makes fools of the English noble
establishment.

Depends if the version of the myth being peddled has Robin as ye true
heir of Loxley or whatever, and thus places him as a righteous aristo.
Even if you want to pursue the Anglophobic angle, there isn't much
mileage in that from the Walter Scott-inspired approach where Robin is
an expressly English hero. Still, there might be something in there
in regard to the misunderstood popular antagonisim towards the
altruistic policies of an Anglo-Norman Francophone aristocratic elite.

I suppose having Good King Richard come home to make
things right would be a nice touch, but then, wouldn't that be promotion
of a myth?

Yep. Actually, on this theme there have been some more diverse
perspectives beyond the traditional Errol Flynn versus darstardly
Basil Rathbone (oh, those authentic English baddies!) - see "Robin and
Marian" with Sean Connery and Robert Shaw for an example.

The key issue for any of these hinges upon the representational
importance. The further back, generally the more these things become
straightforward myth with less political significance. For example,
the history I learned at school didn't even mention Richard I. The
Robin Hood myths were literature, not a historical narrative about the
formation of national identity (although that's where "Braveheart"
comes in with all the same problems as "The Patriot"). The myths of
the American revolution, however, are fundamental to American
self-image and the definition of American culture and society in a
manner that nobody can claim for Robin Hood in the UK.

People go to the movies to be entertained, not educated.

It's not a question of education. There's no reason a film which
avoids such gratuitous stereotypes and ahistorical distortions has to
be worthy, dull and boring.

Current Hollywood thinking seems to dictate otherwise.

Current Hollywood thinking is the problem.

And given Hollywood
is driven by the box office, a lot of movie goers seem to have no real
problem with it.

Hollywood is constrained by political censorship (e.g. the moral code
of the studio era, the tapdancing around or straightforward evasion of
inter-racial relationships in the current context) almost as much as
it is driven by the profit motive. Mel Gibson movies have enjoyed
plenty of success without Anglophobic posturing and antagonistic
historical distortion (actually, I rate "Force Z" as pretty good,
personally).

I see the Patriot as by and large, an action hero type of movie, set in
Revolutionary War times, with a composite character based on some historical
fact, and events [selectively] also out of history. Nothing more. No UK
bashing (surveys have shown consistently over quite a long period of time
that Americans like the British in fact more than the British like Americans).

You may not see the UK-bashing, indeed the studio scriptwriters and
producer's probably don't see it as an issue because they don't
discern it. But your lack of sensitiveity towards it doesn't mean
that it doesn't exist. The same dynamics apply towards the treatment
of Indians and blacks that I have previously referred to: these have
been modified over time, for whatever reason, but they weren't
initially perpetrated as a specific, deliberate agenda. The prejudice
involved is one of ignorance and habitual stereotyping, a passive
preconditioning and generally not one of active agency. I'll bet
nobody even raised the question of which side Marion (or whatever
Gibson's character was actually called in the movie) was on in the
production discussions. I'd be prepared to bet money that the de
facto assumption that he was never going to be a loyalist guerilla
never even needed to be articulated. It would all have been
unquestioned.

Don't know Mel Gibson's politics, but I think it would be a rare American
who has absolutely no time or interest or generally good feelings toward
the British (Irish Americans probably excepted for obvious reasons).

I'm not concerned with what he does away from the screen,
particularly, merely that he and Randall Wallace in two of their most
recent and most successful productions, have distorted history in
accordance with Anglophobic prejudice.

If you want
to brush up on the intricacies of Revolutionary War history, even Ken
Burns isn't going to do it fully right. You need to read a lot of books.

It's not a question of the minutae, it's a question about the most
basic and fundamental approach taken. Why did Mel Gibson make a
propaganda movie about a conflict when ended two centuries ago?

As stated above. It wasn't an anti-British "propaganda" movie.

It most certainly was. It wasn't about a loyalist patriot, was it?
It was about a guerilla hero in a stuggle of national liberation
against British tyranny. All of that requires some very specific
positioning or taking of sides.

It was
an action-hero genre movie set in revolutionary times, requiring no more
believability than "The Terminator" or other films of the genre.

It assumed a specific historical background, and exploited and
refflected popular historical understanding of that historical
background. "The Terminator" was a science-ficiton movie, with no
pretence at a real-life historical locus. Thus I'm not berating
sci-fi movies for this tendency, but am in fact criticising a movie
which does claim a historical basis.

The "Patriot" was simply a *movie*. It wasn't the gumint preparing for
war against the UK by initiating a brainwashing campaign on its citizens,
who will now riot if war is not declared.

It was a movie which was designed to reinforce existing popular
historical mythology about the very origin and definition of the
American state, and what defines you as an American. I'm sick and
tired of that depending upon the demonisation of the other nationality
involved.

Then the action hero genre of film simply isn't for you.

Not all action hero films exploit the same prejudices, and thus I'm
not complaining about them at all as an entire class, am I? I note
your lack of response to my points in my previous post about the
extent to which I will tolerate stereotyping in such a movie, and
examples where I doubt anybody can claim such stereotyping is
distorted beyond any rational tolerance. Now, if you want to inhabit
the binary extremes to the exclusion of all else, I can apply the
straw man you've just thrown at me right back at you:

I assume your lack of public response means that you find "The Eternal
Jew" a good example of an entertaining movie with no problems of
distortion or prejudice to worry about?

Gavin Bailey

--

"Will Boogie Down For Food".- Sign held by Disco Stu outside the unemployment office.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised wrote:
The myths of the American revolution, however, are fundamental to American
self-image and the definition of American culture and society in a
manner that nobody can claim for Robin Hood in the UK.


I'm not so sure. (although, I agree about Robin Hood). I'm just back
from Glasgow. I stood in a crowded pub in Shawlands for the Scotland
Lithuania match and then the England Turkey match. Yes I know they are
drunken footy fans, but the invocation of anti-english mythology was
fascinating. When the Scots started suggesting that the Turks break
English necks I inquired as to the basis of the hostility. They were
mildly surprised that a Yank wouldn't "hate the buggers as much as we
do". When I mildly suggested compound fractures of the English legs
would be sufficient and that permanent paralysis was unnecessary, it was
simlply accepted that I didn't understand just how deep Scotland's
grievances ran. The mythology of Culloden was invoked, as well as more
recent events dealing tieh sporitng contests that I was not aware of.
IIRC Further discussion followed after bioremediation of flammable
ethanol, but I'm not sure we advanced the ball any further.

Vince

"Vince Brannigan" wrote in message
...


The Revolution Will Not Be Televised wrote:
The myths of the American revolution, however, are fundamental to
American
self-image and the definition of American culture and society in a
manner that nobody can claim for Robin Hood in the UK.


I'm not so sure. (although, I agree about Robin Hood). I'm just back
from Glasgow. I stood in a crowded pub in Shawlands for the Scotland
Lithuania match and then the England Turkey match. Yes I know they are
drunken footy fans, but the invocation of anti-english mythology was
fascinating. When the Scots started suggesting that the Turks break
English necks I inquired as to the basis of the hostility. They were
mildly surprised that a Yank wouldn't "hate the buggers as much as we
do". When I mildly suggested compound fractures of the English legs
would be sufficient and that permanent paralysis was unnecessary, it was
simlply accepted that I didn't understand just how deep Scotland's
grievances ran. The mythology of Culloden was invoked, as well as more
recent events dealing tieh sporitng contests that I was not aware of.
IIRC Further discussion followed after bioremediation of flammable
ethanol, but I'm not sure we advanced the ball any further.

Vince


The irony is the majority of the soldiers in the government army
at Culloden were lowland scots who hated the highlanders far
more than the English. It was they who committed most of the
atrocities after the battle.

Keith

On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 14:08:58 GMT, Vince Brannigan
wrote:

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised wrote:
The myths of the American revolution, however, are fundamental to American
self-image and the definition of American culture and society in a
manner that nobody can claim for Robin Hood in the UK.

I'm not so sure. (although, I agree about Robin Hood). I'm just back
from Glasgow. I stood in a crowded pub in Shawlands for the Scotland
Lithuania match

And for once we defeated the mighty Lithuanians.... [cough, choke]

All we have to do now is beat the Faroes again*. I'm scaling back my
delirium and I'm not even going to bother with fantasies about beating
the Dutch.

[* It has happened. Honest.]

and then the England Turkey match. Yes I know they are
drunken footy fans, but the invocation of anti-english mythology was
fascinating. When the Scots started suggesting that the Turks break
English necks I inquired as to the basis of the hostility. They were
mildly surprised that a Yank wouldn't "hate the buggers as much as we
do". When I mildly suggested compound fractures of the English legs
would be sufficient and that permanent paralysis was unnecessary, it was
simlply accepted that I didn't understand just how deep Scotland's
grievances ran. The mythology of Culloden was invoked, as well as more
recent events dealing tieh sporitng contests that I was not aware of.
IIRC Further discussion followed after bioremediation of flammable
ethanol, but I'm not sure we advanced the ball any further.

I'm entirely familiar with this, and it's one reason I find
"Braveheart" so objectionable (as I stated in the post you're
following up here). There's enough bigotry abroad in Scotland
already. Making propaganda movies that feed and inflame these
prejudices is _not_ a good idea. Robin Hood doesn't inhabit the same
nationalist narrative position in England as Wallace/Bruce do in
Scotland.

Having said that, I'd be the first to celebrate if the bigotry could
be directed in a more discriminating and proportionate fashion to
achieve a more popularly-acceptable result.

Like beheading David Beckham.

Gavin Bailey

--

"Will Boogie Down For Food".- Sign held by Disco Stu outside the unemployment office.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised wrote:

Anyone can be offended if they choose to. In fact, it's now quite popular
to be offended these days. Part of the culture of victimology in general.

I note your snippage of another such example of "victimology".

Again, you're reading too much into snippage. A long, way off topic diversion
in a long, off topic thread just means snippage is warranted.

If this means I've been anti-British, or ignoring some points you feel you've
scored, so be it.

I see clearly where you're coming from, simply don't agree with your
interpretation. You disagree with mine.

The fact that we haven't re-enacted the battle of Lexington is about as
good as can come of it. There's simply nothing more to be said, so I'll
just snip this thread altogether now.

I assume your lack of public response means that you find "The Eternal
Jew" a good example of an entertaining movie with no problems of
distortion or prejudice to worry about?

I'm not familiar with the movie, that's why I made no response concerning
it.

I *presume* this was some sort of anti-Jewish propaganda movie put out by
the Nazis pre-WWII?

If so, I don't think I could even be offended by that. It's so pure and
simple propaganda as to be humorous. I'm not Jewish, so perhaps once
again I'm simply displaying my insensitive nature. German, Japanese (WWII)
and even some clips of Communist Korean and Vietnam war movies I find
humorous rather than offensive.

I had a tough time growing up as a kid due to a physical handicap. I
was pretty ruthlessly made fun of, and that was aggravated by my father
being in the Air Force, so we moved every 2-3 years forcing me to reestablish
myself all over again in a "hostile" environment.

Perhaps as a result, the skin is just too thick. But I personally regard
the quality of being slow to take offense, or not being quick to see personal
slight as a very positive one.

Color me insensitive in that regard.


SMH

On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 15:33:35 +0100, "Keith Willshaw"
wrote:

The irony is the majority of the soldiers in the government army
at Culloden were lowland scots who hated the highlanders far
more than the English. It was they who committed most of the
atrocities after the battle.

Well, yes, the point is that Culloden needs to be seen as an episode
in Scottish history, and as an incident in an on-going Scottish civil
war as much or more than it was an example of the mythical English
oppression of Scotland in action. Not that we'll see a Hollywood
movie made about that, nor one about the heroic and victorious
struggle of the burgesses of Aberdeenshire to drive the westie rabble
and their tyrannical overlords from the sacred soil of the Garioch at
Harlaw in 1411: no English arch-devils to be demonised there, so it
just becomes invisible. Unlike the Culloden myth.

Shooting the ******** off the thieving teuchters was an entirely
legitimate patriotic duty in those days. Still should be, north of
the Mearns and Mounth.

Gavin Bailey

--

"Will Boogie Down For Food".- Sign held by Disco Stu outside the unemployment office.

Vince Brannigan wrote:

Stephen Harding wrote:
William Black wrote:

"Stephen Harding" wrote in message

Just like both sides of the
English civil war never doubted they were British.

I would doubt that any of them, with the possible exception of the king,
considered themselves anything but English, Scottish or Irish.

The idea of 'Britain' as a nation wasn't actually around to any extent then.

Yes of course you are correct.

I'm displaying my lack of conciseness in reference to a blur of references
available to people who live in "The British Isles" and Britain in particular.

So many terms to choose from, yet so many mistakes to be made in historical
and geographic context.

This is actually a matter of quite some debate among scholars.

"Whereas originally the name Cymry seems to have shared the same
British'/`Welsh' ambiguity of Britannia, Britones and so forth, by the
late eleventh century it is likely that Cymry was used solely to denote
the Welsh' and `Wales', being distinguished more clearly from the qually
long-established terms Brython and Prydain, which denoted `Britons' and
"Britain' respectively.(108) One could perhaps go further and argue that
the change in Latin terminology both reflected and helped to reinforce
an increasing assumption on the part of Welsh literati of a need to
distinguish more sharply between the twin elements in national identity,
namely, between a British dimension which defined the Welsh in relation
to the past and the future and, on the other hand, a Welsh dimension
which linked them to a specific territorial space in the present.(109)

British or Welsh? National Identity in Twelfth-Century Wales(*).

You're not helping me here Vince!


SMH

On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:56:12 -0400, Stephen Harding
wrote:

Again, you're reading too much into snippage. A long, way off topic diversion
in a long, off topic thread just means snippage is warranted.

Hey, at least I mentioned Force Z which had a submarine. And Japanese
badguys [who weren't played by English actors, suprisingly enough].

If this means I've been anti-British, or ignoring some points you feel you've
scored, so be it.

Actually, I wouldn't characterise your position as anti-British at
all. You're entitled to your opinion, and while I disagree with it, I
don't equate your reluctance to identify the unacceptability of
prejudiced elements in movies with a specific desire to push the
agenda involved in those prejudices.

I was interested to observe how far, if at all, you had considered the
perspective I was putting forth.

I see clearly where you're coming from, simply don't agree with your
interpretation. You disagree with mine.

The fact that we haven't re-enacted the battle of Lexington is about as
good as can come of it. There's simply nothing more to be said, so I'll
just snip this thread altogether now.

Fair enough. Although actually I'm sure your disagreement is germaine
to my actual criticisms of the films in question.

["The Eternal Jew"]

I'm not familiar with the movie, that's why I made no response concerning
it.

I *presume* this was some sort of anti-Jewish propaganda movie put out by
the Nazis pre-WWII?

Yes.

If so, I don't think I could even be offended by that. It's so pure and
simple propaganda as to be humorous.

If you can seperate the film from the context it was made in, then
that's understandable. In many ways the best antidote to such bigotry
is comedy, but then you don't seem to share the basic appreciation of
films as potential vehicles for such bigotry to start with. That's
not an attack, just an acknowledgement of difference.

I'm not Jewish, so perhaps once
again I'm simply displaying my insensitive nature.

No offence, but I'd listen to a Jew, and especially a central European
Jew when it came to defining the level of offence involved in that
movie.

I had a tough time growing up as a kid due to a physical handicap. I
was pretty ruthlessly made fun of, and that was aggravated by my father
being in the Air Force, so we moved every 2-3 years forcing me to reestablish
myself all over again in a "hostile" environment.

Perhaps as a result, the skin is just too thick. But I personally regard
the quality of being slow to take offense, or not being quick to see personal
slight as a very positive one.

Well, if I could think offhand of a movie that portrayed physically
handicapped children as unstable, violent and antisocial war criminals
I might wonder if you felt any offence.

Color me insensitive in that regard.

It's not that important if I think you're insensitive, what does
matter is if you consider yourself insensitive and whether or not this
amounts to a reasonably tolerable kind of insensitivity. I'd place
most films somewhere on a spectrum of offensiveness for various
reasons, but I would consider some to be so offensive that they
invalidated any entertainment to be derived from them, even parody or
comedy. That requires a sensibility towards their historic and
artiistic context. That sensibility allows me to overcome
objectionable elements in some movies much of the time (e.g. most
westerns) and enjoy them, but not in others.

If you don't share this approach and consider any film valid
entertainment regardless of the sociological or historical context,
you naturally won't share this appreciation.

Gavin Bailey

--

"Will Boogie Down For Food".- Sign held by Disco Stu outside the unemployment office.

On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 14:08:58 GMT, Vince Brannigan
wrote:

I'm just back from Glasgow.

Remission of sentence is a wonderful thing.

Gavin Bailey

--

"Will Boogie Down For Food".- Sign held by Disco Stu outside the unemployment office.