White Man's Burden

[Jon]

No, this is not a thread about white supremacy. In fact it is the opposite. It is the title of a film I saw some time ago that gave me an insight into racism that was not perceivable beforehand. The film has a clever angle, where White's are the underclass and Black's are the wealthy. They flipped the roles. What struck me about it was that I just could not see things from the Black perspective until they were reversed to the White perspective. It is not due to blind ignorance on my part. I can intellectualise what racism is. Instead, it was about the subtle nature of how you feel the injustice.

The film doesn't have great reviews on IMDB, but I do encourage you to watch it if you wish to get better insight into something so hard to see. And, it has John Travolta in it after all!

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114928/?ref_=tt_urv

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Having John Travolta in it doesn't guarantee a good movie. What was that sci-fi flick from a few years ago? Battlefield: Earth (which was an L. Ron Hubbard story adaptation), I think.

 

[Jon]

Yes of course, I as being facetious. Ron Hubbard was a nutter.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

While it isn't quite the same, there is a parallel in the movie Avatar, which I consider to be an absolute work of art. There, the plundering and pillage nature of Man is explored. It isn't comfortable. But if you put the "White Man's Burden" in context, one could say that the real issue is that Man does not care whom or what he plunders, including other people.

 

[Jon]

Humans are prone to violence. I read that before they considered culture to be a big influence. But then they studied chimpanzees and found they patrolled their borders and ripped apart any other chimps in the vicinity. We are tribal by nature, not nurture. Perhaps.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

There is NO DOUBT that we inherited tribal nature as part of our evolution, in that any trespasser in our pre-human environment was likely there to raid the group, perhaps take the children, certainly take the food. Animals herd because of protection. An isolated lion sometimes gets a straggler from the herbivore herd but sometimes the lion gets trampled, so being herd-minded or group-minded isn't limited to hominid ancestry. Look at wolves. They gather in packs and hunt just like groups of lions will form a pride for hunting. Heck, you could argue that the medieval practice of droit du seigneur is part of "alpha male" herd behavior.

 

[Bee]

Heck, you could argue that the medieval practice of droit du seigneur is part of "alpha male" herd behavior.

You could. But that's only half the story. The fact is, that women were seen as chattels and so droit du seigneur, while it may have been on the one hand an alpha-male asserting his power over the herd, it was actually about first rights to claiming property.

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

Having John Travolta in it doesn't guarantee a good movie. What was that sci-fi flick from a few years ago? Battlefield: Earth (which was an L. Ron Hubbard story adaptation), I think.

I thought it was a fantastic film the first time I watched it, and then I spoke to people about it, and they told me it was a bad film, I was puzzled until I watched it again!

I will say I thought John Travolta was very good in it.

I brought the book because of the film, that was very good.