Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Double Standard
Is there a double-standard for pirates? We rail against the Somali pirates, yet we glamorize the pirates of the East Indies. Or is it just the Disney-fied Captain Jack Sparrow pirates of old? For reasons I can't quite figure out, the Somali pirates bug me to no end. And yet, if you were to compare the two, the pirates these days treat their captors really well because they know it leads to bigger payouts. The pirates of old didn't. But I suppose The East Indian Trading Company was The Man, so we cheer because they were fighting The Man. But now I guess the rest of the collective free world is The Man?
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2 comments:
IMHO, we tend to glamorize and romanticize the past...as graphically (and I do mean graphically) illustrated by the pure shock and awe that seemed to be the universal response - regardless of the politics or religious standpoint from ANYONE I personally have heard of - after watching "The Passion of the Christ".
Think about it - cowboys shooting off their .45s on main street? Or shooting one another's hats off - ridiculous! A .45 caliber slug is a MASSIVE chuck of lead that taken in the torso at point-blank range will pick up a 6', 220lb full grown man and SLAM him to the ground like he was hit by a locomotive. Or remove limbs, shatter shoulders or hips beyond repair. You didn't take one in the wing, flip your gun to your weak hand, and shoot the dirty rascal in the heart for a poignant death scene. There's a reason the US Marines moved to the .45 as a handgun during the Pacific Island campaigns of WWII - the Mori warriors were HUGE men; and the .38s were simply ineffective against them.
After the interior carnage that would certainly ensue after the ball o' lead passed through a few vital organs on it's high-velocity tour of the saloon, chances are it would find at least one or more victims before finally coming to rest; "gunfights" were pretty dang short, I'm willing to bet.
Or take knights in shining armor - what do you think the physicality would be like, taking the point of a lance pretty much anywhere at "steed speed"...I can't imagine the results were anything like Hollywood would have us believe.
I think the human mind tends to work that way; whether as a defense mechanism or otherwise, we tend to remember the good, forget the bad, and even reshape that stuff into something palatable for later consumption.
Why is Cap'n Jack cool and Somali pirates are bad? Because we're living with the Somali's! How much you wanna bet that a hundred years from now, in the remake (released in media format we can't even imagine now), CJS will even BE a Somali?
;)
IMHO, we tend to glamorize and romanticize the past...as graphically (and I do mean graphically) illustrated by the pure shock and awe that seemed to be the universal response - regardless of the politics or religious standpoint from ANYONE I personally have heard of - after watching "The Passion of the Christ".
Think about it - cowboys shooting off their .45s on main street? Or shooting one another's hats off - ridiculous! A .45 caliber slug is a MASSIVE chuck of lead that taken in the torso at point-blank range will pick up a 6', 220lb full grown man and SLAM him to the ground like he was hit by a locomotive. Or remove limbs, shatter shoulders or hips beyond repair. You didn't take one in the wing, flip your gun to your weak hand, and shoot the dirty rascal in the heart for a poignant death scene. There's a reason the US Marines moved to the .45 as a handgun during the Pacific Island campaigns of WWII - the Mori warriors were HUGE men; and the .38s were simply ineffective against them.
After the interior carnage that would certainly ensue after the ball o' lead passed through a few vital organs on it's high-velocity tour of the saloon, chances are it would find at least one or more victims before finally coming to rest; "gunfights" were pretty dang short, I'm willing to bet.
Or take knights in shining armor - what do you think the physicality would be like, taking the point of a lance pretty much anywhere at "steed speed"...I can't imagine the results were anything like Hollywood would have us believe.
I think the human mind tends to work that way; whether as a defense mechanism or otherwise, we tend to remember the good, forget the bad, and even reshape that stuff into something palatable for later consumption.
Why is Cap'n Jack cool and Somali pirates are bad? Because we're living with the Somali's! How much you wanna bet that a hundred years from now, in the remake (released in media format we can't even imagine now), CJS will even BE a Somali?
;)
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