TV/Movies Megathread

[Valmy]

Just for the record: imperialist colonization and victimization of indigenous populations happens outside of the Americas and South Africa. I'm sure you'll agree that China is an imperialist power oppressing indigenous populations, for example.

Well certainly. But after centuries it gets a little more complicated. Maybe the Hungarians showed up in some location hundreds of years after some Slovaks did and maybe they did so as part of some conquering tribe but after all this time I don't think those Slovaks have any particular special claim to the land that those Hungarians don't have.

I was only using South Africa as an example, anyway not saying it was the only place.

[Josquius]

It's commonly done, but stretching colonialism to Europe always sits dodgy with me. That was a very different sort of empire building.
Or is Yorkshire in London's imperialist thrall?

[Duque de Bragança]

The colonialism angle has been a staple of regionalist/nationalist militants in Brittany, Corsica or the Basque country, around here for quite a while.

[Sheilbh]

It's commonly done, but stretching colonialism to Europe always sits dodgy with me. That was a very different sort of empire building.
Or is Yorkshire in London's imperialist thrall?

It depends where you look though. Ireland was definitely a colonial experiment - there were plantations, there are the famous walls of Derry which was the model for British forts in North America (guns pointing at the hostile native hinterland).

I also think there are some parallels with, say, the Sami or Russian empire-building and aspects of European colonialism/imperialism.

I don't think that a focus on "indigenous" communities or European global imperialism is necessarily the right lense for understanding that but I think there is stuff to understand in Europe too. I think Jake's reference to China is interesting and probably relevant because I think there examples of policies that are not a million miles away from taking over areas and sort of "Han-isation" in Europe. It's not like European global imperialism, but it's not a million miles away from various styles of Eurasian empires?

[crazy canuck]

Yeah the US discourse shapes ours (and I think the US is ahead of us on lots of these issues) - so BIPOC has been used a few times in the UK, for example by Hackney Council, until someone pointed out that "indigenous" has very different and far more racist connotations here

Indigenous is a very important concept over here in this hemisphere...but a very shitty one over in Africa/Asia/Europe (except outside of some very specific colonized places like maybe South Africa). Quickly it boils down to which nationalist group has special rights over their enemies, which is not really how that term is intended to be used.

"We are indigenous to this land while these immigrants are evil colonizers"

Yeah ok.

Well, indigenous is used to identify the group to be protected from the colonizer - see UNDRIP

https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html

More evil nationalism! 

I don't understand your comment.

[Josquius]

It's commonly done, but stretching colonialism to Europe always sits dodgy with me. That was a very different sort of empire building.
Or is Yorkshire in London's imperialist thrall?

It depends where you look though. Ireland was definitely a colonial experiment - there were plantations, there are the famous walls of Derry which was the model for British forts in North America (guns pointing at the hostile native hinterland).

I also think there are some parallels with, say, the Sami or Russian empire-building and aspects of European colonialism/imperialism.

I don't think that a focus on "indigenous" communities or European global imperialism is necessarily the right lense for understanding that but I think there is stuff to understand in Europe too. I think Jake's reference to China is interesting and probably relevant because I think there examples of policies that are not a million miles away from taking over areas and sort of "Han-isation" in Europe. It's not like European global imperialism, but it's not a million miles away from various styles of Eurasian empires?

To be honest Ireland is the main example where I see it and it annoys me to no end.
To say there were parallels between the plantations and colonialism- yep, totally valid. Same too for example with the Habsburgs in the Balkans et al.
But all the stuff about Ireland as England's first colony and all that... just no. Ireland was solidly part of the European system. The history there was far longer and more complex than the simple evil England decides to colonise its smaller neighbour that the nationalists would have the world believe.
It particularly irks me with the way they will count the pre-plantation invaders descendants quite happily as Irish whilst anyone who came after, even generations later, isn't.... unless they are successful in nice ways of course. Oscar Wilde is Irish, the men of the Protestant Ascendancy weren't.
A pox on the houses of all nationalists.

[Oexmelin]

But all the stuff about Ireland as England's first colony and all that... just no.

Actually, quite yes. The Ireland plantations are basically where England experiments with the practice, vocabulary and concepts of colonization they will use in the Americas. It's also where it will re-implement some of its later evolution, from Virginia and the Bahamas notably. This is pretty well established, historically. Problems arise when people conflate say, 19th-century imperialism (African and Asian colonies) with 17th-century settler colonialism - or when they conflate racialized slavery with indentured servitude.

[Sheilbh]

It particularly irks me with the way they will count the pre-plantation invaders descendants quite happily as Irish whilst anyone who came after, even generations later, isn't.... unless they are successful in nice ways of course. Oscar Wilde is Irish, the men of the Protestant Ascendancy weren't.

They were very different. The pre-plantation invaders broadly became part of Irish society - the Fitzgeralds etc adopt Irish language, law, customs, they patronise the monks and poets and other parts of Irish culture and there was intermarriage between the Normans and the local Irish nobility. Crucially of couse, they tend to stay Catholic after the Reformation.

It's a totally different thing from the Protestant ascendancy, the Plantations and the New English.

You know, Edmund Spenser is a writer of early colonialism about this who explicitly says (unlike the Old English) that Ireland needs to be civilised and his examples of Irish backwardness are exactly the law and customs that the Old English participated in. He is probably the first colonial author and was, appropriately, the great poet who celebrates Elizabeth I (in a text sponsored by Walter Raleigh). Ireland is there at the start of the English colonial moment. It's not an imposition of the present to see the links - they were links that were being made by participants in the late 16th/early 17th century.

Actually, quite yes. The Ireland plantations are basically where England experiments with the practice, vocabulary and concepts of colonization they will use in the Americas. It's also where it will re-implement some of its later evolution, from Virginia and the Bahamas notably. This is pretty well established, historically. Problems arise when people conflate say, 19th-century imperialism (African and Asian colonies) with 17th-century settler colonialism - or when they conflate racialized slavery with indentured servitude.

Yes absolutely especially around slavery. I was listening to an Irish podcast where they recently covered that meme which isn't really a thing in Ireland, as much as it is with Irish-Americans because it is so contemporary and political. They spoke with an African-American historian of slavery and an Irish person who had shared the meme, then realised and took it down. But it was really interesting to hear those perspectives.

[Malthus]

I have been watching a lot of TV lately ...   

[viper37]

I have been watching a lot of TV lately ...   

It's funny how much time do spend you have when you leave online medias and Languish aside!

[Barrister]

I know it will not be of much interest to the audience here, but I though I'd give a shout-out to the animated series Hilda, on Netflix.

Hilda was delightful.

You caused me to google it - apparently there will be a season 2 in 2020.

So, is Alfur your favorite character?  How about you, Malthus?



Hilda was a great deal of fun; thanks for the recommendation.

Malthus, Sav, and anyone else:

Hilda Season 2 is out. 

[Malthus]

I know it will not be of much interest to the audience here, but I though I'd give a shout-out to the animated series Hilda, on Netflix.

Hilda was delightful.

You caused me to google it - apparently there will be a season 2 in 2020.

So, is Alfur your favorite character?  How about you, Malthus?



Hilda was a great deal of fun; thanks for the recommendation.

Malthus, Sav, and anyone else:

Hilda Season 2 is out. 

I binged it. 😀

[spoiler]It ends on quite the cliffhanger! [/spoiler]

[FunkMonk]

Can't Get You Out Of My Head. Adam Curtis docs are always a trip. 

[Sheilbh]

Can't Get You Out Of My Head. Adam Curtis docs are always a trip. 

They are all the same film - but I love them

[Savonarola]

I watched a series of cartoons by Winsor McCay.  His most famous one, Gertie the Dinosaur, was done before there were cells, so he hired a neighborhood kid to redraw the background over and over on rice paper (something like 2400 times).  This causes the background to jump around a bit as the cartoon progresses.  Gertie seems to possess weight and moves like a living creature, plus McCay manages to give her personality.  None of the cartoons of the era could do that, the world would have to wait for Walt Disney to pick up where McCay started.

McCay had a vaudeville act and had a couple comic strips (Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend and The Slumbers of Little Nemo); so he could only work on cartoons during his free times.  His other major cartoon, 'The Sinking of the Lusitania" took him 22 months to complete.  He had started shortly after the Lusitania had been sunk; by the time he finished the United States had entered the First World War, so it did remain timely propaganda.