.......

[spot]

A society that plain refuses to distinguish between fact and fiction is a very sick society.

Did nobody notice that I didn't join the thread to criticize the OP? That I joined the thread to comment on the replies to the OP and made the obvious assumption that RG knew the image was faked, since she after all was the one who'd sourced it? My subsequent explosion was over her dismissive can't-be-bothered don't-care what's-the-difference posts, not the OP.

[Accountable]

spot;867962 wrote: A society that plain refuses to distinguish between fact and fiction is a very sick society.



Did nobody notice that I didn't join the thread to criticize the OP? That I joined the thread to comment on the replies to the OP and made the obvious assumption that RG knew the image was faked, since she after all was the one who'd sourced it? My subsequent explosion was over her dismissive can't-be-bothered don't-care what's-the-difference posts, not the OP.
Ficticious art makes statements in the real world. You lost me, Spot.

[minks]

Hmmm Like Sands Through The Hour Glass, These Are The Days Of Our Lives....

Wow I see now what I have missed over the past half a year:wah: you guys all still build a mean thread.

Well I think it's a thought provoking picture regardless of weather we take it as truth or not.... I wonder what mister clans man would do if they told him he needed a blood transfusion and one of the "aids" in the pic was the blood doner hmmmm

[spot]

"mister clans man" was an actor in a photo-shoot, he's not capable of having such thoughts, the actor isn't thinking like a Klansman, he's lying there wondering why they had to go to a fourth take. If you prefix it "what-if" then it might make sense. This entire thread has treated the OP as reportage for some reason. The event didn't happen. I'd maintain it's impossible for the event to have ever happened. Nobody's credulity has been remotely strained and it ought to have been.

[spot]

Jester;868613 wrote: I think you made a big deal out of nothing Spot. It does not matter to me whether the pic is true, to me it was an obvious fake of which I took immeidate notice. When I see something like that I take it for what it is at face value. Then try to surmise what folks think about it. The whole thread was presented as 'thought provoking', not that it was TRUTH in action. The comment you made about being dumbed down doesn't even come into play to me, obviously to you it did and you felt like saying something about it, which is fine and well to do, so, do it, its a dern forum and thats why we all come here, so post away. But like you've told me before don't be surprised if folks disagree.
We agree at least that what I brought up was a genuine point, then, and not a mere figment of my imagination. Some people distinguish between fact and fiction, that's been the historical position. Some don't, that seems to be the more recent way of looking at the world. Perhaps I'm fighting a rearguard action against this tendency toward discussing "celebs" as though they were real, or discussing TV soaps as though the action related to the actors as opposed to the script-writers, or discussing the news as though it were of the same material, on the same level of suffering, of the same importance, as the fictional component of entertainment. Some here say the fact or fiction aspect makes no difference to the way in which they react to the material.

I haven't a clue why you regard a forum as less real than other areas of life.

[spot]

Jester;868887 wrote: I know its happened in some emergency room somehwere, where a prejudice man was treated like everybody else by those who hes is prejudice against.It's happened far more often the other way about, of course, for far too many years that in so many emergency rooms victimised men, women and children were treated differently by a system designed to be prejudiced against them. That, to a large extent, is why I was so outraged by the saccharine image we started with. It's not just an insipid fiction, it's based on lying assumptions and ignores so much reality which shouldn't be ignored. None of that genuine reality is present in the image.

[spot]

Jester;869095 wrote: Presenting one side of it does not assume the other sides do not exist or havn't existed, it merely reflects on one aspect of it, or one side. No one stopped you from presenting this, it appears that some of us sensed you being indignant about it.

It was a point to start at, nothing more.


You live in a society which prefers its more comfortable fictions to the alternative of confronting reality. It's always tended that way but the tendency is reaching levels where all you have left as a national average is a deep ignorance both of history and of current events. The deliberate applied use of that advertising photo in the OP as a lie (by the person who trimmed off the context, not the original poster) typifies the fiction-telling.

[RedGlitter]

I couldn't help but wonder earlier today, how many human beings were violated, beaten, stabbed, shot, dying of starvation, etc, during the time that dumbass photo was getting people riled up? It seems ridiculous in the scheme of things. If you were really that concerned about the state of humanity as reflected by what is evidently a staged photo, then what did you do to help since this thread was created? Did you feed a hungry person? Did you teach a child how to read? Did you put in a good word for someone? Did you go visit a shut-in? It seems a lot of wasted effort to get riled over art when you could put your money where your mouth is and go do something productive..

Jester is correct. That does appear a total slam to the US. I notice I don't personally say anything about the UK for instance, don't believe I ever have here, but residents of the UK sure have something to say about my country in which they do not live. How quick they are to criticize. All Jester did was point that out in 25 words or less, where it would have taken me a paragraph to say the same thing. :wah:

[Chezzie]

hey RG, That guy on the gurney, did he make it :sneaky::D

[Accountable]

A Tale of Two Cities is a fictitious story, a lie. So it has no value. It imitates a real situation; it is staged. Let's pull all copies and shred them. We can recycle the paper and put it to better use than telling useless lies.

[G#Gill]

Jester;868887 wrote: I agree you have a valid point of discussion, I just think you came about it too heavy thats all. I run into the same problem in a way when I'm discussing religion with Ted, I take a story in the bible as truth as face value, he makes it total metaphor, he claims that the truth it teaches is valid regardless and I say it looses a lot of teahing power if its not truth.

I think the photo in question raises a point, but it would make a powerfull point if indeed it was true, however I know its happened in some emergency room somehwere, where a prejudice man was treated like everybody else by those who hes is prejudice against.

The forum (not sure where you got this impression but I'll comment) The forum is real, the folks are real, the passion is real, but the anonymity makes me step back a bit as to how much of it is really truth and how much is folks presenting a truth that they'd like to be. I had a very interesting discussion on another board with a bunch of army buds, all of which I knew in real life and served with at one time or another... three of the five buds presented themselves on the board as they saw themselves, not as they really were. I think the reality we see of folks on the board is altered somewhat, making it very difficult to read folks the way they really are. I feel compassion and empathy and joy and friendship with a number of persons here, but it lacks a real person, its still powerful in many ways and we do communicate, but there is a demension missing that prevents this from becoming fully real. The reality of this comes more into play when we see conflict on the board than anythign else, passions hit a high level but defusing that passion gets difficult becaseu we're all just using printed words, we cannot see the facial expression, gesturing, eye movement etc. It takes longer to get folks to understand when that element of reality is missing.


Good post, Jester.

[spot]

Does it occur to nobody that a work of fiction declares itself to be a work of fiction and can be treated as such, which allows something like a work by Dickens to be a valuable addition to any culture, while the author of this fraudulent crap deliberately disguised its fictional nature by trimming off the original declaration in order to deceive people? As an advert it's potentially intriguing. As a deliberate lie it should be pilloried. Worse than the lie is the state of mind that couldn't care less whether it's fact or fiction when discussing the "reaction" of the "Klansman" to the "medics".

[spot]

Trinity or Nobody, I'm not sure that it develops the thread to any meaningful extent. I thought we were having a discussion here and it turns out we're watching disruptive hecklers.

Accountable;869271 wrote: A Tale of Two Cities is a fictitious story, a lie. So it has no value. It imitates a real situation; it is staged. Let's pull all copies and shred them. We can recycle the paper and put it to better use than telling useless lies.Does it occur to nobody that a work of fiction declares itself to be a work of fiction and can be treated as such, which allows something like a work by Dickens to be a valuable addition to any culture, while the author of this fraudulent crap deliberately disguised its fictional nature by trimming off the original declaration in order to deceive people? As an advert it's potentially intriguing. As a deliberate lie it should be pilloried. Worse than the lie is the state of mind that couldn't care less whether it's fact or fiction when discussing the "reaction" of the "Klansman" to the "medics".

[spot]

Jester;869186 wrote: So.

Spot, thats exacty why you sometimes come across as 'holier than thou' in these conversations.

If you re-read what you just wrote you just slammed the USA again , calling us ignorant.

I totally disagree with your assumption of my society.


What I wrote was "You live in a society which prefers its more comfortable fictions to the alternative of confronting reality". I agree that the consequence is a general level of ignorance when it comes to historical truth.

I'll put a single example forward out of hundreds. If you don't like this one I'll be more than happy to provide alternatives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-571_%28f ... accuracies

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/773913.stm

Many miles away from Tinseltown the retelling of this epic has offended the locals of Horsforth in Leeds. They raised the £241,000 needed to build the Aubretia at a time when the average weekly wage was £3.

The local MP for Pudsey, Paul Trusswell, felt strongly enough about the film's rewrite of history that he wrote a letter to President Clinton in protest. He received a reply, in which the President acknowledged the role played by the people of Horsforth and tried to assure them that the movie was a work of fiction.

[Dewey2Me1MoThyme]

I think I saw the horse take a breath, whip it again

Dew

"Anything worth dewing is worth dewing well"

[spot]

I hadn't noticed that the thread had reached resolution, had you?

[spot]

Jester;869939 wrote: It's been recycled, its now a green thread five times over. Al would be proud.:wah:


You just won't engage, will you. I'm making a serious point, I've been making a serious point throughout this thread and you're in the delighted position of thinking your laughter will make my serious point simply disappear. You "totally disagree with your assumption of my society" but not to the extent of discussing my very valid accusations.

What I wrote was "You live in a society which prefers its more comfortable fictions to the alternative of confronting reality". I agree that the consequence is a general level of ignorance when it comes to historical truth.

I'll put a single example forward out of hundreds. If you don't like this one I'll be more than happy to provide alternatives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-571_%28f ... accuracies

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/773913.stm

Many miles away from Tinseltown the retelling of this epic has offended the locals of Horsforth in Leeds. They raised the £241,000 needed to build the Aubretia at a time when the average weekly wage was £3.

The local MP for Pudsey, Paul Trusswell, felt strongly enough about the film's rewrite of history that he wrote a letter to President Clinton in protest. He received a reply, in which the President acknowledged the role played by the people of Horsforth and tried to assure them that the movie was a work of fiction.

[YZGI]

Spot, if it's ok I will ask you a question.



Are you suggesting that only the U.S. has historical inaccuracies in media or the arts? i.e Movies, plays etc. etc.



I suspect not.



I heard from the the beginning that the Movie U-571 was an historical event fictionalized in the movie. It was made clear from the beginning that it was not an historical account. How does that make the U.S. ignorant? We know it was not an actual historical account. Thats what documentaries are for.

[spot]

I'll try to find an equivalent report for the USA but at the moment I've just finished reading one for the UK. I hate to say it but I've been wetting myself. This really is serious face-to-face interviews with genuine Brits for serious reasons and it's pitiful.

Anyway - first, the U-571 bit before you get the chance to wet yourself in turn.

The detractors of the survey's findings blamed Hollywood and television, which have gained a reputation for skewing historical events to fit audience profiles and lift profit margins. he film U-571, starring Harvey Keitel and Jon Bon Jovi, sparked fury in Britain four years ago when it told how American servicemen altered the course of the Second World War by capturing the Enigma code machine from a German U-boat. In fact, it was British and Canadian sailors who captured the machine in May 1941, before the US had entered the war.Okay? What I was complaining about, others complained about. It's not just me.

Now for the evidence of the consequences of this bastard Hollywood attitude on real people's minds - the Disneyfication of the planet. Read it and weep.The Independent, April 5, 2004

1066 AND ALL THAT: HOW HOLLYWOOD IS GIVING BRITAIN A FALSE SENSE OF HISTORY

The Battle of Hastings never took place and Adolf Hitler is a fictional character. Robin Hood really existed, Harold Wilson saved Britain during the Second World War and Conan the Barbarian is a bona fide figure from early Nordic history. It might sound like the latest attempt by revisionist extremists to pervert the past but the reality is perhaps more disturbing: this is how a significant chunk of the British population, muddled by Hollywood films and unmoved by academia, sees history.

A survey of the historical knowledge of the average adult, to be published this week, has uncovered "absurd and depressing" areas of ignorance about past events, and confusion between characters from films and historical figures. Researchers, who conducted face-to-face interviews with more than 2,000 people, found that almost a third of the population thinks the Cold War was not real and 6 per cent believe The War of the Worlds, H G Wells's fictional account of a Martian invasion, did happen. Some 57 per cent think King Arthur existed and 5 per cent accept that Conan the Barbarian, the warrior played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in a 1982 film, used to stalk the planet for real. Almost one in two believe William Wallace, the 13th-century Scottish resistance leader played by Mel Gibson in his film Braveheart, was invented for the silver screen. The study raised new questions about the teaching of history after it found that 11 per cent of the British population believed Hitler did not exist and 9 per cent said Winston Churchill was fictional. A further 33 per cent believed Mussolini was not a real historical figure.

Lord Janner of Braunstone, the chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: "Such findings show that in our schools we are not conveying sufficiently the recent past - a past in which many of us lived and so many people died. "If we are to prevent the return of Hitlerism in our present or future, we have to know what happened in the lifetimes of so many of us. It is a terrible indictment of the level of knowledge of the general population."

The detractors of the survey's findings blamed Hollywood and television, which have gained a reputation for skewing historical events to fit audience profiles and lift profit margins. The film U-571, starring Harvey Keitel and Jon Bon Jovi, sparked fury in Britain four years ago when it told how American servicemen altered the course of the Second World War by capturing the Enigma code machine from a German U-boat. In fact, it was British and Canadian sailors who captured the machine in May 1941, before the US had entered the war.

The survey of 2,069 adults aged 16 or over was conducted for Blenheim Palace to mark the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Blenheim.

Some 27 per cent of people interviewed thought Robin Hood, whose story has been featured in films by directors such as Kevin Costner and Mel Brooks, existed whereas 42 per cent believed Mel Gibson's Braveheart was an invention. More than 60 thought the Battle of Helms Deep in the Lord of the Rings trilogy actually took place.

Michael Wood, the historian, said the "dumbing-down" trend was damaging people's knowledge of the past. He said: "If you don't give an audience a clear idea of how we know things, I believe this is a problem. Hollywood distorts history the whole time and once you get that far down the line it's not history, it's entertainment. History is there to give value to the present as well as to entertain. You do diminish it if you take the mickey out of it in an attempt to make it accessible'."

More than a quarter of people do not know in which century the Great War took place and 57 per cent believe that the Battle of the Bulge, the Nazi counter-offensive in the Ardennes in 1945, never happened. A further 53 per cent think the military leader who lead British troops at Waterloo was Lord Nelson whereas a quarter think the admiral's fatal triumph at the Battle of Trafalgar did not take place. Nearly one in five believe Harold Wilson, not Winston Churchill, was Prime Minister during the Second World War. John Hoy, the chief executive of Blenheim Palace, said history had become boring. He said: "People associate history with dry and dusty dates and facts. Once they realise that history is about people, the way we used to live and the way we live now, it becomes more relevant and more exciting."

Others pointed to the popularity of history programmes. Francis Robinson, the senior vice principal of Royal Holloway, University of London, said the delivery of history to a wider audience was a worthy goal. He said: "I have no problem with using different media to get across the message to different sections of the audience. There is always a chance of misrepresentation, but you have to weigh up that against the broader good of encouraging more people's interest." But Andrew Roberts, the right-wing historian, said: "We have abandoned the teaching of history according to dates and context - if you don't know that the Tudors came before the Stuarts then you can't understand anything of that period. Within a generation we are going to lose our national memory and for Britain, which has such a unique and complex history, that is a complete tragedy."

STRANGER THAN FICTION: DISRAELI, HITLER AND THE COLD WAR

Real people that some believe never existed

Ethelred the Unready King of England 978 to 1016 - 63 per cent

William Wallace 13th-century Scottish hero - 42 per cent

Benjamin Disraeli Prime minister and founder of the modern Tory party - 40 per cent

Genghis Khan, Mongol conqueror - 38 per cent

Benito Mussolini, Fascist dictator, 33 per cent

Adolf Hitler - 11 per cent

Winston Churchill - 9 per cent

Real events some people believe never took place

Battle of the Bulge 52 per cent

Battle of Little Big Horn Scene of Custer's last stand - 48 per cent

Hundred Years' War 44 per cent

Cold War - 32 per cent

Battle of Hastings - 15 per cent

Fictional characters who we believe were real

King Arthur, mythical monarch of the Round Table - 57 per cent

Robin Hood (left) - 27 per cent

Conan the Barbarian - 5 per cent

Richard Sharpe, fictional cad and warrior - 3 per cent

Edmund Blackadder - 1 per cent

Xena Warrior Princess - 1 per cent

Fictional events that we believe did take place

War of the Worlds, Martian invasion - 6 per cent

Battle of Helms Deep, Rings Trilogy - The Two Towers - 3 per cent

Battle of Endor, The Return of the Jedi - 2 per cent

Planet of the Apes, the apes rule Earth - 1 per cent

Battlestar Galactica, the defeat of humanity by cyborgs - 1 per cent

[K.Snyder]

Surely you see one as being nothing more than an attempt to make more money many can never get enough of?...

But equally I understand the lack of consideration the film makers have shown in regards to the men and/or women who lost their lives in the events they so portray...