When did Americans start cheering for the robber-barons?

[Count Chocula]

When I took my son to see Avatar, I thought to myself: "It's 'The Last of the Mohicans.' In spaaaace. With Gaia FOR REALZ!1!1!" The evil corporation meme, as DW noted, goes way back; since I'm not a fan of megacorps having worked for a couple of them, that really didn't bother me. I don't think they're evil, but working for one's like working for the DMV. Cameron's not the first name that comes into my head when I think of complex, relevant storylines anyway and I didn't expect it going into the movie.

However, and me being me you knew there was a however, I was disappointed at the one-dimensional evil! EVIL! EEEEVVVIIILLL! portrayal of the megacorp in the best Alien or Resident Evil tradition. The portrayal of the bad guys was every bit as nuanced (meaning not at all) as the mining company owner in Pale Rider (or was it Unforgiven? I forget). I don't watch Fox enough to have seen any of their commentary on the movie, but I'm guessing their ire was directed at that one-dimensional quality of the villain megacorp.

What really chapped my hide and put a burr under my saddle about the film, was the whole Earth-mother-the-world-is-God-we-can-learn-so-MUCH!-from-these-noble-savages meme. Cliche, cliche, cliche, so 1960s/New Age mystic it was a joke. And not even remotely close to accurate. Rather than just hate the movie for its vapid plot line, I chose to interpret it as an object lesson in the fate of bullies, no matter the playground.

And the special effects, I must admit, were awesome.

[Alyrium Denryle]

What really chapped my hide and put a burr under my saddle about the film, was the whole Earth-mother-the-world-is-God-we-can-learn-so-MUCH!-from-these-noble-savages meme. Cliche, cliche, cliche, so 1960s/New Age mystic it was a joke. And not even remotely close to accurate. Rather than just hate the movie for its vapid plot line, I chose to interpret it as an object lesson in the fate of bullies, no matter the playground.

Well to be fair, in this case they really could learn a lot from the noble savages.

However, and me being me you knew there was a however, I was disappointed at the one-dimensional evil! EVIL! EEEEVVVIIILLL! portrayal of the megacorp in the best Alien or Resident Evil tradition. The portrayal of the bad guys was every bit as nuanced (meaning not at all) as the mining company owner in Pale Rider (or was it Unforgiven? I forget). I don't watch Fox enough to have seen any of their commentary on the movie, but I'm guessing their ire was directed at that one-dimensional quality of the villain megacorp.

No... it was literally the usual "this movie is anti-capitalist and thus anti-american blah blah why do they hate soldiers?" crap.

But honestly, do you think the bean counters at a corporate office, given what we see in the behavior of large corporations now, would think for a second about strip-mining an inhabited planet bare provided they could get away with it?

Individuals can be nuanced, but an organization with each individual in it diffusing the perceived moral responsibility of the other cannot be, and are in fact legally obligated not to be. If they can use a legal means to deliver max profit to shareholders, they are obligated to do so. In this case it meant raping an inhabited world.

Could the individuals have been more nuanced? Sure. On the other hand we have problems still with human beings of different skin tone and treating them equally, how realistic do you think the chances are of the average person not being a bigot toward a being that is not even human?

It is perfectly realistic to have someone rationalize the competing need to keep one's job with the moral obligations they have toward other beings by rejecting the moral obligations. Rationalizing it as "they are just savages". It has happened throughout history and there is no reason to suspect that it will ever changes if we go in to space and meet some less advanced sentient beings that have something we want.

[The Yosemite Bear]

pale rider was the one with the evil mining corp/robber baron and his hired gun slaughter everybody sheriff gunmen vs. Bounty Hunter turned Preacher that rides off into the wilderness ala SHANE.

Unforgiven was the former outlaw kills currupt lawmen and bartenders for the whores.

[K. A. Pital]

Had it been known well in advance that the Nazis really would set up death camps and use industrial techniques to kill Jews as fast as possible... that would have shocked a lot of people.

Hitler and other Nazis made open proclamations to the effect of "annihilating the Jews" in some of their speeches, IIRC, but at the time nobody paid attention.

[Ritterin Sophia]

I was disappointed at the one-dimensional evil! EVIL! EEEEVVVIIILLL! portrayal of the megacorp in the best Alien or Resident Evil tradition.

When you're talking about corporate exploitation of a populace it tends to be rather one-dimensional.

[Simon_Jester]

Had it been known well in advance that the Nazis really would set up death camps and use industrial techniques to kill Jews as fast as possible... that would have shocked a lot of people.

Hitler and other Nazis made open proclamations to the effect of "annihilating the Jews" in some of their speeches, IIRC, but at the time nobody paid attention.

Yes. But if someone says they'll do something in a speech and you don't believe them, you don't know they're going to do it.

What I'm getting at is that if it had been known, not just rumbled about at a handful of political rallies, but known, what the Nazis were going to do, in its full scope... a significant number of people would have had more of a problem with that. Even people who didn't object all that much to localized pogroms, deportation, and the like might hesitate at the idea of slaughtering the entire ethnicity down to the babes in their cradles.

Some of them, anyway.

[Thanas]

Politicians all around of that era were casually advocating mass slaughter, for example Churchill and Teddy Roosevelt. It was simply not a great deal that time.

[Simon_Jester]

Thanas, the following is a straight question, because I think I might genuinely be missing something:

I know quite well that, as you say, Churchill advocated mass slaughter of enemy civilians. I believe it of Theodore Roosevelt, though I do not know it to be true; I'm guessing it was in reference to the Philippines, or possibly the Plains Indians in his youth.

However, I do not know of cases before the Third Reich where any nation undertook to systematically eradicate an entire ethnic group numbering in the hundreds of thousands or millions. Kill the adults and reeducate the children, incorporating them into the conqueror's own hierarchy, yes. Starve and marginalize the defeated group down to a pitiful, impoverished remnant of their former selves, yes. But complete destruction from start to finish? I am not familiar with any case of that being a planned government policy.

And before you reply, I know of cases where ethnic groups were destroyed- the Tasmanians and certain tribes of the Native Americans come to mind. However, this was normally the result of small scale actions, with a lot of individual killers involved. Government policy didn't stop them, and often encouraged them, but I didn't think it demanded or organized the final destruction.

I am also well aware of genocide campaigns that took place before the Second World War: the Armenian genocide, any number of campaigns by America and various European powers in the Americas, Australia, and Africa, and so on. These were usually government-led and organized, but were seldom pursued to completion: some Armenians were left alive, the surviving Indians and Aborigines were usually forced onto reservations, and so on.

But I had thought it was relatively rare for governments to actively pursue the aim of destroying an ethnic group, starting with large-scale actions against thousands of people and pursued down to the deliberate massacre of the last survivors.

Am I wrong?

[K. A. Pital]

No, you're right, but what Thanas said actually supports your point - Hitler's rethoric was not that different from Churchill's, for example. The difference became clear when it came to acting on those words.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. When someone like Churchill said "exterminate the brutes*," I'd expect him to mean "go in, kill the vast majority of the military age males, drive them from their homes, destroy the homes, probably killing a noticeable fraction of the noncombatants in the process, then leave." Something on the order of what a British punitive expedition in Afghanistan might have done (he accompanied one such in his youth).

And that's hideous filth, something that says a lot of very bad things about the era in my opinion. But at the stark, bare minimum, the wounds it leaves behind can eventually heal. Acts like that generally don't scour a whole race of people from the face of the Earth. And no, that's not an excuse for doing them; it's just an upper bound on the sheer amount of evil involved.

*I don't know if he actually said those specific words; I'm giving it as an example.
________

But when Hitler said "exterminate the brutes," he actually MEANT it; it wasn't just shorthand for "do enough damage that they play no role in our affairs for the next ten or twenty years." He wanted to be rid of them all, and if he couldn't drive them away on the cheap he'd outright kill them, down to the little old grandmothers and the children.

That's what people weren't expecting before the Holocaust. That's the difference between the kind of mass slaughter advocated by Churchill, TR, and their contemporaries and the kind advocated by Hitler- or at least the kind carried out by Hitler. There have been other leaders who did that sort of thing, but not many.

[Sean Mulligan]

The fact that Avatar is doing so well at the box office, shows that most Americans would rather cheer for the little guy then the robber baron.

[Ritterin Sophia]

The fact that Avatar is doing so well at the box office, shows that most Americans would rather cheer for the little guy then the robber baron.

Coming from a state that has made a reputation as being made up of the proverbial lowest common denominator, most of them are really only there for A. Action Scenes and B. Love Scenes.