Posted on 07/17/2015 7:36:20 AM PDT by Kaslin
Sure you don’t mean the “white whine” crowd?
The movie (with German dubbing) is frequently aired here in Germany - not that you would need that anymore.
Regards,
He may have been Gerald to his mother but he is Whorealdo to me
So, I have never read the book. I always seem to catch the last half of the movie when it is on broadcast stations and I quickly turn it off because someday I'd like to read it and see the whole movie.
All my other classes in high school were top notch.
You're so right. But your words won't penetrate the minds of leftists. They live in an unreal world. They're furious with anyone who dares to question their absurd fantasies in which they, themselves, are saintly Atticus Finches ... even if they're never done a genuinely heroic thing in their own lives.
Conservatives, to them, are all knuckle-dragging racists, because that's how we're unfailingly portrayed in popular culture. An unintentionally funny example of this was the tv show, "I'll fly away." My liberal mother-in-law used to insist on watching this drivel at family get-togethers. It was a shameless rip-off of the "To Kill a Mockingbird" story ... complete with Atticus Finch-like lawyer played by Sam Waterston (a less handsome and slightly more modern version of Gregory Peck).
All the black folk in this tv series were saints, while all southern white folk were despicable characters (except of course for the lawyer-character played by Waterston, and the little circle of Caucasians who were close to him) .
I had to laugh at "I'll fly away" because it was so simple-minded. You would think it would insult viewers' intelligence -- including the intelligence of black viewers, because of the storyline's formulaic and patronizing "white liberal savior" theme.
But as this reviewer says of TKaM - my liberal mother-in-law adored it.
Who doesn't!
I remember her! :-)
No, but Gregory Peck was real and the line between the character and the actor melded into one. It is easy to imagine Atticus as an old racist....not so easy to imagine an old, but handsome, Gregory Peck as a racist.
I went to a Southern Lit conference and a speaker pointed out that Atticus was a product of a South that found its basis and inspiration from the English feudal system. Atticus was a gentleman and his honor required that someone step up and defend the least of humanity. It was his duty, much like a knight’s code of chivalry. Ironically, I rewatched “Gone with the Wind” and the stained glass window at the Butler house was a castle with a knight and damsel. Feudal duty required certain behavior, and Atticus lived up to those standards as his personal honor required, nothing more.
I worked in a hopital in the 70’s and yes, every month someone named a kid Kunta as if it was a long-lost ancestor’s name....
Odd, how I’ve never met anyone named, or willing to use the name ‘Kunta’. They would 40+ years old now. Where did they all go?....................
Everybody sees TKAM as a point being made about prejudice.
I see it as Harper Lee revealing herself to us.
It is fiction based somewhat on real events.
People wonder why she didn’t flaunt her fame.
I think it was because the world took a very personal story from a woman revealing her inner self and turned it into their cause. The world stole her story and used it for themselves.
She had to rewrite her original story several times in order to get it published. By doing this, the publishers framed her story the way they wanted it.
In effect, they made Lee’s baby their own.
It is a great story, but I don’t blame Harper Lee for not capitalizing on it.
They were born in KC... Every month the medical records secretary would prepare a batch of birth certificates to be sent to Jeff City and we would guess the pronunciation based on spelling. Kunta was an easy one... I n he ensuing years, I am sure people changed their names to reflect newer heroes. In fact, social work records would discuss people and say “client LeVon (a/k/a Billy Joe, Sammy, Shaque)” as the welfare recipients would change their names with each new agent without benefit of court documents. It was a mess and easily created deeper layers of fraud. A friend of mine almost closed an estate not knowing who the main recipient was until she found out the guy changed his name after getting out of prison and his nuclear family did not even know his legal name. People are going to have a name heyday once those 70’s census records are made public.
The way I read the account from an editor involved with the original goes something like this:
Harper/Collins received her submission of Go Set a Watchman and advised he that they could not publish it but if she submitted a work framing the characters earlier in their timeline it might be more appealing.
She re-wrote the story as TKAMB and placed her characters in the earlier part of her fictional chain of events and it was published as a success. The original Watchman manuscript was filed away and forgotten.
What we now see published was her first attempt at the novelized world she lived in and her view of it.
What we have is the controversy that these characters were sainted and instead, in her fictional world, they were real and people of their times.
Her editor rejected the original manuscript, but suggested a “prequel” as seen from Scout’s eyes when she was a little girl. The reaction to Harper Lee’s newly published book says more about the infantilization of American culture and intellect than about Atticus Finch.
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