Probably saw it there, and thought it was the thread DrDeth just linked to.
Anyway, not sure if she still posts here, but apologies to @RivkahChaya for the nitpick a decade in the making.
So there’s a really specific (and subtly racist IMO) trope I’ve seen in recent depictions of ancient Rome…
You’ll have a diverse range of ethnicities, including black(in 21st century parlance) actors. Which is absolutely accurate.
The non-white characters don’t face any racism from the white characters. Again fine, this isn’t set in 1800s America, it’s not remotely anachronistic to show this
But then they will treat Africa as if they were a 21st century American describing modern post colonial africa (or a 19th century European describing colonial africa). Roman Africa was not some remote uncivilized region populated by exotic uncouth savages. Northern Europe was that. Africa was the center of the civilized world, it has been conquered by Rome but it was the cultural center of the Mediterranean, not Rome.
One recent example that bugged me (despite being from a movie that made Asterix and Obelix look like an accurate historical reenactment. But still stood out enough to bug me) was from Gladiator 2. The main character who grew up in Africa, quoted a line from the Aeneid and was told “you didn’t learn that in Africa”! Wtf? You wouldn’t have learned the most famous piece of Roman poetry in the center of the Mediterranean education and culture, that had been under Roman control for centuries by the time of the movie.
You could say “you didn’t learn that in Briton” or “you didn’t learn that in Germania”. Not “you didn’t learn that in Africa”,
Well, wait: one step at a time. If denying them a Christian burial didn’t have any effect on them, then what was the big deal about it?
I didn’t see this one listed. I’ve always detested the myth that returning Vietnam veterans in uniform were routinely spat upon by war protestors/hippies in airports, train stations etc.
We’re supposed to believe that the vets just took it calmly, without getting into brawls with the spitters, and no media coverage ensued.
That it happened somewhere at some time could well be true. But I’ve never seen a documented case, and it certainly wasn’t commonplace.
The myth is used to denigrate protests against the war in Vietnam and slander opponents - to a lesser extent to champion better treatment of veterans.
A lie is still a lie.
Ken Burns retails this myth in his Vietnam docuseries, with photos of demonstrators who’d gather outside the gates of military installations.
From what I’d read, lacking the research resources of Ken Burns, they were out there offering assistance to servicemen wishing to desert. Burns doesn’t note that, or Jane Fonda’s/Donald Sutherland’s “FTA” (fuck the army) anti-USO shows that were part of that effort. It does show Fonda’s climbing onto a NVA gunmount and audio of her opinion that the POW should be killed as war criminals.
Oddly, the main form of criticism of Ken Burns online comes from right wing USA fist-fuckers. YouTuber Cynical Historian, who I do respect, doesn’t go into Burns because he simply finds him boring.