Many – perhaps even most - people associate the word “hobo” with homeless. There is a fatal disconnect between “…a white lady with a British accent in an exaggerated clown/hobo costume encouraging kids to read books…” and most people’s image of the homeless, to say nothing of the reality. Glamorization in any way of homelessness seems more than a little distasteful especially with the issue these days so prominent nationally and resistant to easy fixes.
I didn’t see or even hear of much formal corporal punishment. I think by the time we were in high school it wasn’t going to be too effective to give students pops like it was in elementary or middle school.
But there was a level of casual violence(?-maybe corporal punishment) on the part of the teachers/staff that I think wouldn’t fly these days- the prefect of discipline would thump guys on the head with a finger, or if there was a fight or something, ears might get grabbed to get them to disengage. We had coach/teachers who’d wing erasers/chalk/whiteboard markers at sleeping/inattentive students, and stuff like that.
We called it the “Assassination game” when we did it in college (early 1990s) and basically chose our targets randomly out of a hat, and used squirt guns/water balloons/super-soakers. It had more of a James bond/spy type feel, not hitman or serial-killer.
I made a point of not saying that. I do say that hundreds of societies throughout time have let children run naked, at least through puberty. And hundreds of societies throughout time have thought nothing of adult public nudity. Is sexualizing nudity an increase in compassion and tolerance? We’ve done that because the so-called Abrahamic religions sexualize nudity. Is that an advance? Will that be thought barbaric in the future? Was everybody in the past worse than us at everything?
We like to believe that we’re evolved and and better than those dummies. I hope that’s true in many ways. I share many of those beliefs. But the correct reaction is to look at ourselves in the mirror and think, You ain’t so much. You can do better than this. Keep trying.
In the 1950s “This is Your Life” had an episode that reunited a Holocaust survivor with the family that didn’t know he was alive and an episode that introduced Hiroshima survivors to Enola Gay crew. Surprise! Even in today’s reality tv that wouldn’t fly.
This is a straw man. We weren’t talking about young kids running around naked while playing together at a swimming pool, we were talking about Victorians taking dubious photos of children and insisting that it’s never anything more than an artistic portrayal of innocence while in denial about the existence of pedophilia and abuse.
This is ignoring history. Taking photos because your society believed in the absolute innocence of children is not morally different from allowing children to be publicly naked because of their innocence. Some individuals in our society looks at the two differently, but I’m asking why, since the impetus for it was equivalent. Nor is this attitude universal in our society. Parents have been taking cute pictures of their own nude children for a century, yet recent attitudes suddenly forbid that. Why? What does that mean? Is that an advance?
My point is simple. It’s fascinating to look at changes in society as to what was acceptable relatively recently but not now. It’s dangerous to therefore consider everything new to be better. Always ask why.
We really do need more musicals glorifying the wonderful life of prostitutes in 19th century Europe. They were lucky indeed to live in a world where unmarried women had both factory worker and prostitute as career paths. A wonderful story of twin sisters, one who becomes a factory worker and the other a prostitute could bring Broadway back! The twins lose track of each other over time but finally catch up to share their life stories just before their deaths, one from injuries and damage to her lungs at the factory, the other from tuberculosis and syphillis. Luckily they lived long enough to celebrate their 30th birthday together.
The motivation for taking naked pictures of other people’s children is never any different from letting your own kids play naked in a pool? Really?
This had never occurred to me. But now that you have granted me this devastating insight, and in such a non-patronizing manner… haven’t there been one or two stories in recent years about the abuse of children? And that serial abusers got away with it for decades because most people could not imagine that upstanding members of society might be pedophiles and rapists?
We don’t want to live in a prudish society where genuinely innocent nudity is taboo, nor to overreact into a paranoia where children are sequestered because we suspect a pedophile around every corner. But the evidence of widespread abuse of children - and women - that has emerged in recent decades certainly does not support a hypothesis that our attitudes to the potential for sinister motives and abuse were calibrated correctly in the past.
You call it patronizing to say always ask why in a thread full of people not asking why?
I like asking why. Why, for example, do people in our society sexualize children when there have been hundreds of societies that thought would never have occurred to? Why do half the respondents of one major party answer polls saying they think the leaders of the other party are pedophiles who drink the blood of babies?
I personally hate most everything the Victorians stood for. I also hate the current insanity about sexuality that is poisoning my country. I don’t find that contradictory.
There were pedophiles in Victorian England, there are pedophiles in other countries around the world, even the ones where the kids run around naked. There is nothing unique about 21st century America that leads to pedophilia.
The taboos against nudity in Victorian England were if anything stronger than they are now so there sexualization of nudity was a thing even back then as can be attested to by vast collections of Victorian pornography.
Yes, for much of society, children were thought of as innocents and unsexualized so saw nothing wrong with nude depictions. But that didn’t mean that those who were pedophiles wouldn’t find such nude photos sexually stimulating, and it is likely sieze an opportunity view and photograph children in the nude.
The main difference between then and now is that there is more open discussion and awareness (probably hyper awareness) about child abuse so that we are very sensitive about these things. I am sure that some of the photgrphers were on the up and up, the same way that I’m sure that many priest who desired giving private tutoring to altarboys were just helping their education. But knowing what we know now, it is probably better safe than sorry.
MTV refused to air that video, but Night Flight did.
I never heard of Brazil nuts being called anything other than that until the past few months! However, I was told that “eeny meeny miney mo” was “dirty” but not why, and knew that some people said the N word instead of “Tiger” but thought we’d made it up.
A mistress is not a prostitute.
All societies have despicable individuals. Societal hysteria, though, leads to this.
Victorians defined hysteria as a weakness of women, but their hypocrisy went to ridiculous extents. “Dickens himself had mentioned in Martin Chizzlewit a related custom which he apparently met with in America - that of treating the word “leg” as an obscenity, not to be uttered by or before ladies. Kipling found the same prejudice in Vermont fifty years later.” Whenever you think we’re beyond such prudery, look around you.
Tell me, in this scenario what was the mistress’s other job that earned her the money to pay for her food, clothes, and lodging?
Watch the film.
How about an entire little league baseball team crammed into the back of an old pickup truck with no cap driving to away games.
I remember it as being exhilarating, but now I shudder when I think what might have happened.
As I recall the movie Gigi (I remember it well 
), Gigi’s mother, grandmother and grandaunt were all demimonde- not common whores but not respectable either; courtesans. Gigi herself was presumably illegitimate. Training her to “the family business” was probably the best they knew how to do for her. That she made a respectable marriage to someone of social standing was incredibly lucky.
When I read the OP, I remembered that, as a kid, Chevalier sounded old and creepy, even before I knew what he was singing.
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I’ve read words to this effect on these boards over and over, and it sounds like bitter old men nostalgic for all the freedom they used to have, but now it’s all “cancelled” by “SJWs”.
But look around, Pops. Anyone can watch Blazing Saddles or Airplane or Fritz The Cat or Animal House or even Porky’s.
No one’s censoring those or “cancelling” your god-given right to watch dumb comedies. Hell, they’re still making Jackass movies, go crazy watching Steve-O tape a bottle rocket to his junk!
Since people have mentioned Blazing Saddles and Airplane! as being hard for Hollywood to remake–another film I think Hollywood would have a hard time remaking is The Towering Inferno–mostly because it would seem somewhat tasteless after the destruction of The World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks.
I’m a lot of things, but “bitter old man” sure ain’t one of them. When I say that “Airplane” wouldn’t fly now, all I mean is it would not be MADE as a new movie now in exactly the same way. The nuns who “talk jive” would probably offend some people, and I’m quite sure the pilot asking the little boy if he’d ever seen a grown man naked would be considered both triggering and as poking fun at victims of child predators.
Of course it’s still possible to watch it. Is anyone claiming that it’s been censored out of existence? Lots of old movies and TV are cringe-worthy by today’s standards, but it’s exceedingly rare for them to be canceled.
YMMV, but I stand by my assessment. I can’t imagine that Airplane would be produced identically today, but I sure can imagine there being an outcry if somehow it was. This doesn’t make me “bitter,” I’m just somewhat aware of what’s happening in the world around me.