09-12-2020, 07:57 PM
(09-12-2020, 05:36 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Most days I visit the YouTube website, and play a few of the videos they offer as ones I would like. One set is that of The History Guy, who provides short snippets featuring odd bits of history. He has a few themes. One is his obsession with military hats. Another is that he states that often that all good stories involve pirates. He goes a little bit out of his way to fold pirates into as many of his videos as possible.
So naturally, as I thought South Pacific was a good story, Xenakis must be telling the truth for once. There must be pirates involved somewhere in South Pacific.
Now, I hadn’t actually seen the play, watched the movie, or read the book. I did know the music. Through much of the 1960s I took organ lessons. At one time or another, many of the songs for South Pacific were assigned by my instructor. Even today, the computer I use to visit this web site is at the center of a MIDI music studio. I have a music keyboard a lot of the old music from the 60s, and could still play many of the hits of the time…. Including those from South Pacific. Just though a more professional rig.
Anyway, I just rented South Pacific’s 1958 Mitzi Gaynor version of the movie and played it back using a fancy mixer and two monitor speakers. No pirates. No politics among the nurses. The closest thing was making fun of Nellie for washing that man out of her hair then immediately picking him up in the same scene.
It is fun to watch. The military base is obviously fairly distant from the front. The soldiers have it fairly easy... it is an all-purpose site (supply and R-and-R), with the Army, the Navy, and the Marines. For a military base, discipline is quite lax, which it would not be near the front. It's almost paradise, except for one thing: "We ain't got dames"....Bali Hai, which is off limits to the servicemen, actually has women. Native women.
Quote:The closest thing to pirates was a few conversations involving the Japanese. The American officers seem to agree that the Japanese had much the same policy as Xenakis claims for communists. I personally wouldn’t make much difference between fascists and communists. The only difference was that fascists often worked with the capitalists elites, while the communists would replace them. Otherwise, both were out for the party, not for the people.
There is no question: the Japanese leadership was typical of a totalitarian regime, a criminal syndicate in all but self-title.
Quote:The American officers of South Pacific did not seem to care about the local population, which was an improvement. With hindsight, they kept a few bases but otherwise ignored the locals once there was no longer need for the bases.
Didn't want those soldiers going to Bali Hai and leaving behind a little VD and a bunch of half-American children... or even coming back with a war bride.
Quote:It was interesting trying to set the time and place of the action. Much of it was reminiscent of Guadalcanal. They seemed to need spotter on something that was very much like the slot. It wasn’t quite right. A sign appeared in the movie which indicated Guadalcanal was several hundred miles away. The planes showed were also Hellcats. These didn’t appear until well after the Guadalcanal fighting. Corsairs and Lightnings would have been more likely for land based operations. The fleet which was shown in the final scene was also a bit big for that early in the war. I would guess they were somewhere between Guadalcanal and Rabul, but I don’t know of any fleet anchorage along the slot. Likely it was a fictional island.
Guadalcanal was as far as the Japanese got.
Quote:Anyway, no pirates. Emile fought a bully rather than being involved in any way with politics. It was almost like Xenakis had no clue how to respond to my recent posts and had to lie to come up with something. The only politics was a feeling that autocratic governments were bad.
I thought it could have been political, but the political orientation of the lethal incident in which Emile was involved was ambiguous -- if political. The bully was compared to the Japanese, though...
Quote:
Which confirms the idea that anyone involved in manipulating the vote, Gerrymandering, manipulating the post office, is that buddy buddy with autocrats, who has an administration full of indicted con men, has shown an affinity for violence and working outside the law, needs to be washed out of your hair, to be sent on his way.
Once we wash that man (Trump) right out of our hair and send him on his way (possibly to a Hague tribunal), much can go back to normal rather fast, right? People who have survived COVID-19 who have organ damage (including myocarditis and diabetes) will not quite find life back to normal. Let us not forget those who lose loved ones. The casualties are on the scale of a war, but the government will not be giving out any Purple hearts or Gold Stars this time.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
