The baby girl that was born just a few hours ago… her father wants to drown her in milk because he didn’t receive a male heir!
Rekha as Ramdulaari // Lajja (2001)
This is why it angers me when people reduce Bollywood to frivolous musicals made solely for entertainment. Bollywood is a multidimensional platform that exposes a lot of prevalent issues in an often bold and unapologetic manner. Powerful scenes like the above illustrate how the Indian movie industry seeks to enlighten the public. I promise you, it’s not all song and dance.
I’ve been looking for the English sub for months 😢
So they go around the world bombing and killing people and then expect us to feel sorry for them?? Nah son, you deserve it.
me if i ever find out any of my neighbors are veterans
Hmmm. I mean, just because the army as an institution is flawed and damaging doesn’t mean everyone in it is a terrible person. To paint every single veteran with the same brush is reductive and to make light of the debilitating mental disorders many have just seems wrong. Like yes, fuck the military as an institution completely 100%, but blaming disabled ex-front-line infantry maybe isn’t the best direction for our anger, perhaps.
A lot of veterans are poor people who were intentionally targeted by scouting programs coming to their schools starting at age 13, and most of them are worse off coming back than they were to start with… let’s be courteous to folks with PTSD
Don’t be an ableist fuckface. Intentionally triggering someone is disgusting.
I thought people on this godforsaken website at least understood this one basic principal, but apparently not, so let me make it crystal clear:
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO BE SELECTIVELY PROGRESSIVE
You can hate Ann Coulter. But if you suggest that she deserves to be raped, you are a misogynist.
You can hate Woody Allen. But if you say he’s part of a Jewish conspiracy or joke about putting him in an oven, you are an antisemite.
You can hate Michael Vick. But you call for him to be lynched or call him the N-word, you are an anti-black racist.
You can hate Caitlyn Jenner. But if you misgender her, or make comments about her genitalia, you are a transphobe.
And you can hate the military. But if you deliberately try to trigger veterans with PTSD, you are an ableist piece of shit.
You do no get to pick and choose which people to treat fairly when it comes to acknowledging and combatting prejudice.
Not liking a person is not a free pass to disregard anti-prejudicial words and actions. Either you respect marginalized peoples as a whole (even if you don’t like an individual), or you don’t respect them at all. There is no middle ground.
If anyone really like, agrees with harassing veterans with PTSD or anything similar, unfollow me right the fuck now. I don’t want you following me.
You don’t have to like the military, it’s massively fucked up but y’all needs understand that most people in the military are victims of propaganda and are usually poor or part of a minority who are taken advantage of in order to join.
^^^ All of these comments tbh
Mhmm
They offered the ASVAB at my HIGH SCHOOL. They CAME INTO MY SCHOOL and said “If you guys take the military aptitude test, you get free donuts and you miss the first half of the day.” They brought in hot dogs.
They brought food to a place where half of us were in poverty if not more, and they said, all you have to do is take a little test and you’ll get a snack, you don’t have to come in to school on time (an extra full hour of sleep that morning!). So we did. By the hundreds.
My younger brother, a year behind me in school, scored “the highest we’ve ever seen in the whole damn state, son,” and for the next. Three. Fucking. Years. They harassed him. He got phone calls from every goddamn branch of the military. People would show up at our house at random, trying to recruit him. They’d tell him horror stories about how much better it is to enlist than be drafted (as if there’d been a draft in our lifetime!). They called our Mom at work. They sent recruiters to talk to our stepfather, who’d been in the Army, to try to get a handle on my brother’s weak points.
THREE FUCKING YEARS OF THIS.
My brother is the second child of six. My brother was thirteen by the time he had his own pillow for the first time. My brother was hungry all the time, dizzy from hunger some days–and oh, sidenote, my mother, stepfather and father are all abusive assholes who’d as soon hit you as look at you.
Guess what year my brother graduated?
If you guessed “May, 2002,” or “almost immediately after 9/11,” ding ding ding ding!
The ONLY REASON my brother didn’t join the military, in the end, is that his girlfriend at the time said “If you enlist, I will never speak to you again.” Her dad was a military man, and he was also an abusive shithead, so in her head the two were inextricable. But if she’d said “go for it?” Or if she hadn’t said anything at all?
Something like half of the males in my fucking graduating class enlisted.
It was better than starving.
And a great number of those are dead now.
I hate the US military industry. I’m disgusted by the things our military does. But by god I don’t blame our veterans for what was done to them.
Rich people don’t enlist.
The ones who join the military are the ones who are hopeful that for once they’ll know that they’re getting a meal, not just today but tomorrow too.
Don’t join the fucking military.
I mean, some of us have family whose choices boiled down to ‘military or coal mine,’ very literally, with zero exaggeration. A better answer is: there need to be enough economic choices that no one HAS to join the military, and military recruiters should be forbidden to prey on economically imperiled children in JHS and HS.
But if those choices don’t exist, and people have family who need food, housing or health care, just saying “then perish” is kinda shit.
I’d rather starve than join the military but I’d do an awful lot to make sure @mistresskabooms can eat and get her health care.
🤷♂️
Can someone, like @vaspider , explain why they hate the military?
I’m looking at joining, as I can’t go afford college, not even the community ones, and I’m looking at either becoming a Nurse or an interpreter, and I’m worried about what could be asked of me and whether or not this is worth it.
The United States military is one of the most blatant and obvious tools of our imperialist and systematic oppression of non-white, non-Christian people. Most people who enlist are like you, thinking it’s their best option, and in some cases, like most of @fox-bright‘s graduating class, that seems true.
But the military uses people up. Modern military training, even for nurses and interpreters, is specifically oriented at breaking you psychologically so that you stop seeing the “other side”, whoever they may be, as human beings. People have PTSD just from coming through basic training, and that’s on purpose. They don’t want you to have enough willpower left to say no to an order to shoot someone. They don’t want human beings, they want living weapons, and the entire process is focused on breaking you down psychologically from human being to weapon. Even a nurse or an interpreter will go through this training, and will be instilled with the same prejudices toward whoever command decides is the enemy.
Don’t get me wrong, they want you smart and able to think. At this point, they probably could just make tanks and such robotic, but that’s not the point. They want you able to respond to new situations and new threats like a thinking person. They just want you thinking the way they want you to, responding the way they want you to. So they break you until your normal reactions to situations are broken down and overridden by the reactions they want you to have.
I don’t like the United States military because it makes victims of everyone, including the people serving in it. I have several friends who are veterans. Every last one of them has come out of it broken. They’ve done things they can never undo and seen things they can never unsee, and all in the name of following orders of old white men who view them as nothing more than investments of resources instead of people. They all have a hard time learning to be people again once they get out, and many never do.
Also, you’re probably never going to see that GI Bill school money. There are so many hoops you have to jump through to get it, and the fact that you’re now trying to go to school like a regular student but you very likely have PTSD that makes it hard to focus on studies, exceedingly few veterans ever see that money, and even fewer actually finish school and get a degree with it.
Thank you, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget this.
does anyone have any idea if this is similar for the Brit Military?
Some relatives have been recommending I join “because you do so much better in a structured environment”
“Money can’t buy you happiness” is propaganda from rich people to convince the poor to be satisfied with less.
Delicious, finally some good fucking food.
they’ve actually studied this, and there is a measurable point up to which money basically does buy happiness, and then past that point it stops
a billionaire is not guaranteed to be any happier than a millionaire, but both those people are almost guaranteed to be happier than someone living in poverty
(the “point” turns out to be “the time at which you have enough money that all your needs can be met without anxiety and you have some amount of money left over to do things like pursue passions, give back to the community, and do other emotionally fulfilling things.” what a shocker!)
Money buys security, free time, disposable income for leisure products, service, foods, and events.
So yes…it does actually buy happiness. It incidentally also purchases health care, and fulfill the hierarchy of needs which tend to contribute to most people’s ill health due to stress levels…
You know, this scene is so powerful to me that sometimes I forget that not everyone who watches it will understand its significance, or will have seen Casablanca. So, because this scene means so much to me, I hope it’s okay if I take a minute to explain what’s going on here for anyone who’s feeling left out.
Casablanca takes place in, well, Casablanca, the largest city in (neutral) Morocco in 1941, at Rick’s American Cafe (Rick is Humphrey Bogart’s character you see there). In 1941, America was also still neutral, and Rick’s establishment is open to everyone: Nazi German officials, officials from Vichy (occupied) France, and refugees from all across Europe desperate to escape the German war engine. A neutral cafe in a netural country is probably the only place you’d have seen a cross-section like this in 1941, only six months after the fall of France.
So, the scene opens with Rick arguing with Laszlo, who is a Czech Resistance fighter fleeing from the Nazis (if you’re wondering what they’re arguing about: Rick has illegal transit papers which would allow Laszlo and his wife, Ilsa, to escape to America, so he could continue raising support against the Germans. Rick refuses to sell because he’s in love with Laszlo’s wife). They’re interrupted by that cadre of German officers singing Die Wacht am Rhein: a German patriotic hymn which was adopted with great verve by the Nazi regime, and which is particularly steeped in anti-French history. This depresses the hell out of everybody at the club, and infuriates Laszlo, who storms downstairs and orders the house band to play La Marseillaise: the national anthem of France.
Wait, but when I say “it’s the national anthem of France,” I don’t want you to think of your national anthem, okay? Wherever you’re from. Because France’s anthem isn’t talking about some glorious long-ago battle, or France’s beautiful hills and countrysides. La Marseillaise is FUCKING BRUTAL. Here’s a translation of what they’re singing:
Arise, children of the Fatherland! The day of glory has arrived! Against us, tyranny raises its bloody banner. Do you hear, in the countryside, the roar of those ferocious soldiers? They’re coming to your land to cut the throats of your women and children!
To arms, citizens! Form your battalions! Let’s march, let’s march! Let their impure blood water our fields!
BRUTAL, like I said. DEFIANT, in these circumstances. And the entire cafe stands up and sings it passionately, drowning out the Germans. The Germans who are, in 1941, still terrifyingly ascendant, and seemingly invincible.
“Vive la France! Vive la France!” the crowd cries when it’s over. France has already been defeated, the German war machine roars on, and the people still refuse to give up hope.
But here’s the real kicker, for me: Casablanca came out in 1942. None of this was ‘history’ to the people who first saw it. Real refugees from the Nazis, afraid for their lives, watched this movie and took heart. These were current events when this aired. Victory over Germany was still far from certain. The hope it gave to people then was as desperately needed as it has been at any time in history.
God I love this scene.
not only did refugees see this movie, real refugees made this movie. most of the european cast members wound up in hollywood after fleeing the nazis and wound up.
paul heinreid, who played laszlo the resistance leader, was a famous austrian actor; he was so anti-hitler that he was named anenemy of the reich.ugarte, the petty thief who stole the illegal transit papers laszlo and victor are arguing about? was played by peter lorre, a jewish refugee. carl, the head waiter? played by s.z. sakall, a hungarian-jewwhose three sisters died in the holocaust.
even the main nazi character was played by a german refugee: conrad veidt, who starred in one of the first sympathetic films about gay men and who fled the nazis with his jewish wife.
there’s one person in this scene that deserves special mention. did you notice the woman at the bar, on the verge of tears as she belts out la marseillaise? she’s yvonne, rick’s ex-girlfriend in the film. in real life, the actress’s name is madeleine lebeau and she basically lived the plot of this film: she and her jewish husband fled paris ahead of the germans in 1940. her husband, macel dalio, is also in the film, playing the guy working the roulette table. after they occupied paris, the nazis used his face on posters to represent a “typical jew.” madeleine and marcel managed to get to lisbon (the goal of all the characters in casablanca), and boarded a ship to the americas… but then they were stranded for two months when it turned out their visa papers were forgeries. they eventually entered the US after securing temporary canadian visas. marcel dalio’s entire family died in concentration camps.
go back and rewatch the clip. watch madeleine lebeau’s face.
casablanca is a classic, full of classic acting performances. but in this moment, madeleine lebeau isn’t acting. this isn’t yvonne the jilted lover onscreen. this is madeleine lebeau, singing “la marseillaise” after she and her husband fled france for their lives. this is a real-life refugee, her real agony and loss and hope and resilience, preserved in the midst of one of the greatest films of all time.
I remember when I first saw Casablanca, and being struck by this scene, and that was without knowing the history behind it or all that Madeleine Lebeau – and so many more refugees- had suffered.
Do yourself a solid and watch this film. Watch this scene. And most of all, remember refugees, the ones who lived then and especially the ones who live now.
I knew this movie, of course, it’s one of the mains from my mother’s list of movies you should see “At least once in a lifetime”, but I had never until now felt any desire to watch it.
It’s one of those movies where context and the (not so quite) subtle subtext are vitally important to understanding the importance of it, not only as a classic piece of film making (hokey old timey speech and all), but as a political and social commentary of the times, rooted fiercely in protest and a whole lot of “fuck you fascists”.
I never really got it until my father (raised by his Jewish grandmother who fled Austria with the clothes on her back and a single suitcase and swathes of dead loved ones left behind) sat me down and told me the full context of when the movie was made, what it was actually about and who it was made for.
It made his casual way of saying “here’s looking at you kid” whenever we skipped school to go to protest rallies (start of the Iraq war) all the more poignant for me. I just thought he was being an old man quoting the popular cult media from his youth. But it means so much more than that.
Cause here’s the thing about that iconic line from the end of the movie: you’ll find screeds and screeds of people talking about how he’s using it to flirt with her once last time and just how suave it is, alluding that it’s purely about her youth and beauty and his ever lasting love for her even though she’s married to someone else.
But that line? Had been in use for a good 50+ years prior to Casablanca gracing the screens. It’s a toast, a wish for your health. And the people watching would have known the significance of it, particularly the displaced Europeans knowing that they’ll likely never see their loved ones again.
Cause here’s looking at you kid– and the unspoken meaning behind it– one last time.
Rick isn’t just letting go of the love of his life in that scene. He’s using his position of power and privilege as an American with access to outside networks (predominantly crime related, but hey) to help her escape the country with her highly persecuted and sought after husband to a place of safety.
He had the option to just take her himself and run– and her husband even urges him to do so at one point. But Rick endeavors to get them both to safety, and he shows up armed to do so. He fights for their freedom even though he doesn’t have to. He goes from staunchly refusing to help them out of bitterness and cynicism, to realizing that if he doesn’t do something people are going to die. And he doesn’t just save the woman he loves, which would be oh so easy. He saves the man he hates too. Because he can, so he must.
The final scene ends with Renault (played by Claude Rains, an Englishman), head of the local police (and a character largely played for laughs), making the decision not to arrest Rick or anyone else involved when ordered to, actively defying the orders of a fascist. When he and Rick are walking away, he insinuates that he and Rick should join the French Resistance movement in
Brazzaville, and Rick again delivers the other iconic line from the movie: “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Casablanca is about forging alliances in the face of tyranny. It’s about doing what is right, even though it goes against the law when the law is corrupt. It’s about being willing to give up your own liberties and comfort to preserve the things you love, even though it won’t directly benefit you. Hell, it might even kill you. But someone’s got to do it.
And yea, it’s old, it’s dated and a product of it’s time and it shows. There are times when the modern viewer will cringe and rightly so. But it was also incredibly out there for its time, when the world was going to absolute hell in a hand basket and it seemed like the walls were closing in, it held many important messages, but primarily: Resist.
So here’s looking at you, kids.
I did not watch the video, and read but a single, italicized word.
The sudden record scratch that sounded in my mind stilled all thought, as I realized
Somehow
Inexplicably
Through my entire childhood and (short) adult life
I had always thought
That Casablanca and Les Miserables were the same thing
My boyfriend is triggered by Christmas and Christmas music. We were in a restaurant, and Christmas music was playing, and he started panicking so he went outside for a cigarette. The manager of the restaurant overheard him saying he had to get out, and changed the music over for the rest of the time we were there. There are safe spaces in the real world. People are nicer than you think. And bullshit people who try to tell you to get over your triggers, ain’t shit.
The most dangerous phrase in the language is, “we’ve always done it this way.”
“Come on, let’s mix it up!” The heart surgeon says.
“B-but we’ve always done it this way!” The other replies, “this is how you replace a heart valve.”
“That’s the most dangerous phrase in the human language!” The first surgeon replies haughtily as he inputs a fruit loop into the patient’s heart. “This will be his valve. He will be a fruit loop in a world of Cheerios.”
(taken from this post on the experiments of Harry Harlow)
This is serious business, because this is a large part of how sexism, racism, homophobia, rape culture, ethnocentrism, etc. continue to happen.
The reason we do heart surgeries the way we do is not “because that’s what we’ve always done.” It’s because that’s how year of scientific research says will give the best results. One of the best uses of the scientific method is to test common practice, and either eliminate it or give it legitimacy. Don’t do things because “that’s what we’ve always done,” do them because that is what evidence and research say we should do.
Saying “we’ve always done it this way” justifying maintaining a harmful societal norm is dangerous. We can do better.
I honestly can’t believe someone saw a post about how it’s bad to justify bigotry or other hardships with “that’s the way it is/has always been/etc” and decided to debunk that with an example of heart surgery as if that’s in any way comparable or the point of this post. 🙄
But honestly, even if the post was talking about things like that? If science found a better way to do heart surgery, and after tons of study and research it was undeniably the best way to do it, and surgeons said “Nah, we have always done it our way so we are going to keep doing it our way; who cares what the science says” that would be a problem.
Also, heart surgery is a perfect example of us not doing it the way we’ve always done it.
The first open heart surgery ever performed was in 1893 by the first Black surgeon in the world, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams. He repaired a stab wound to the patient’s heart. This was only 125 years ago.
The first heart catheterization was performed in 1929 by Dr. Werner Forssman, when he performed the procedure on himself in the name of research.
The first coronary angiogram was performed in 1953 by Dr. Eduardo Pereira.
The first artificial ventricle was implanted in a patient in 1967 by Dr. Michael DeBakey.
The first human heart transplant was also performed in 1967 by Dr. Chris Barnard.
The first successful pediatric heart transplant was performed in 1984 by Dr. Eric Rose.
This is just a short list of some of the more major advancements in coronary medicine. There are way too many interesting developments to list here, because medical science is constantly improving. Every single one of these developments was a huge risk. Nobody had done it that way before. And every single development has led to thousands more saved lives. Literally millions of people would now be dead if these doctors and their patients had done things “the way we’ve always done it,” if they had not taken risks and pushed the boundaries of medical science.
Fuck doing it the way it’s always been done. Get out there and save the world from “the way we’ve always done it.”
wupacing 