If you saw an old black and white film showing people hung from a tree,

[tavernier]

regardless of the color of the victim, and the footage was shown over and over in minute detail, would it disturb you?

I’m watching a popular series where this is being shown and I mentioned that if I were black this would’ve been particularly disturbing to me because of the history of KKK atrocities. In this case the victim was white but it still bothered me that it would’ve been horrific for most black families to sit through.

When I mentioned my feelings in that forum I only had one response. She was very surprised at my discomfort. Was I disturbed when it occurred in the book?

Umm, lady... these things don’t bother you?

[hlthe2b]

1. Outlander?

It bothered the hell out of me.

[tavernier]

2. Yes. Thank you.

I have friends who have gone through that in their history, and this representation was so brutal that I was hoping that they weren’t watching.

[Flaleftist]

3. I'm not sure.

I think I've become a tad desensitized. I can't tell you the last time anything from a show or movie really disturbed me. Real life suffering depicted on news and documentaries are different. Maybe a little if the photo is real. I'd have to watch the episode.

[tavernier]

6. No, it's not like that at all.

It’s all theatrical... shows what he might be seeing last few seconds of consciousness from his eyes.

[liberalmuse]

4. I tried to watch this show.

It's way too brutal, so I stopped after only a few episodes.

[Hoyt]

5. Agree. While we usually think of lynchings having Black victims, the KKK and racists

have also targeted Jewish people and even Catholics to some degree.

[GulfCoast66]

11. 11 Italians were lynched in New Orleans in 1891. If I remember correctly.

But that’s kind of a distraction. Thousands of Black Americans were lynched the last not very long ago. As a southerner who is white I can guarantee there are still plenty of whites in the south who would do the same.

I know this opinion is not popular on DU. But if I were a person of color living outside of a blue area of the South I would have a firearm and know how to use it. Because when Trump loses there will be isolated cases of his followers expressing their rage. Not many. But some.

Read about the Ocoee Florida massacre. A black man had the nerve to vote so a lynch mob went after him. He was given shelter in the home of a Black man named July Perry. Who was a veteran with guns. When the mob showed up there to kill them Perry took out the leaders of the mob before they were killed. Then there was a genocide against all black folks in the town. In my mind Perry is an American hero.

Today the second part would not happen today. Because the police and people would not allow it. But a small percentage of his followers here in the south are hoping to return to those days.

[Dan]

14. Open up a history book my friend

...”Because the police and people would not...” ;

There is a reason that relations between Blacks and the Police have been bad... and in the bad old days, the police were part and parcel of the lynch mobs.

Today, prior to cell phone cameras’, it was easier for the Police to do their evil deeds by hiding behind self defense. Now, today, the cell phones have revealed the evil that some (note some) police do - in the name of the law.

The blessing with a camera on their asses and never knowing who is taking the pictures when, the police (bad ones) are increasingly covering their asses.

I hate that I have these thoughts, but at the same time there is a question that I would like to ask most police, which is “When is the last time you turned in a fellow cop for wrong behavior?”.

I also know that the vast majority of police are decent, law abiding officers - at least that is my prayer.

[Arthur_Frain]

7. We are pretty desensitized as a society these days.

I’m old enough to remember when movies made from books declined to present particularly violent scenes, whether because of FCC guidance or whatever (this was back when we only had a few channels through the air).

Nowadays it seems like a competition. “Can we out do the person with the goriest imagination in the room when we put these things on film?”

Dexter. Breaking Bad. Nip/Tuck. I haven’t seen Outlander, but I imagine it’s purposely designed to trigger your cringe reflex with harsh, disturbing, violent, or implied violence depicted garishly on your screen, judging from what you say.

Trashy, we have become.

[tavernier]

9. No, in fact it's a very intelligent historical time travel series

based upon nine highly acclaimed books.

But the author puts her time traveling innocents into most precarious situations so there are we as well. Those certainly weren’t the easiest of times

[qwlauren35]

8. Curls my stomach.

There is a museum in Baltimore called Blacks in Wax. And downstairs, out of sight is the "Strange Fruit" section. A series of photographs and dioramas of lynching. It's the most horrid thing imaginable.... except for their diorama of a slave ship. They are both horrid. You go in there, and it's very easy to hate white people.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

10. The context would matter to me.

If what you're describing happened on the Outlander series (which I have not watched and I've only read the first book of the series) it would feel so far in the past as to not have too much or an effect.

But if I see pictures of black people hung from a tree, I'm intensely bothered. While I'm white, there's a sense that these are my people. The hangings are too close in time for me to have any distance, even though none of them were personally known to me. I feel as if much of the history of this country since about 1860, even though that year is more than a generation before my own grandparents got here, anything since about then is connected to me.

But 18th century Scotland? Meh.

I realize the above sentence makes me look completely uncaring, but my point is that I don't feel a strong personal connection to that era. However, back to your original question, if the footage is graphic and gruesome, I would definitely be disturbed.

[UTUSN]

12. Comment in link: "FBI ruined (Billie HOLLIDAY)'s career b/c she wouldn't stop singing" Strange Fruit

[Stuart G]

13. Read, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I was so disturbed, I started to cry..

There were no pictures, no sound, just a clear picture by the author, Dee Brown, of people being slaughtered over and over. For no reason, none at all. (The book was about the slaughter of Native Americans, by mounted soldiers of the U.S.Army) I don't think I got past page 300..

.How about a 30 minute film "Night and Fog" Atrocities of the German concentration camps where the Germans killed Jews. At the end, pictures of piles of bodies and bones, and more and more carnage.
..Talk about being disturbed.. You got to feel, and people in that forum didn't feel ..I feel and when I showed that "Night and Fog" to my students in high school, some didn't think they would feel, but at the end all felt and moaned in horror..Once after showing that film a quiet student, in my Chicago High School class, came up to me with a friend, and the friend told his story..
...When the Khmer Rouge came around and killed the so called, "elites" "upper class" (whoever they were) my student said his father was a college teacher, and they came in, as they came in, my student and his mom escaped out the back window, and while they escaped, the members of that killing squad killed his father. That was his story, and as long as I have a memory, I will recall that story..He told that after I showed the horror of the film of the concentration camps...And I feel now as I tell it, and I felt then in 1997 when he told me..
...You either feel or don't feel. It is so obvious that Trump does not feel. Just like the killers in Cambodia, and the Nazi killers in the concentration camps..Trump does not feel and he doesn't care. It is so obvious and so very sad.