"Overlapping generations" and silent movies

by sir82 4 Replies latest jw friends

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  sir82

  I'm a big fan of TCM, the cable channel that shows old movies without commercial interruption.

  Last night they showed "The Birth of a Nation", the famous (infamous?) DW Griffith silent classic that defends the Ku Klux Klan.

  The movie was made in 1915 - 96 years ago.

  As I was watching it, it occurred to me, "All these actors are now dead. Most have been dead for 50, 60, 70 or more years. Even the most long-lived probably died 30 or 40 years ago."

  My first thought was, it's kind of macabre, seeing images of all those young folks working nearly 100 years ago, folks who are now long since dust.

  Then I thought, "Hey, according to the WTS, I belong to the same generation as these guys". It was a perfectly ludicrous idea. How can any sane person make the claim that anyone alive today belongs to the same generation as, for example, Lillian Gish? Belongs to the same generation that grew up before airplanes and automobiles were even invented?

  It is of course the same idea that has been hashed out on this forum in dozens of threads, but it hit me anew while seeing images of people who actually did live in that generation.
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  Found Sheep

  overlap generation is so stupid I can't believe they don't all leave
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  Quendi

  In 1976 I attended a screening of The Photo-Drama of Creation in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It was interesting to watch from a historical perspective. There was a short talk given before the show in which the speaker made a curious but interesting remark. He said that practically all the actors and actresses whom the audience would see in the film were dead. After all, more than sixty years had passed since its premiere back in 1912, and he used that fact to state how close Armageddon must actually be since the 1914 generation had mostly passed away. This screening took place early in 1976 and the disappointment of 1975 was still keenly felt by many. So his remark had the effect of stirring the embers for some. Another curious thing he mentioned was that the names of those who took part in the film had largely been forgotten. Some were members of the headquarters family at that time, others apparently were not even Bible Students but had talents that C.T. Russell felt would be useful.

  I wonder if the Society shows The Photo-Drama anymore. It was produced in the years when Russell and his followers were certain that Armageddon would come in 1914 and the Bible Students were working feverishly to get their message out. Screening it today might raise more embarrassing questions about 1914 and the "generation" than the Society wants to answer. Perhaps the film has been quietly mothballed, with as little mention of it being made as possible because in some ways it is another embarrassing reminder of the false prophecies the WTS has made.

  Quendi
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  undercover

  I love TCM also... and I had a similar thought as I watched some of the Elizabeth Taylor movies they showed all day Sunday. Even though Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf aren't as old as BOAN, Cat is now over half a century old and Virgina Woolf is pushing the mid-century mark.

  It struck me as I watched these great actors of the mid 20th century who are all gone now. That generation is gone, yet somehow I'm supposed to (by WT standards) be part of that generation by the sole fact that I was alive at some point the same time as them.

  I started to say that Taylor, Paul Newman, Burl Ives or Richard Burton aren't as good examples as Gish, but then I looked up her birth date and saw that she died in 1993, later than Burton and only two years before Ives. So Ives, Gish, Taylor, Newman, you, me, and any children and grandchildren we have are all the same generation.
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  Eiben Scrood

  You're totally right to bring this up again. I've been out of the Watchtower for over 5 years and this still angers me. It is absolutely insane that they could publish something so absurd AND still have a membership. It's scary actually. It speaks to the powerful hold a cult has on its adherents.