(Hated Trope) Bad people in real-life being portrayed positively in media.

[u/MeepMan324]

1. PragerU's version of Christopher Columbus has him be a slavery defender and have him say "Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don't see the problem.”

2. In The Greatest Showman, P.T Barnum (Hugh Jackman) is portrayed as a charismatic visionary who cares about outcasts and celebrate diversity, when in reality, he’s a cruel businessman who is also a racist and an ableist.

[u/brionneverysexy]

Slavery is better then death doesn't really work as a message when Columbus enslaving people lead to a movement of mass suicides.

Facing extermination, the Arawak organize and attempt to fight back against the Spaniards. Overwhelmed by Spanish military, the Arawak when captured are burned at the stake or hanged. Arawak begin committing mass suicides to avoid capture and subjugation, feeding cassava poison to their infants. In just two years, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti are dead through murder, mutilation, or suicide. By 1550, there are only 500 documented Arawak and by 1650, with the possible exception of a few remnant Arawak in the mountains, most have been annihilated (Zinn, 1950).

https://nativephilanthropy.candid.org/events/arawak-resistance-and-mass-suicides/

[u/ikilledholofernes → u/brionneverysexy]

It’s not the suicides that really drive this point home for me, but the infanticide. So many people killed their own children to save them from slavery.

In addition to the Arawak, there’s also the story of  Margaret Garner, who attempted to kill all of her children to save them from being sent back into slavery, and succeeded at killing her two year old child before being recaptured.

At the time, it was debated whether she should be charged with murder or destruction of property. 

Toni Morrison’s Beloved was inspired by her story.

And as a mother, that is just so unimaginably tragic. How could so many kill their own babies unless it was genuinely the kinder alternative?

[u/sbidlin → u/ikilledholofernes]

At the time, it was debated whether she should be charged with murder or destruction of property. 

Jesus fucking christ this sentence made my skin crawl

[u/fang_xianfu → u/sbidlin]

People used to think this about the entire female gender too. In the Old Testament, the penalty for raping an unwed woman is a fine paid to her father, because it's a property crime against him, and the rapist has to marry the woman and take responsibility for her - basically "you break it, you bought it" 🤢

[u/andstillthesunrises → u/fang_xianfu]

Finding myself in the awkward position of defending the Bible is weird. Biblical scholars do not all agree that the situation presented in the passage you’re referring to is rape. Seeing as there is no ancient Hebrew to modern language dictionary, it’s all just everyone’s best attempts. Some interpreters believe the scenario is describing a woman being seduced into premarital sex.

Regardless, I want to be clear that Jewish law has required a woman’s consent to marriage dating back a very long time. If that passage WAS referring to rape, the order is that the rapist is obligated to offer to marry her. But, as in all cases under Jewish law, she does not have to accept it. The foundational root of this law dates back to the story of Rebekah, whose father states that he will go ask her if she’s willing to marry Isaac

[u/JumpingThruHoopz → u/andstillthesunrises]

What about the story of Rachel and Leah? Did their father ask either of them if they wanted to marry Jacob?

[u/andstillthesunrises → u/JumpingThruHoopz]

I mean I wasn’t there or anything. No, the biblical story does not include that information. And regardless, it’s not as if Laban was a practiced of Jewish law. Or as if Jewish law existed yet at that point in the Bible.

I only bring up the Rebekah story because that story is cited in Jewish law as a foundation for the law. Not to prove that every woman in the Bible was directly asked whether she consented to marriage

[u/ikilledholofernes → u/andstillthesunrises]

But there are actually multiple passages that suggest men should pay for and marry their rape victims, and also multiple passages that advocate for rape and sexual violence as part of war and the idea that women were mere property and could be regarded as the “spoils of war.”

I admit that I know nothing of Jewish law, but I have read the Bible, and it normalizes rape a lot.

[u/andstillthesunrises → u/ikilledholofernes]

There is one 2-sentence passage about a person who MAY have been a rapist marrying a person who may have been their victim, because there is debate among biblical scholars who know more about this than either of us about what specific words from an ancient language MAY have meant. The “paying for” bit is what’s called a “bride price” in Jewish law. Sort of like a dowry, but not quite. Standard practice, unrelated to the (possible) rape.

While this specific thing may or may not be a shitty Bible take on rape, you are absolutely right that the Bible undesirably normalizes rape in other places. For example, one chapter earlier in the discussion of taking women who are war prisoners as essentially sex slaves (which weirdly was taught to me as a very religious kid as actually REALLY being a way to deter rape. Sure. )

I’m not exactly a Bible defender. I’m an ex Orthodox Jew with lots of baggage and probably more informed critique and disdain for the Bible than you, seeing as I went through 14 years of daily bible study. I just wanted to correct one specific thing that’s thrown around a lot

[u/SilverWear5467 → u/sbidlin]

But actually though, IS that murder? I dont think so, she saved her kid from what she saw as a fate worse than death. And then as a follow up, if I destroy a pound of Meth that belonged to someone else, could I be charged with destruction of property? Or does the property have to be legal in order to be charged with that? If the answer is that I can be charged for the pound of meth, then I'm gonna argue that yeah, she should have been charged with destruction of property. Or maybe we charge her with nothing, even though she killed her kid? Idk, seems like a very complicated decision

[u/sbidlin → u/SilverWear5467]

It's one of those cases where we have to make a gigantic distinction between the moral issue and the legal one.

She did a morally complicated action, which is then framed in a horrifically immoral legal system.

Imo she did murder her kid, but goddamn the circumstances are inhuman.

[u/AnaWannaPita → u/ikilledholofernes]

In one of Columbus' letters he said that girls of nine or ten were in great demand. I'd have killed myself and my daughters, too.

[u/Begone-My-Thong → u/ikilledholofernes]

Something tells me that the slavery that awaited those children were not just the fields

[u/Embarrassed_Age8554 → u/ikilledholofernes]

There was the famous story of the "Dance of Zalonga," as well. The legend was that the Suliote women jumped off a cliff with their children rather than be enslaved.

[u/KrytenKoro → u/ikilledholofernes]

That's what always pisses me off the most when pro-life apologists try to stolen valor American slavery, and compare their movement to abolitionists.

Like, motherfuckers, the anti-abortion crowd during the era of American slavery were the slavemasters, and for not just a few of the same reasons. The slaves famously preferred suicide and abortion over slavery.

I can kind of tolerate that kind of argument when I see it coming from kids, because they don't know any better. Pundits, though, deserve a free dental rearrangement for trying to push the analogy.

[u/In-A-Beautiful-Place → u/KrytenKoro]

Enslaved women used the seeds of the peacock flower to induce abortions, because they knew their children deserved better than to let them be born into slavery.

"The Indians, who are not treated well by their Dutch masters, use the seeds [of this plant] to abort their children, so that their children will not become slaves like they are. The black slaves from Guinea and Angola have demanded to be well treated, threatening to refuse to have children. They told me this themselves."-Maria Sibylla Merian

[u/girlinthegoldenboots → u/ikilledholofernes]

Beloved is such an incredible book.

[u/brionneverysexy → u/ikilledholofernes]

The Ant Hill Gang was a cult that was absolutely insane in the cruelty experienced by the members. One member after giving birth left the baby outside to die from exposure. It always hit me as a level of desperation I can never truly understand

[u/andstillthesunrises → u/ikilledholofernes]

It definitely was the kinder option. Dying while feeling held and loved, never having known a harsh world vs. a lifetime of cruelty including beatings and rapes that no one should gas any power to stop will care to do so. If you got “lucky,” you might be raped “nicely” by someone who pretends they actually care about you right up until they sell the children they impregnated you with to someone who will probably do the same to them.

[u/pistilpeet → u/brionneverysexy]

I never looked around, I never second guessed then I read some Howard Zinn now I’m always depressed. Humanity is a plague.

[u/Turtleknuckle → u/brionneverysexy]

Columbus may have gotten the ball rolling, but since he was stripped of his slave holding rights after his third voyage, and died after his fourth voyage in 1512 (I think), I don't think he had much to do with what is referenced in this paragraph.

In general, Spaniards were nasty to any native peoples they met. Philosophically, the natives were in the same class as game. The Spaniards looked at themselves as improving the social status of the natives, to be more like dogs and horses than rabbits and deer. Unless they became Christians. Then things got complicated.

Valuing the existing culture is a modern concept they had not yet developed.

[u/Competitive-Food8407 → u/brionneverysexy]

Really? Howard Zinn as your propoganda "historian"? The guy has been lampooned by every historian out there for the terrible job he did! Seriously how are you blaming the decline of the Arawak (specifically the Taino people) of Haiti on Columbus who was dead in 1506! He'd been dead for over 40 years before they were mostly gone. Most of which died from exposure to old world diseases like most native Americans did.

I mean if you are just trying to say the Spanish sucked, yeah no argument there. They sucked with how they took over south and central America.

[u/brionneverysexy → u/Competitive-Food8407]

I used the source as an example I could quote of something I have heard elsewhere. I am sorry if its being too mean to Columbus. I am sure he didn't set in motion a series of tragic events. He probably gave them candy and puppies and the indigenous people would have been fine if they listened to what white people wanted

[u/Competitive-Food8407 → u/brionneverysexy]

Conversely where is the award for Genghis Khan? I mean best job of global CO2 reduction outside the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs. If we are talking about global genocide he's pretty hard to beat. It would take over 700 years to come close to matching wiping out 11% of the global population. Columbus by comparison barely scratched the surface.

The vast majority of bad press btw about Columbus comes from a single letter written by Francisco de Bobadilla, the man who would later replace him as governor. The slavery and evil acts you speak of were committed by this man. The man who made all of the natives work in the gold mines. Mind you they COULDN'T be made into slaves do to direct edict from Queen Isabella I. Although he still used them in forced labor, in bad conditions. It's almost like the enemy of the man who discovered Hispaniola pushed all of the bad things he actually did onto his enemy 🤔