From Jens Schweikhardt:
Stuf4 <[email protected]> wrote
in <[email protected]>:
# Huge media attention has been given to the Neil Armstrong biopic First Man in not showing the planting of the USA flag. I understand the reasons offered behind this decision. If I was the one querying the director or Ryan Gosling, I would say...
#
# Imagine doing a movie on the life of Edmund Hillary, and then during the scene of reaching the summit of Everest, not showing him raising the British flag.
What is overlooked is that symbolism is stooop^Wunnerving, and
the American instance of it especially so. An honest flag-planting
would have planted a second one right next to it, in black, red
and gold, for without Wernher von Braun and his German team,
no Armstrong would have been made to give in to political pressure
and waste a precious ten minutes satisfying those who come in
their pants when the national anthem plays.
Symbolism goes hand in hand with nationalism. It is used by nationalist
to appeal to low-insticts. The moon landing was much greater than that,
it had a human-kind dimension, as evidenced by the text on the plaque.
Kudos to Armstrong for making a reference to this in his first words.
Ditching the planting scene was totally fine. And it saves
having to clean a lot of stains in undergarment :-)
A lot of consideration was given to planting the UN flag instead of the US flag. But the powers that be decided against it.
Yes, the "shoulders of giants" that Neil stood on that day included a bunch of Nazi shoulders.
JS: "The moon landing was much greater than that, it had a human-kind dimension, as evidenced by the text on the plaque. Kudos to Armstrong for making a reference to this in his first words."
Everyone is in agreement that there is certainly this larger aspect of what the accomplishment meant. It was a singular milestone for all of human history.
But there was also the much more narrow aspect to the space race. And there's been a huge level of energy spent here on this forum explaining that aspect, in how it was driven as a primal contest of survival in the face of the nuclear ICBM threat. Most
people only acknowledge the nationalistic aspect of that most fundamental motivation that got the bills paid.
On Friday, Stephen Colbert did an excellent job in summarizing what the event meant:
Ryan Gosling's Moon Controversy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4WKqNDnpDo
"Suck it, Ruskies!"
He even called attention to the ownership aspect of the flag planting: "...America called dibs on the Moon. It's ours now."
Tho he stopped short of pointing out the illegality of doing so. I haven't seen anyone point out that key part. And here is yet another key aspect that no one is talking about:
Armstrong's quote was "...one small step for [a] man."
Half a century later, the title of this movie is "First Man".
Nobody in 1969 cared that his statement excluded half the world's population in this ostensibly human achievement. And half a century later, STILL no one cares that the book title and movie title continue this exclusion.
Imagine if NAA had come up with this words to commemorate this unquestionably historic event:
"That's one small step for a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant man. One giant leap for humankind."
And then half a century later, with whatever social progress happens in the interim, a book gets published about his life titled:
"FIRST WASP".
People would be very quick to point out that what he did was significant to far more than just the fraction of the human population that was WASP. It was significant to ALL humans.
Yet write a book with a title that excludes half the population, and come out with a movie that likewise ignores all females of our species, and even in 2018...
No One Cares.
The controversy focuses only on the nationalism-vs-globalism aspect. Women continue to be marginalized, even in the aftermath of Hidden Figures, where the world was made aware that black women *contributed* to the event. Armstrong liked to point out
how he was only one of roughly half a million people working on this program. Millions more were on the hook for *paying* for this program.
That was millions of females of the human species.
It was common in the 1960s to ignore women. During that era, it was also common to be dismissive of people with black skin. Imagine if Robert Lawrence had not been killed in that F-104 crash, but instead made it into the Apollo program. And say that
there were certain delays, and it eventually came to him to be the commander of that first lunar landing. Given the norms of the day, one can imagine that he would have been branded with the title:
FIRST NIGGER.
It was a common term back then. There were actually people who used that term in a way that was not denigrating. Every school kid who has read Huck Finn knows that.
Landing on the Moon was a milestone of technological progress. But there has also been social progress. Most people have stopped using the word 'nigger' because it has had such strong connotations of hate.
If Bob Lawrence had been the first to step foot on the Moon, is there any way in 2018 people would be accepting of a movie title "First Nigger"? Almost impossible to imagine that.
Yet here we are in 2018 with this movie focusing on this male accomplishment. And no one criticizes the title for how dehumanizing it is.
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong made:
One small step for a member of the human race. Which was one giant leap for humankind.
And look at the date even. Whether you identify the day of this singular human achievement as having happened on July 20th, the day of the Sun, or July 21st, the day of the Moon...
...right there you are exposing whether you are a person who has their horizons limited to a parochial nationalistic mentality, or whether you are a person who comprehends the bigger picture.
NAA's First Step took place on
-Sunday, USA Time
-Moonday, Global Time.
It will be interesting to see if Damien Chazelle has grasped this aspect of differing perspectives.
Time.
Elsewhere I have pointed out that NASA has traditionally used racist clocks. And they still do this today. Nobody notices. Nobody cares. And when that was stated here on this forum, people FREAKED OUT.
One day, given continued evolution and social progress, NAA will be remembered as a member of the human race, not merely a "First Man". We will live in a world that is free from racism and sexism. But clearly that day is not today.
Three years ago, back in 2015, we were given the excellent tv series The Astronaut Wives Club. It did a great job of showing how racist and sexist those days were. You could actually say that it did *too good* of a job. During the instant of Neil's
First Landing, the director cuts to the plight of a Negro boy talking to his Negro mother, explaining why he is refusing to watch the event.
That episode is actually another example of where the director made the editorial choice to not depict the flag planting. I don't recall anyone complaining about that one.
My best read on that artistic choice is that any depiction of any part of the EVA after the First Step would have been anticlimactic. And that director had already used the landing scene to highlight an anti-political statement. So the flag planting
would have been an opportunity to double down on the anti-political msg. Instead it was left with the First Step as a human achievement, with a cut to the wives watching the event at home in the living room. We were treated with the female perspective,
and the black perspective. Lily Koppel's book was all about bringing balance to the equation. Valid perspectives that have been ignored for decades.
JS: "Ditching the planting scene was totally fine."
I did not miss the planting scene in AWC. It is quite possible that when I get around to watching Damien Chazelle's version, I will not miss it either. But then again, AWC was not a story about NAA. I don't even remember if Janet was portrayed
anywhere in the entire series. She's not listed in the cast. And neither is Neil.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3530726/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast
~ CT
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