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seas-storyarchive · 8 months ago

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Lens Flair - What if

Note: this has Angel and Alastor friendship; could be seen as Radiorose (if not in one-sided)

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It started as a taunting gift from Angel.

Hmm.. no, can't kill him. Valentino would call for war. Not to mention Charlie would be angry with him. No, no, that simply wouldn't be do.

He was hesitant, at first. He had his monocle, his vision was leagues better in death than it had been in life. So..

"Angel Dust?"

"Yeah, Smiles?" Angel was sitting with the others, most likely for cover from whatever Alastor would potentially do to him.

"Why on earth did you get me.. these?" He showed the item, they were red glasses with black rims.

So, he didn't sound mad? Well, not yet anyways. "Oh! It's cause yous like ta read, and ya squint a lot when yous confused at somethin', and I thought it'd be a nice way not ta strain yer lookin' at all dhose small prints or gettin' lost in da mental sause or whatevah's up dhere." Angel waved an arm about to illustrate his point. "Gotta keep dhem doe eyes looking wide, afta all. Let me know if dhey work alright, or if ya need a prescription pair, I got a guy dhat owes me a favor."

He looked at the glasses in his hands, feeling conflicted. "Hmm..." Dare he put them on? In front of others? Well, he was no stranger to glasses.. but..

"Here, lemme help ya." When the fuck did Angel get up and come so close!?

"Hmm!?" Alastor was frozen, like a dear in headlights, when Angel pulled the arms of the glasses open and carefully slid them onto Alastor's face.

Despite how having human ears anymore and the constant hair products, Alastor's hair still retained enough thickness to hold the glasses in place along with his nose.

Seeing the world through red lenses? Hm.. wonderful! Oh, if only they had these in his time! What a world of difference it would have made!

"Hey, Smiles." The snapping of fingers in front of him made him blink and his ears twitch.

Alastor looked up to see Angel had backed away a bit, one lower hand holding the elbow of the upper hand that wasn't in his face, trying to decide if he liked the image.

"How you feelin'-!?" A hug. A fucking hug. Initiated, by Alastor. Angel hesitantly hugged him back, as Alastor wasn't known for his hugs and- was that a tail that was brushin' against his lower arms! Holy hell!

"Wonderful, my fine fellow." He pulled back to smile at Angel. "One would even say.. enriched."

"Well, let's see." He turned to the others on the couch and chairs, watching. Al's face mostly blocked by Angel, so they weren't seeing much. "Nifft, can I see the book Al was readin'?"

"Okay!" Niffty grabbed the book and hopped off the couch, making her way over. Her eye widened when she saw Alastor's face, gasping. "Oh, Alastor sir! You look great!" She said as Angel took the book from her.

There was a very soft noise of something brushing against fabric - oh yea, the tail - as Alastor smiled at Niffty. "Why thank you, Niffty! I feel, well, simply nifty."

"Don't count it yet, let's check dhat readin' ah yours." Angel opened to the first page, mindful of the satin bookmark halfway through, holding it up. "Can you read dhis?"

Alastor tried, and found out he could - the noise getting louder as he made a 'happy deer noise' as Charlie and Niffty joked once. "Ho ho! Why, I haven't been able to see this clearly since 1931 when I got a new prescription! I'd venture to say that this is the clearest that everything has ever been!"

"Ignorin' dhat littl' tidbit for now- you ready ta put on a show?" Angel asked with a smirk.

"I suppose..?" Alastor tilted his head, squinting - nope, glasses seemed to only make this funnier. But Angel wisely kept it quiet as he turned around.

"Alright, yous mugs! Get ready fer a surpise.." Angel paused, and turned to Alastor, "wait, Smiles, do the creepy neck thin- yea, that.." creepy eyes on the back of his head bitch. "Oh, wait! Can you strike a pose - oh dhere's da money maker baby!"

Angel turned back to the crowd, clearing his throat. "Now, please give a round ah applause fer Smiles and his new eyewear!" He stepped away from Alastor.

They saw the back of his head, nothing new, while his body was in a performative pose.

"And- turn, baby! Show off dhat money maker!" Angel encouraged, his hands held up to form a square to 'focus' on Alastor.

Turn Alastor did, a wide and friendly smile on his face, to show off his new eyewear.

Husk spat out his drink. Vaggie's mouth dropped open. Lucifer cut himself while carving a duck. Charlie and Rosie - she'd helped Angel pick out the glasses, of course she was there - were silent.

Charlie was the first to speak, seeing the slow deflation of Alastor's face. "Oh Al! You look amazing!" She stood up with a smile, walking towards him and taking his hands.

"Y- you really think so?" Alastor asked, with a stutter, embarrassed. "I uh.. I have a face meant for radio and all, so I never truly considered getting a new prescription in death.."

"Uh, yeah! You look amazing!" Charlie turned to the room. "Right, everyone?" She squinted her eyes a bit in warning.

"Uh, yeah.. nice eyewear." Husk said, in fear of his life, before quickly starting to chug his beer.

"Not bad, Antlers." Lucifer said, finally mentally saying 'fuck it' and summoning a first aid kit.

"It suits you, truly." Ah, Vagatha.. always so curt with him.

And now, always time for the honest opinion of-

"Why I must say!" Rosie was fanning her face and - was she blushing!? "I wasn't expecting those to be such a perfect fit."

Oh.. oh, Alastor could work with this.

"Really? How so?" Alastor grinned at he moved away from Charlie to prance about - also testing his spacial awareness with the glasses.

"Oh, you know! I just.. glasses, and you, and your.. your immaculate image! I didn't want to up end-"

Alastor was suddenly in her face - nose to nose, for lack of a comparison, good ol' Alastor and ignoring boundaries - and all words died in Rosie's mouth. Oh, oh no - he's hot!

"Up end, how?" Alastor grinned as he asked her - breath of death be damned. "I think these make me look more, hm, articulate with my facial expressions." He batted his doe eye lashes at her. "Don't you think?"

Fuck! Fucking fuck! Rosie had trapped herself, the sound of sharp nails gripping and tearing into upholstery was heard.

And then - this little moment was ruined.

"Yeah! Get it, babies!" Angel whistled and started to whoop.

Alastor pulled away too quick for Rosie's liking, but at the same time she was also relieved.

"Well! If you'll all excuse me," Alastor backed up from Rosie, a smile of - oh, so triumph was what he was going for.. that bitch, "I must prepare for a radio broadcast!" And then, he vanished into shadows.

"Um, Rosie?" Charlie's voice made Rosie snap her head towards her. "Are.. are you okay?" Was she.. smiling?

"Y- yes. I'm.. I'm fine." No, she was not. She stood up, retracting her nails from the chair. "I, have some business to tend to in Cannibal Town! Fair well for the day, all!"

And, she was gone. After a minute..

"Damn, Smiles got a way wit' da ladies!" Angel said with a grin as he laughed. "Did you see dah way dhat chick looked at Smiles? Looked like she was ready for some bow-chicka-wow-wow!"

"Angel Dust, please!" Charlie scolded.

"What? You heard how she grippped Smiles' chair!" Angel laughed. "Oh! Oh man! At least now, I don't gotta teach Smiles how to charm someone! Kid's doing fine on his own!" He was now doubled over.

"Didn't think he had it in him." Husk said, before going to down another drink to get rid of the images the first one disgustingly left him with.

"Guys.." Charlie was trying to get them to stop.

"Seriously. Stop it." Vaggie had to agree with Charlie.

Angel kept laughing. "Hey- hey Luci? What you think? Smiles on top?"

Lucifer gave an ungodly snort. "Guy is definitely a power bottom with her."

Angel was now on the floor. "That's even funnier holy shit!"

Niffty's eye widened. "New lore.." She then rushed off to go write her stories.

"Charlie, let's just leave them be." Vaggie said, guiding Charlie out of the room.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel what if #radiorose #could be #one sided radiorose #also could be #hazbin alastor #hazbin rosie

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dragoneyes618 · 4 months ago

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Considered the Father of the Indian Nation, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869 – 1948), aka Bapu (a Gujarati endearment for “father”), was a lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist and political ethicist whose use of nonviolent resistance led the successful campaign for Indian independence from British rule and inspired worldwide movements for civil rights and freedom.

Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability and, above all, achieving self-rule. He famously began to live in a self-sufficient residential community, to eat simple food, and undertake long fasts as a means of both introspection and political protest. Bringing anti-colonial nationalism to the common Indians, he called for the British to quit India in 1942 and was imprisoned several times for many years in both South Africa and India. In August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan, leading to extensive religious violence throughout the country.

Gandhi visited Punjab and Bengal, the primary affected areas, attempting to alleviate misery and, in the months that followed, he famously undertook several hunger strikes to halt the religious violence, with his final fast beginning in Delhi at age 78 on January 12, 1948. He was murdered a few weeks later by a militant Hindu nationalist unhappy about Gandhi’s defense of both Pakistan and Indian Muslims.

Gandhi’s first job was with a Jewish law firm in Johannesburg and some of his closest friends and confidants, both in Johannesburg (1893 – 1914) and later in India, were Jews. He lauded the Jewish spirituality, high standards, and sense of community and, after visiting the synagogue in Johannesburg during Pesach, he expressed his culinary delight with “the Jews’ unleavened cakes” and wrote that “you can almost say that I was keeping Passover with my Jewish friends.”

He, in turn, was always held in high regard by the Jews. In 1931, he met with members of Bene Israel to discuss their participation in the nationalist movement, but he suggested that they join in support of the movement only after India won its independence from the British, urging them not to become involved in politics before then because they constitute such a small minority.

The Bene Israel, sometimes referred to as the “Native Jew” caste, are a community of Jews in India said to be the descendants of one of the Ten Lost Tribes that settled in India many centuries ago. Starting in the second half of the 18th century after learning about normative Sephardic Judaism, they migrated to cities throughout British India, primarily to Mumbai, where they opened their first synagogue in 1796 and became prominent within the British colonial government.

Exhibited here is the editorial on the front page of the February 1948 issue of Schema that was dedicated to mourning Gandhi’s loss. After waxing enthusiastic about the greatness – indeed, the near deity status – of the late Indian leader, the editorial addresses Gandhi’s contribution to the Jewish community:

What does the passing of this great saint and believer in the universality of true religion mean to our small community in India? Our debt to him is no less unquestionable. Apart from the general principles of morality on which he based his every thought and action and which afforded all communities including ourselves the protection of the rock-like foundations of the true freedom and self-expression, he gave concrete expression to his sympathy for our cause and our sufferings on numerous occasions and in no uncertain manner. We are proud and grateful to place on record that he had the greatest respect and admiration for the Jewish people and all they symbolized – for he did not himself stand for what they had stood through centuries of persecution and suffering – the eternal principles of justice and morality against the savage hand of tyranny, the belief that the spirit shall triumph over the sword.

Indeed, Gandhi sympathized with Jews and saw their plight as similar to that of many Indians:

My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions. Through these friends I came to learn much of their age-long persecution. They have been the untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their treatment by Christians and the treatment of untouchables by Hindus is very close. Religious sanction has been invoked in both cases for the justification of the inhuman treatment meted out to them. Apart from the friendships, therefore, there is the more common universal reason for my sympathy for the Jews… There the Indians occupied precisely the same place that the Jews occupy in Germany… A fundamental clause in the Transvaal constitution was that there should be no equality between the whites and colored races including Asiatics. There, too, the Indians were consigned to ghettos described as locations. The other disabilities were almost of the same type as those of the Jews in Germany. The Indians, a mere handful, resorted to satyagraha [nonviolent resistance] without any backing from the world outside or the Indian Government…

During a massive review of millions of its archival documents in 2019, the National Library of Israel unearthed a letter handwritten by Gandhi on September 1, 1939 – the very day that World War II broke out in Europe – in which he sends Rosh Hashanah greetings to Avraham E. Shohet, a local Jewish Indian official:

You have my good wishes for your new year. How I wish the new year may mean an era of peace for your afflicted people.

Shohet was head of the Bombay Zionist Association (BZA), president of the Bombay branch of Keren Hayesod, the Bombay city office’s Zionist organization, and editor of The Jewish Advocate, the official publication of the BZA and the Jewish National Fund in India.

But did Gandhi deserve the veneration and affection of the world’s Jews? The answer to that question is far from black and white.

It is doubtful that most Jews would consider Gandhi a great friend, or even a moral person, when they learn that, notwithstanding his characterization of Hitler as the ultimate in evil and as a man with whom negotiation is impossible, his solution to the Holocaust was that Jews should happily accept their fate and proudly submit themselves to mass extermination . . . which he readily admits would be the inevitable result of the Jews wielding “peaceful resistance” against the Nazis.

In a seminal letter he wrote from Segaon (a village in the Khargone district in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh where he established an ashram and settled) – which he published as The Jews in the November 26, 1938 issue of the Harijan newspaper – Gandhi argues that “the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history;” that “the tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to have gone;” and that “he is doing it with religious zeal.” He writes that “If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified.”

However, because he does not believe in war under any circumstances, he concludes that “there can be no war against Germany, even for such a crime as is being committed against the Jews:”

Can the Jews resist this organized and shameless persecution? Is there a way to preserve their self-respect, and not to feel helpless, neglected and forlorn? I submit there is. No person who has faith in a living G-d need feel helpless or forlorn. Tetragrammaton of the Jews is a G-d more personal than the G-d of the Christians, the Mussalmans or the Hindus, though as a matter of fact in essence, He is common to all and one without a second and beyond description. But as the Jews attribute personality to G-d and believe that He rules every action of theirs, they ought not to feel helpless. If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would have confidence that in the end the rest are bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain, France and America were to declare hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner joy, no inner strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Tetragrammaton had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the G-d fearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.

Gandhi even went so far as to send two conciliatory letters to Hitler, the first on July 23, 1939 and the second on December 24, 1940, in which he addressed the Fuhrer as a “friend” and wrote that he did not believe the German dictator was the “monster” that his opponents described. He raised the issue with Hitler of the Germans’ treatment of Poland and the Czechs – with nary a mention of the Jews – and he asked his closest friend, the Jewish Zionist Hermann Kallenbach (more on him later), to pray for Hitler.

Even after World War II, Gandhi essentially remained silent on the Holocaust and, most inconceivably, he spoke out against the “wickedness” of the trials of Nazi war criminals. In a June 1947 interview with his biographer, Louis Fischer, he said:

Hitler killed five million Jews [the correct number, of course, is six million Jews, but what’s another million Jews more or less?]. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs… It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany… As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.

Gandhi defenders argue that, in urging Jews to accept martyrdom during the Shoah, he was only being consistent with his core values of pacifism and peaceful resistance and that this was not fatalism but, rather, an assertion of will so strong that it would deny the Nazis a sense of ethical and moral superiority over their victims. This position has not only been characterized as passivity bordering on cowardice but, I would argue, a naivete that is stunning, dangerous, and disgusting. Moreover, as I discuss in more detail below, Gandhi’s views of the Jews, the Holocaust, and Eretz Yisrael exhibit a sharp and indisputable double standard that is the very antithesis of “consistency”

Perhaps the Jerusalem Post said it best: in an article titled Repudiating Gandhian Pacifism in the Face of Mass Murder in 2016, the Post summarized Gandhi’s philosophy regarding the Shoah as “when some evil regime or group wants to attack and kill you, the worst thing you can do is try to run and hide to save your life.” No matter how much Gandhi may have sympathized with the Jewish condition, he was oblivious to Jewish survival.

Thus, in a 1939 response to Gandhi’s 1938 article, Martin Buber, the renowned Austrian Jewish and Israeli philosopher who had made aliyah from Germany only a short time earlier, wrote what should have been obvious to any rational person, let alone to a national leader and internationally-respected philosopher like Gandhi:

The five years I myself spent under the present [Nazi] regime, I observed many instances of genuine satyagraha [nonviolent resistance] among the Jews, instances showing a strength of spirit in which there was no question of bartering their rights or of being bowed down, and where neither force nor cunning was used to escape the consequences of their behavior. Such actions, however, exerted apparently not the slightest influence on their opponents. All honor indeed to those who displayed such strength of soul! But I cannot recognize herein a watchword for the general behavior of German Jews that might seem suited to exert an influence on the oppressed or on the world. An effective stand in the form of non-violence may be taken against unfeeling human beings in the hope of gradually bringing them to their senses; but a diabolic universal steamroller cannot thus be withstood.

Moreover, Gandhi extended his opposition to Jewish self-defense against Nazi genocide by resolutely opposing their right to go to Eretz Yisrael, whether to establish a Jewish State there or even to simply save themselves from death at the hand of the Third Reich. He argued that the mere Jewish agitation for a national home would provide justification to the Nazis to expel them – as if Hitler needed any additional excuses – and that the Jews should engage only in non-violence against the Arabs and “offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them.” In March 1921, he issued a statement supporting the proposition that Muslims must retain control over Eretz Yisrael.

In his 1938 article, Gandhi – almost unbelievably – writes:

Several letters have been received by me asking me to declare my views about the Arab-Jew question in Palestine and the persecution of the Jews in Germany. It is not without hesitation that I venture to offer my views on this very difficult question… [After expressing sympathy for the Jewish plight:] But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. [But] why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood? Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or do they want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the national home affords a colorable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews.

Not surprisingly, in the wake of its October 7th butchery, this quote has been resurrected by Hamas, and its supporters around the world who argue that Gandhi, the great statesman and man of peace, was clear that “Palestine” belongs to the Arabs and that the Jews are, at best, interlopers.

In his article, Gandhi concludes:

And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about it in the wrong way. The Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart. The same G-d rules the Arab heart who rules the Jewish heart. They can offer satyagraha in front of the Arabs and offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them. They will find the world opinion in their favor in their religious aspiration. There are hundreds of ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if they will only discard the help of the British bayonet. As it is, they are co-shares with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them… Let the Jews who claim to be the chosen race prove their title by choosing the way of non-violence for vindicating their position on earth.

Thus, argued Gandhi, the “real Jerusalem” was the spiritual one and, as such, Zionism was unnecessary and Jews could practice their faith in their native countries – including, as we have seen, Nazi Germany.

In Buber’s 1939 correspondence to Gandhi cited above, he noted that Arabs had themselves come to possess Eretz Yisrael “surely by conquest and, in fact, a conquest by settlement,” and he appealed to Gandhi to recognize the responsibility for violence and unrest that was shared by Palestinian Arabs, but Gandhi would not yield. Similarly, Moshe Shertok, as head of the Jewish Agency (later to become Prime Minster of Israel as Moshe Sharett), also asked Gandhi to raise his authoritative voice in favor of a Jewish autonomous government in Eretz Yisrael, but he refused.

Statue of Gandhi and Kallenbach outside Rusne synagogue in Lithuania (2015).

Moreover, A. E. Shohet, the leader of the Indian-Jewish community and Gandhi’s good Jewish friend, reached out to Hermann Kallenbach, a wealthy Jewish Zionist architect and carpenter to whom Gandhi referred as his “soulmate,” to intervene with Gandhi on behalf of Zionism. In May 1910, Kallenbach had funded the establishment of Tolstoy Farm, the South African prototype for Gandhi’s ashram, where the two had lived together; Ghandi once wrote to him “Your portrait (the only one) stands on the mantelpiece in my room . . . even if I wanted to dismiss you from my thoughts, I could not do it.”

How to explain Gandhi’s outrageous views on the Holocaust and Israel? It certainly wasn’t due to antisemitism, since he loved all people and peoples – including, as we have seen, Nazis and terrorists – and he often spoke out in support of Jews. Some authorities suggest that he adopted his views on Jews because he understood Judaism only through the lens of Christianity and that he reduced Judaism to a religion without considering its nationalistic character and, as such, he excluded Zionism from the Jewish identity. Moreover, his closest Jewish friends, including Kallenbach and Sonya Schlesin, were all universalists largely ignorant of rabbinical philosophy and law and post-Biblical rituals and customs; thus, for example, Gandhi condemned the Bible’s “eye for an eye” rule for its inhumanity and violence, wholly unaware of the oral law teaching that the Biblically proscribed punishment was never meant to be interpreted literally but, rather, that the tortfeasor must compensate his victim through the payment of financial damages.

Another proffered explanation for Gandhi’s anti-Zionism was that, although he was well-informed about the special Jewish relationship with Eretz Yisrael from Kallenbach, Schlesin, and others, his pro-Arab bias and battle against British colonialism and imperialism trumped all other considerations so, unlike every other people, religion, and nationality, he chose to disregard Jewish singularity. Moreover, his desire to placate Hindus and Muslims and keep them united in India surely colored his attitude towards Zionism. In a manifestly undeniable double standard, he held Jews to the highest possible spiritual standard while judging the “proud Arabs” by the “accepted canons of right and wrong.”

Double standards seem to be the rule, rather than the exception, when it came Gandhi’s attitude to the Jews. As another example – in what can only be characterized as a truly monstrous double standard – he acknowledged that nonviolence was not possible for the Polish people in 1939 and praised their violent resistance to Hitler, at the same time he was telling the Jews to go peacefully and joyfully to death by their Nazi executioners. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize five times, but never won; yet, he continues to be admired by many Jewish leaders, including David Ben Gurion, who hung a photograph of only one person in his bedroom: Mahatma Gandhi.

#mahatma gandhi #gandhi #the holocaust #holocaust #world war ii #history #antisemitism #judaism #jumblr

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thepastisalreadywritten · 1 year ago

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Hachiko: The world's most loyal dog turns 100

2 July 2023

The Chinese tagline on the movie poster says it all: "I will wait for you, no matter how long it takes."

It tells the true story of Hachiko, the faithful dog that continued to wait for its master at a train station in Japan long after his death.

The cream white Akita Inu, born 100 years ago, has been memorialised in everything from books to movies to the cult science fiction sitcom Futurama.

And the Chinese iteration - the third after a Japanese version in 1987, and the Richard Gere-starrer in 2009 - is a hit at the box office.

There have been tales of other devoted hounds such as Greyfriars Bobby, but none with the global impact of Hachiko.

A bronze statue of him has stood outside Shibuya Station in Tokyo, where he waited in vain for a decade, since 1948.

The statue was first erected in 1934 before being recycled for the war effort during World War Two.

Japanese schoolchildren are taught the story of Chuken Hachiko - or loyal dog Hachiko - as an example of devotion and fidelity.

''Hachiko represents the ideal Japanese citizen with his unquestioning devotion," says Professor Christine Yano of the University of Hawaii - "loyal, reliable, obedient to a master, understanding, without relying upon rationality, their place in the larger scheme of things."

The story of Hachiko

Hachiko was born on 10 November 1923 in the city of Odate in Akita prefecture, the original home of Akitas.

A large-sized Japanese dog, the Akita is one of the country's oldest and most popular breeds.

Designated by the Japanese government as a national icon in 1931, they were once trained to hunt animals like wild boar and elk.

"Akita dogs are calm, sincere, intelligent, and brave [and] obedient to their masters," said Eietsu Sakuraba, author of an English language children's book about Hachiko.

"On the other hand, it also has a stubborn personality and is wary of anyone other than its master."

The year Hachiko was born, Hidesaburo Ueno, a renowned agricultural professor and a dog lover, asked a student to find him an Akita puppy.

After a gruelling train journey, the puppy arrived at the Ueno residence in Shibuya district on 15 January 1924, where it was initially thought dead.

According to Hachiko's biographer, Prof Mayumi Itoh, Ueno and his wife Yae nursed him back to health over the next six months.

Ueno named him Hachi, or eight in Japanese. Ko is an honorific bestowed by Ueno's students.

The long wait

Ueno took a train to work several times a week. He was accompanied to Shibuya station by his three dogs, including Hachiko. The trio would then wait there for his return in the evening.

On 21 May 1925, Ueno, then 53, died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Hachiko had been with him for just 16 months.

"While people were attending the wake, Hachi smelled Dr Ueno from the house and went inside the living room. He crawled under the coffin and refused to move," writes Prof Itoh.

Hachiko spent the next few months with different families outside Shibuya but eventually, in the summer of 1925, he ended up with Ueno's gardener Kikusaburo Kobayashi.

Having returned to the area where his late master lived, Hachiko soon resumed his daily commute to the station, rain or shine.

"In the evening, Hachi stood on four legs at the ticket gate and looked at each passenger as if he were looking for someone," writes Prof Itoh.

Station employees initially saw him as a nuisance. Yakitori vendors would pour water on him and little boys bullied and hit him.

However, he gained nationwide fame after Japanese daily Tokyo Asahi Shimbun wrote about him in October 1932.

The station received donations of food for Hachiko each day, while visitors came from far and wide to see him.

Poems and haikus were written about him. A fundraising event in 1934 to make a statue of him reportedly drew a crowd of 3,000.

Hachiko's eventual death on 8 March 1935 at the age of 11 made the front page of many newspapers. He was found on a street in Shibuya.

In March 2011, scientists finally settled the cause of death of Hachikō: the dog had both terminal cancer and a filaria infection.

There were also four yakitori skewers in Hachikō's stomach, but the skewers did not damage his stomach nor cause his death.

At his funeral, Buddhist monks offered prayers for him and dignitaries read eulogies. Thousands visited his statue in the following days.

In impoverished post-war Japan, a fundraising drive for a new statue of Hachiko even managed to raise 800,000 yen, an enormous sum at the time, worth about 4bn yen (£22m; $28m) today.

"In retrospect, I feel that he knew that Dr Ueno would not come back, but he kept waiting - Hachiko taught us the value of keeping faith in someone," wrote Takeshi Okamoto in a newspaper article in 1982.

As a high school student, he had seen Hachiko at the station daily.

Remembering Hachiko

Every year on 8 April, a memorial service for Hachiko is held outside Shibuya Station.

His statue is often decorated with scarves, Santa hats and, most recently, a surgical mask.

His mount is on display at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo.

Some of his remains are interred at the Aoyama Cemetery, alongside Ueno and Yae.

Statues of him have also been cast in Odate, Ueno's hometown Hisai, the University of Tokyo and Rhode Island, the American setting for the 2009 movie.

Odate also has a series of events lined up this year for his 100th birthday.

Will the world's most loyal dog still be celebrated a century from now? Prof Yano says yes because she believes the "heroism of Hachiko" is not defined by any particular period - rather it is timeless.

Mr Sakuraba is equally optimistic.

"Even 100 years from now, this unconditional, devoted love will remain unchanged, and the story of Hachiko will live on forever."

🤍🐕🤍

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thechanelmuse · 2 years ago

Photo

My Book Review

In his first memoir, The Big Sea, Langston Hughes unveils his self-portrait as a depressed, vulnerable young world traveler in his 20s in the 1920s, aiming to understand his family and sense of self against the barriers of society. His gift of words and will to finally be leads to his self-discovery, awakening, and budding friendships in the midst of examining the racial construct and class structures around him in various countries. I Wonder As I Wonder is a continuation of his wanderlust spirit around the world into the 1930s. Langston paints a portrait of societal structures and cultures around the world —Cuba, Haiti, Russia, Soviet Central Asia, Japan, Spain — (even witnessing dictatorships and the Spanish Civil War) and within the US. He makes his imprint as a gifted wordsmith during the The Great Depression, meeting new and some familiar faces along the way. Just as The Big Sea, I Wonder As I Wonder is a layered sensory book. You feel like you’re right there in the past as a curious world traveler, seeing through his eyes, taking field notes, witnessing the shaping of various countries and the way it translates to the daily lives of the people, and how it all compares/contrasts to today. It's funny that upon concluding this memoir, Langston still writes about wanting to be a writer: “But that is what I want to be, a writer, recording what I see commenting upon it, and distilling from my own emotions a personal interpretation.” The thought of doing while actually doing. Journeying through the preceding pages with him, you understand it's really his longing to make his passion a successful earning career in spite of barriers. He did indeed.

SN: The photos aren’t included in book, but are pivotal to the details in the book.

Langston Hughes with dog on beach at Carmel, California (1934)

The next 3 photos are Langston Hughes in Haiti (1931)

The next 2 photos are Langston Hughes and Dorothy West in route to Russia (1932)

The Russian film company Meschrabpom's "Black and White" film team on the SS Europe (1932). Front row from left: Mildred Jones, Louis Thompson, Constance White, Katherine Jenkins, Sylvia Garner, Dorothy West, Mollie Lewis. Middle row from left: Wayland Rudd, Frank Montero, Matt Crawford, George Sample, Laurence Alberga, Langston Hughes, Juanita Lewis, Alan McKenzie. Back row from left: Ted Poston, Henry Lee Moon, Thurston Lewis, Lloyd Patterson, Loren Miller

Langston Hughes and German journalist Arthur Koestler (far right) on a cotton kolhoy in Soviet Central Asia (1932)

Langston Hughes in Ashgabat (1932)

Thaddeus Battle, former student at Howard University and activist in the National Negro Congress, Bernard “Bunny” Rucker, and Langston Hughes on the battlefield in Spain (January 1938)

Langston Hughes, Soviet journalist Mikhail Koltsov, Ernest Hemingway, Cuban poet and journalist Nicolás Guillén in Madrid, 1937

#langston hughes #I wonder as I wander #dorothy west #lloyd patterson #arthur koestler #ernest hemingway #thechanelmuse reviews #book review

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the-rewatch-rewind · 1 year ago

Text

Another new episode!

Script below the break.

Hello and welcome back to The Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane, and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies in a 20-year period. Today I will be talking about number 15 on my list: Columbia Pictures’ 1940 fast-talking comedy His Girl Friday, directed by Howard Hawks, written by Charles Lederer (and uncredited Ben Hecht and Morrie Ryskind), based on the play “The Front Page” by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, and starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, and Ralph Bellamy.

After a four-month absence, reporter Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) returns to the office of The Morning Post to inform her ex-husband/boss, editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant), that she is about to marry insurance agent Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy), settle down, and quit the newspaper business for good. Desperate to win her back, both professionally and romantically, Walter entices Hildy to write one last great story for the paper, while doing everything he can to sabotage her relationship with Bruce.

I don’t remember any of my first impressions of this movie, or if I had seen it before I started keeping track. I assume it was one of the many old movies I got from the library relatively early in my foray into Old Hollywood, so I might have seen it in 2002. I definitely saw it once in 2003, once in 2005, once each in 2007 through 2009, three times in 2010, three times in 2012, once in each year from 2013 through 2016, twice in 2017, once in 2018, twice in 2019, and twice in 2022. I know that in 2010, I took a class at community college called “film as literature,” in which some assignments involved picking a movie and three different aspects of filmmaking, and discussing how those three aspects enhanced the story of that particular film. The instructor advised us to watch the movie we were writing about three times, focusing on a different aspect each time, and His Girl Friday was one of the movies I wrote a paper like that about (I focused on dialogue, props, and lighting), so that explains the three times in 2010. But I can’t think of a good explanation for why I watched it three times again in 2012, aside from the fact that it’s a great movie that I always enjoy watching. It’s also one that feels particularly appropriate to include in my annual Cary Grant birthday marathon, because it happened to come out on his birthday in 1940, so that’s part of why I watch it almost every year.

By far the best and most noteworthy aspect of this movie is its rapid-fire dialogue. Yes, a lot of old movies are very dialogue-heavy with people talking pretty fast, but like, His Girl Friday takes it to a whole other level. A typical movie averages around 90 words of dialogue per minute; His Girl Friday averages around 240. Many lines were specifically written so that the beginning and the end didn’t matter, allowing the actors to talk over each other, as people do in real conversations, without preventing the audience from understanding what was going on. All the fast, overlapping talking is particularly impressive given that multi-track recording hadn’t been developed yet, so they couldn’t adjust the volumes of different speakers separately in post-production; they just turned different overhead microphones on and off so the primary speaker was louder when they were recording, with some scenes reportedly requiring up to 35 switches – shout out to that sound department. At the time, the record for fastest film dialogue was held by the 1931 version of The Front Page, and director Howard Hawks was determined to break it with this adaptation, which he later proved he had done by screening the two versions next to each other. He also encouraged the actors to improvise, which made filming take longer – as it had with his earlier Bringing Up Baby – but helped the conversations feel even more authentic. Rosalind Russell felt that Cary Grant had more good lines in the script than she did, so she hired her own writer to help enhance her dialogue. Apparently at one point, after she did something unscripted, Grant broke character and said into camera, “Is she going to do that?” which Hawks really wanted to keep in the movie, but ultimately didn’t make the final cut. But several noteworthy ad-libs remained, including at least two, possibly three, amazing inside jokes. One is when Walter says, “He looks like that fellow in the movies…Ralph Bellamy” about Bruce, who did, in fact, look exactly like Ralph Bellamy, the actor playing him. And then there’s the part when the mayor says, “You’re through,” and Walter replies with, “The last man that said that to me was Archie Leach,” in reference to Cary Grant’s birth name – yes, he had the same birth surname as me, but we’re not related as far as I know. And the third, which has not been officially confirmed as an ad-lib or intentional reference but might have been, is when Walter calls the man hiding in a desk a “mock turtle,” which was the character Grant played in the 1933 Alice in Wonderland movie.

So basically, this film was made specifically for Cary Grant fans, and that’s a big part of why I love it. Walter Burns is one of his less likable characters – he’s selfish and deceptive and manipulative – but also one of his most fun to watch. Grant nails every beat of the breakneck-paced dialogue, knowing exactly when to pull focus toward himself and when to fade back to let his scene partner shine through. He still keeps going in the background, though, which helps make this movie especially rewatchable. As you can probably tell from the mere existence of this podcast, I enjoy rewatching movies anyway, but with His Girl Friday in particular, there are so many excellent moments that I didn’t notice until I’d seen the whole film many times, and I’m still noticing new things with every rewatch. While you don’t need to hear the overlapping bits of dialogue to follow the movie, once you’re familiar with the story it’s very fun to go back and listen for the parts you missed before. And several actors – Grant in particular – make some great reaction faces in the background that are worth watching out for. So if you’ve only seen this movie once, I would highly recommend revisiting it.

And it’s not just Cary Grant – Rosalind Russell is absolutely fabulous in this movie. Hildy Johnson was a man in The Front Page, but when Howard Hawks heard his female secretary reading the lines during auditions, he thought they sounded great coming from a woman and decided to turn Hildy into Walter’s ex-wife. It would have been nice if they could have changed one of the main characters into a woman without making her automatically romantically involved with the other main character, but we can’t have everything. Many actresses were considered but ended up either turning it down or being too expensive to hire. Russell knew she was not a top choice and was apparently very insecure about that, but she had no reason to be because she was perfect. All the reporters in the movie talk ridiculously fast, but she leaves them in the dust and makes it look easy. It took me many takes just to quote part of one of her many rapid monologues at the end of last episode without tripping over my words; I don’t know how she did it. And while she’s talking a mile a minute, she’s also portraying an incredibly layered and nuanced character. The wonderful character actors playing the other reporters do a great job of conveying that they have embraced the cold, detached mindset of caring more about the scoop than the story itself. Hildy shares this to a certain extent, but she hasn’t completely lost her sense of empathy the way they have. She fits in with the guys, but she’s also better than them, both as a journalist and as a human being, without seeming too perfect to be realistic, which is an incredibly complex and difficult balance to strike, but again, Rosalind Russell nails it. Much as I love Grant’s performance, Russell is really the glue that holds the whole thing together, and she commits to that role completely.

Hildy is such a strong character that I’m always disappointed when she goes back to Walter at the end. She is clearly a much better match with him than with Bruce, whose slow, deliberate speech contrasts rather jarringly with Hildy and Walter’s snappy patter. But Walter has learned exactly zero lessons by the end of the movie, and there is no reason to believe that any of the problems with their first marriage will ever be resolved. Throughout the movie, Hildy is torn between wanting the domestic life of Bruce’s wife and the more hectic life of a newspaper reporter that still has a hold on her. When Walter tells her she can’t quit because she’s a newspaperman, she replies that that’s why she’s leaving, so she can be a woman. But as much as she complains about it, she makes it pretty clear that she does love being a reporter. I think there is a part of her that genuinely likes the idea of settling down as a housewife, but it seems like the main reason she wants to do that is because society is telling her that’s what women are supposed to do. So I’m very glad the movie doesn’t make her marry Bruce. I also recognize that at the time it was rather radical to suggest that a woman should pursue a career in something other than homemaking if she wants to, let alone suggest that she doesn’t have to completely give up the idea of having a husband to do so. In 1940 it was highly unusual to show a man wanting his wife to also have a career like Walter does. So from that perspective it is kind of nice to see them get back together. But at the same time, he treats her pretty terribly, and it kind of feels like it’s saying that a career gal should be happy with any man she can manage to get, regardless of how slimy he is. Not that Hildy doesn’t also treat Walter pretty terribly too. I guess they show their affection by hurling insults at each other, which is a type of relationship that makes no sense to me, but they seem to be on the same page about it. Still, I would love to see Hildy walk out on both Walter and Bruce like the strong, independent woman she is. At least the movie makes it clear that, despite its title, she is nobody’s assistant, or “girl Friday.”

The progressive for 1940 but doesn’t quite work now theme extends beyond feminism. Besides the Walter/Hildy/Bruce love triangle, the other main storyline in the movie involves a man named Earl Williams, played by John Qualen, who is about to be hanged for killing a policeman, despite some legitimate questions regarding his sanity. Walter wants Hildy to do one final interview with Earl to show that he definitely wasn’t responsible for his actions, and that he’s being strategically executed a few days before an election so the incumbent sheriff and mayor will look tough on crime and win. Most of the reporters don’t seem to care, asking the sheriff if he can move the execution up a few hours so it can make their morning editions. The sheriff refuses, but it is very clear that he could not care less about upholding the law, and same with the mayor, because when a messenger from the governor arrives with a reprieve, they try to bribe him to leave and come back later so they can still execute Williams and pretend the reprieve arrived too late. And it’s not just the politicians who are corrupt. Hildy bribes a prison guard twice: first to get an interview with Earl Williams, and then to find out how he managed to get a gun and escape. Then when Hildy and Walter find Williams, they hide him, not because they think he’s innocent and want to save him, but because they want to be able to turn him in after they’ve written the story of how they captured him. The movie’s statements about the way American society treats working-class people on the fringes, like Earl, and the way the criminal justice system is easily manipulated for political or financial gain, are honestly still pretty accurate, for the most part. But in a bizarre twist, Walter tells Bruce and Hildy that the policeman Earl shot was black, and that the politicians are trying to get votes from black people by executing his white killer, which is just, so completely backwards from how anything actually works that it kind of detracts from the legitimate points the movie does make. Everything about this story just screams late 1930s/early 1940s, from the characters’ world views to the costumes to the current event references, which makes sense given when the movie was made, but is completely inconsistent with the written prologue at the beginning, which states: “It all happened in the dark ages of the newspaper game – when to a reporter getting that story justified anything short of murder. Incidentally, you will see in this picture no resemblance to the men and women of the press today. Ready? Well, once upon a time—” It’s like, nice try, but in 1940 you can’t pretend this is set in a bygone era and then talk about Hitler and the European war. I don’t think they were really fooling anyone, but at least this allowed the filmmakers to get away with criticizing journalists without getting sued or censored.

Speaking of being censored, one of the few female characters in this movie, Mollie Malloy (played by Helen Mack), kind of seems like she’s supposed to be a prostitute, but of course they weren’t allowed to say that so it’s not super clear. What we do know is that she befriended Earl Williams shortly before he was arrested and has visited him in jail, and that the press has been inaccurately representing the nature of Earl and Mollie’s relationship. I don’t know if it was partly because of the Hays Code that they specifically state that Earl and Mollie haven’t slept together, but regardless of the reason, I’m always a fan of platonic male/female friendship. And the way the movie shows that they care about each other deeply in a non-sexual way, while portraying the reporters as wrong for sexualizing their relationship, feels almost like it’s saying “asexual rights” and we love to see it. We don’t really know what’s going to happen to Earl and Mollie after the events of the film, but I hope that Earl gets the mental health care he needs – he won’t because it’s 1940 but we can pretend – and that Mollie fully recovers from jumping out of the window – we know she’s alive but not how badly she’s hurt – and that they remain close friends.

While this movie touches on a lot of dark themes, overall the tone is lighthearted. It feels like it’s exposing the world for the hellscape that it is and laughing at it. And while some of its attitudes feel very outdated and problematic, that mood is still relatable. His Girl Friday is hectic and chaotic and screwball, but it manages to remain at least somewhat grounded and real. So watching it can feel like either escaping from the real world or looking into a mirror held up to the real world, depending on what the viewer chooses to focus on. This makes it an appropriate movie to watch in many different moods, which helps explain why I revisit it so often. That and the incredible fast-talking performances that I’m still in awe of. And, of course, Cary Grant’s presence always helps.

Thank you for listening to me discuss another of my most frequently rewatched movies. Next up is the fourth and longest movie I watched 22 times in 20 years, which is also from the 1940s, so stay tuned for another oldie. It is also probably the most disturbing movie on this list, just to warn anyone who may be watching along. As always, I will leave you with a quote from that next movie: “Are you suggesting that this is a knife I hold in my hand?”

#his girl friday #cary grant #rosalind russell #howard hawks #the rewatch rewind

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