MovieChat Forums > The Legend of Tarzan (2016) Discussion > Perpetuates myths of slavery and colonia...

Perpetuates myths of slavery and colonialism


Leopold II and the Belgians were ultimately responsible for the atrocities that went on in the Congo. However Hollywood likes to perpetuate the myth that Africans were not the least bit culpable for slavery and the atrocities of colonialism. A lot of the human rights abuses that went on there and elsewhere in colonial Africa were commited by African henchmen who eagerly did the bidding of their colonial overlords and sometimes even took the initiative in gathering up forced labor for them. The movie itself is entertaining but far from great and nowhere near historically accurate.

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[deleted]

You're such a hypocrite. Who cares? That's the way it really was!! SO BORING if everything is perpetually POLITICALLY CORRECT. I probably wouldn't go.

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Am not being "politically correct." It facts. You can't just put most of the blame or even a little blame on what happen to the africans on the africans.

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Good show but these chaps are a lost cause. They've been raised to be butt-hurt that racism is wrong, etc. etc.

What's missing in movies is same as in society: a good sense of work ethic and living up to ideals.

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Do you mean racism or bigotry or both are wrong? The two words do not mean the same thing despite the frequent misuse of the former in the modern English language.

Requiescat in pace, Krystle Papile. I'll always miss you. Justice was finally served.

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well you are politically moronic (PM)-so i would say its a wash

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And your a white supremacist troll.

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There's lots of them on IMDB unfortunately. This was what I was afraid would happen once this film garnered more attention.

What's missing in movies is same as in society: a good sense of work ethic and living up to ideals.

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There's lots of them on IMDB unfortunately. This was what I was afraid would happen once this film garnered more attention. 


I know. there is lot of them lieing and trying to find any excuse to make africa and africans the bad guys. When history shows what group of people are really the most vicioussious. Caucasoids.

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And your a white supremacist troll.


Joss Whedon would be horrified at the thought of someone who doesn't know the difference between "your" and "you are" using his name.




Don't give me songs
Give me something to sing about

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Read about a black African named Tippu Tib. He was Swahili, and traded in slaves. He also owned around 10,000 slaves who worked his cloves plantation. he died in 1905, believe it or not. I say this, not to excuse white or Arab involvement in the horrible trade, but to illustrate that all peoples have participated in horrible, vile crimes against others. Don't try to white-wash anyone's sins.

"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's LIVING!"
Captain Augustus McCrae

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I Never said only white people own slaves. I only said how they differ and how whites and arabs did most of the slaving.

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He also doesn't believe there are any civil wars in Africa so he's not the most intelligent individual around.

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and how whites


Which whites? What country was the leading Slave raiding nation of the Atlantic Slave trade?




Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?

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Mylesag, where is Magnum2895-3 being PC in his post?! He's actually being the opposite because he is just stating the truth.





Deckard B26354, I'm filed and monitored

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You're speaking to an empty room, my friend. This entire thread is from IMDb and hasn't been visited since. Plus, Mylesag wasn't responding to Magnum, but to a post that was deleted.

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Thanks beauq81 (404). ;-)

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*You're

I mean Africans literally sold African slaves to Americans and Europeans. They are the ones who introduced the slave trade to whites. While most slaves in Africa had the hope of regaining their rights and families, that was not a guarantee.

Black slaves were also treated much better than white slaves in America. Yeah it may come as a big shock to you, but white slaves outnumbered black slaves in America. Irish slaves were indentured and got their freedom after 7 years, so they were very often worked to death. Black slaves were seen as more valuable and treated better so their health didn't decline.

I'd also like to point out that white people were the first to abolish slavery, while slavery still goes on in other parts of the world, perpetuated by other races.

The more you know.

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Most of what you written are complete lies. What is with you white supremacists denying your ancestors actions. The white slaves were treated better then the black slaves? Africans introduce the world to the slave trade?! That all you guys know how to do is lie to feel better about what really occurred. Just the fact you said irish slaves were free to be let go after 7 years made my point of chattel slavery. The black slaves didnt get to be free at all. Not just them but their children and their children children.

And the main reason slavery was abolish was to weaken the Southerners not because lincoln or the north had any sympathy for blacks.

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Yeah look at Africa now with Civil Wars all over the continent. Black Africans are doing soooooo well on their own now.

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What civil wars?

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African World War, Google It

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Name 3 current civil wars CURRENTLY happening in africa. And dont make them up too.

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Somalia of course as per usual; Nigeria & their Boko Haram problem; then there's the Mali-Algeria-Libya triangle of infighting; Central African Republic, South Sudan and the DRC conflicts continue; Burundi is on the cusp. Is that enough?

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Somalia is not having a civil war.
boko haram is a jihadist terrorist group. not a civil war.
Central African Republic, South Sudan and the DRC are not having a war, but having to deal with preventing the LRA (A terrorist group) from rising again.
Mali, Algeria is not having a civil war with libiya. Their trying to keep libiyan smugglers out mali.
And burundi is the only african nation you list that is on the cusp of a civil war. But it is not a civil war CURRENTLY!

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Um, a war against fellow citizens within ones own borders is a civil war regardless of what the government calls those they are fighting (of course they refer to them as terrorists).

You should also let Wikipedia know they need to update the following pages as there's not actually a civil war occurring apparently ...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_Civil_War

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_African_Republic_Civil_War_(2012?present)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Civil_War_(2014?present)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Mali_conflict



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whatever liar. The wiki pages shows your lieing. Am done debating with you white supremacists. You guys will never see your ignorance.

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The old 'stop showing me facts', followed by childish name calling, and finally giving up because you have no intelligent retort to give once proven completely wrong. You can now crawl back into the hole from whence you came. Thanks for playing though.

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[deleted]

Well you sure got owned there champ.

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Look at the USA. People getting killed daily by police, terrorists and homeless people on every corner in the cities. Not to mention plenty of xenophobes and racists supporting one of the candidates for the President. We are not perfect either.

It makes no sense to keep blaming people for stuff that happened centuries ago. Africans made mistakes, Europeans made mistakes, English colonials made mistakes. Why do white people feel the need to make ante-bellum slavery appear better than it was? It was TERRIBLE for the enslaved. Regardless of whether there was violence or not, no human being wants to feel like they are a thing or an animal to be owned by another human being.

It was also bad for the indentured servants but at least they were freed after 7 years (or however long their contract was) and their children were not AUTOMATICALLY enslaved. Accept that it was horrible and it was the U..S.A's past. Who cares whose grandfathers ran those plantations? Those people are dead now. Nobody here today is responsible for what happened. However, we who are alive today need to make sure that fairness and justice happen NOW. We can't change the past so stop feeling guilty about it and trying to make it seem like white Americans/Europeans weren't responsible for the African slave trade. For sure, some Africans were involved but whites were responsible for what happened in the USA once they sold the those people here. Not all whites were slaveholders, and we know that. Detach yourself from the past and worry about yourself and your family NOW.

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Thank you.

People denying racism and slavery is the reason we're having problems in this country today. If more people would accept what happened and is happening we can be able to talk about it truthfully and find solutions for them.

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That and people who pretend it's still 1963 and those don't want to admit that however well intentioned, many of the Great Society programs have, in fact, destroyed Black communities rather than helped them.

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Look at the USA. People getting killed daily by police,

Mostly White people as it happens. Indeed, Whites are far more likely to be shot when being arrested than Blacks.

Far more people are murdered by non-coppers than are killed by cops, though. According to the CDC, in 2014 there were 15,809 homicides compared to 515 caused by legal intervention.
terrorists

Perhaps a hundred people might be killed in a bad year by terrorists in the US.
plenty of xenophobes and racists supporting one of the candidates for the President.

I agree, the bigots supporting Clinton are quite worrying. One of her strongest supporting (and supported) groups has encouraged calls for the death of policemen based on continued lies about police involved shootings.
Why do white people feel the need to make ante-bellum slavery appear better than it was?

Because no one like to think of themselves or their ancestors as villains. One notices that this tends to be a regional and generational thing.

Mind you, some modern activists have a vested interest in claiming that a typical plantation closely resembled Mauthausen or Auschwitz-Birkenau. Bad as many were, and many were horrific, few came remotely close - if for no other reason than that it would be uneconomic. Some slaves were no worse treated than free farmhands and domestic servants. Most, however, were and unlike free workers, they had no legal options to change their situations.

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Oh right, the humane fun version of slavery....

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And of course Africans enslaved by Africans could keep their religion - so long as it was the same as their masters. I'm quite sure the Muslims who were some of the leading slave owners and traders were models of religious tolerance, just as their Boka Haram successors are today.

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You do realize that most slaves that working in the colonies were caught and sold to the colonists by other africans right? This was both because of Africans that made they living as slave traders and because Africa were filled with tribes that were constantly at war with each other were a lot of prisoners were often taken and sold off.

And yes the movie as very far from being historically accurate, even to a point that some of the historical features added started to annoy me (like Leon Rom, a real person but very different from the movies portrayal).

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Many of the people who post here should read more. Slavery existed in Africa long before contact with Europeans and in some places still exists today. Even before the Belgians arrived in the scene the Congo had been controlled by various warlords who would routinely kidnap members of rival tribes for use as slaves. They were the ones who supplied the Europeans. Read "King Leopolds ghost" for a well researched book on Leopold and the Congo free state and you will see that a lot of the atrocities commited on Africans were perpetrated by other Africans working for the Belgians.

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Human beings always been violent to each other. Fighting with who's the closest to us. This been going through out all time. White people been fighting each other and the rest of the world since the begining of time. The point is people are violent to each other but the atrocities of slavery, colonialism, racism, and genocides of Millions of humans are most of the times perpetrated by white people.

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That's not entirely true - people of all ethnicity are as violent towards each other and other ethnicity's as white people. White people don't hold the special global mean-ness record or anything like that.

Actually, the whole black and white thing is kind of silly because no humans are white and no humans are black, we're all just a variety of flesh tones. So let's just say Caucasian, Asian and Negroid people, to break the species down into broad later evolutionary groups.

Caucasian's aren't meaner than Asians or Negroids - but Caucasians do tend to colonise and spread themselves further and more quickly than the other groups. This is likely in built into the mindset because of environmental pressure from the ongoing ice age.

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people of all ethinicitys are as violent as each other? how many countries has africa colonised, enslaved, dropped a nuclear bomb on, how many africans are committing terrorist actions on us soil?, how many jews did the africans kill?, did we invade india like the british? did we colonise countries like was done to south africa and steal gold and diamonds? of all the wars that have taken place on this earth, how many is africa responsible for?...........im waiting.

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how many countries has africa colonised . . .

All of Africa for a start. At some point or another virtually every African ethnicity has conquered and/or been conquered by another African ethnicity. The Zulu Wars, for instance, were a clash of colonizing peoples fighting over teh same land.

As for not expanding out of Africa, that certainly was not due to any special virtue on Africans part. It was strictly because of technological backwardness. compared to Europe.
how many africans are committing terrorist actions on us soil?,

Well, it just happens that it's much easier for Africans to commit terrorist acts in Africa. Ever hear of Boka Haram? The activities of Al Qaeda and Daesh affiliated groups in both East and West Africa are an example.
of all the wars that have taken place on this earth, how many is africa responsible for?

Quite a few actually - including some going on now.

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"The point is people are violent to each other but the atrocities of slavery, colonialism, racism, and genocides of Millions of humans are most of the times perpetrated by white people."

You say that as if it covers all of human history. It doesn't. You ignore all the history of the ancient world as well as that of Asia, China, and South America. Slavery, massacre, colonialism, the systematic subjugation of others went on everywhere. Attila. Darius. Alexander. Even the Old Testament features Joshua and his men slaughtering men, women and children without mercy to secure the "promised land", rather than offering their labor and knowledge to the pre-existing residents of towns like Jericho in an effort to co-exist.

The difference is that white-promoted slavery in the form you're referencing happened in the age of the printing press, the Enlightenment, Industrial age tech, and other factors that allowed people to examine it, replace it, and ultimately, to condemn it. And, we have records of it that name names.

I have at least two Scottish military ancestors who were defeated by the English in the 1600s, and sold as slaves to an English aristocrat who had an ironworks in Massachusetts. They were the lucky ones because they survived a 300 mile march south to England and about a year of imprisonment first. They were sold for 19 shillings each. I couldn't find out if they were married in Scotland - they were officers, so probably old enough (over 18) to have had wives. If they did they never saw them or any children they may have had again. Meanwhile back in Scotland the wives of officers were left to starve, then arrested for stealing food or being indigent, and sold in turn as slaves (9 shillings each) to sugar plantations in the Caribbean islands. No indenture, no end to their toil, no protection from rape, assuming they survived the sea voyage in the first place.

The two ancestors who ended up in MA worked at least 10 years, then the ironworks either closed or burned down. They and a number of other same-age men and women, possibly with similar stories about how they ended up in the American colonies, did a deal with Native Americans for Block Island, Rhode Island. The ex-slaves boated themselves and some livestock over and made a little town, never to return to the mainland permanently again. Although that didn't keep their children and grandchildren from being swindled out of their land rights a generation later by English swindlers backed by the Crown. My two ancestors are part of the reason slavery was made a permanent condition extending in perpetuity to all the children of enslaved people; white slaves and indentured servants were too hard to find when they ran away amongst all the other white people pouring in. And they ran away a lot.

Everybody has dirty laundry when it comes to slavery. Native Americans, you name it. Everyone made up the same kinds of excuses to justify it. Pick your era, there it is. And don't tell me the Africans who sold fellow Africans to foreign traders thought "someday" they might have a chance to find their way home again. They knew perfectly well that once you sold someone onto those ships, they were gone for good.

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the atrocities of slavery, colonialism, racism, and genocides of Millions of humans are most of the times perpetrated by white people.

Slavery is far from unique to "white" people. It was almost universal in civilizations in both old and new worlds. Europeans were perhaps only unique in the distances they transported slaves to trade. They were also unique in that they not only abolished slavery first, but suppressed the slave trade whenever they found it. It still survives, but not in the Western World.

Colonialism is a Marxist term of art to describe Western capitalism. Obviously, the West is "guilty" of Western capitalism. If you mean placing people under a different nation's rule or displacing people through mass population movements, then the West is no more guilty of it than others - just happened to be more successful more recently.

Racism is unfortunately also almost universal and also something Westerners have taken the lead in fighting.

Finally, genocide. While White people, i.e. the Nazis, perhaps committed the worst single example, they've not been alone. Asians, Africans, Native Americans all have committed genocides at various times. They've also been leaders in large scale democides. Few Westerners, for instance, can compare with the death tolls of Mao Tse Tung and Genghis Khan.

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Tamerlane made pyramids out of the skulls of those conquered by his empire. Atrocities are in no way strictly the province of those of European descent.

Requiescat in pace, Krystle Papile. I'll always miss you. Justice was finally served.

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Atrocities are in no way strictly the province of those of European descent.



But that would mean criticizing 'peoples of color'--that's totally Taboo in the world of PC.




Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?

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"Atrocities are in no way strictly the province of those of European descent."

nickm2: "But that would mean criticizing 'peoples of color'--that's totally Taboo in the world of PC."

Except several of us just did that exact thing. In a truly PC world people of color have to take their legitimate hits along with everyone else. Pay attention. If you do you'll learn that political correctness means addressing people as they prefer to be addressed and taking care to include everyone. Which means being honest about the bad as well as the good.

The first part is just common courtesy. The second part is about acting like a real American. Why this is so hard for some people that they can't stop whining about it says a lot about them.

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A lot of the human rights abuses that went on there and elsewhere in colonial Africa were commited by African henchmen who eagerly did the bidding of their colonial overlords

You can always find henchmen. Some do it from conviction, others do it for advantage, and many do it because it's better (in the short run) to be a Kapo than go straight into the gas chambers.

I won't claim that the pre-colonial peoples of the Congo were saints, or the post-colonial ones for that matter, but before Leopold took over, the place was not a big concentration camp. Even by the standards of other Imperialist powers, the Congo was a hellhole and caused a great deal of criticism in London and paris.

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To the OP: TRUE. Most blacks were enslaved and sold by other blacks and arabs, and 1/3 of Africans were slaves before the first whites ever arrived. That isn't part of the liberal 'white guilt' narrative that is being shoved down our throats though.

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Not true at all.

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denial and deflection, say blacks were responsible for slavery to deflect from the fact their ancestors were downright racist *beep* then come back with, "white people ended slavery" i dont remember slavery having to be outlawed in africa.

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Whether you recall it or not, it was European colonial powers that ended slavery where ever they found it, including most of Africa - West Africa in particular.

As for my ancestors being racist - no doubt some of them were. I dare say many of your ancestors had some rather ethnocentric notions as well. I wouldn't be surprised if some were slave traders and some abolitionists. I do know that many or most were effectively slaves, though, going back to before Roman times..

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imd beans you speak utter *beep* slavery was wrong, regardless of who did it, i suppose it was blacks that owned the thousands of ships that took the slaves away, or blacks that threw hundreds of sick africans into the sea or dumped them if the seas got too rough, women children, i suppose it was blacks drinkin lemonade in those southern states, whilst their peers roasted in the sun pickin cotton to build americas economy so people could make a fortune to leave their kids whilst those that truly earned it were beaten and lynched, yeah white folk of the past were saints, us black folk should be grateful, i mean we were living in perfect synch with the land no polution, recycling, all the stuff that we are told to do now, oh yeah also brought guns and wiped out elephants, hunted lions to stick their heads on your walls, yeah this is all black peoples fault why didnt i see this before!

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IMDbeans writes: "That isn't part of the liberal 'white guilt' narrative that is being shoved down our throats though.'

Since when is correcting historical coverups and bringing facts out into the light of day considered shoving anything down anyone's throats? Liberal white guilt doesn't exist; a drive for restorative justice, factual historical data, and the desire to drive a stake through the heart of Jim Crow - once and for all - does.

Everyone knows how Africans enslaved one another. Everyone knows the Arabs made it big business. And the Romans. And the Persians. And the Native Americans. Everyone knows that pretty much everyone enslaved someone throughout history, in the Bible, you name it. So what? That doesn't mean we don't deal with the fallout of our own history here in our own country.


To wrench this back on topic, I found the history of this place in this time fascinating, not least because of the role of SLJ's character, who certainly never made it into my history book in school. Understanding how modern nations function or don't function begins with the history of who had control over their natural resources. Colonialism was all about extracting a colony's most precious resources at the cheapest cost and leaving nothing sustainable behind. This reverberates into the present. I appreciate that the filmmakers actually introduced some historical context.

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I still do struggle with your timeline, even if it was made with well intentions.

Many (especially white supremacist) circles like to propagate the idea on how European slave trade only started during the Age of Discovery. The problem with that is obvious, and you even name them: the Roman Empire. Correct me, if I'm wrong, but the supposed establishment of Rome predates the Persians attacking the Greek city states. Every civilization had enslaved and colonized, no surprises there. However, for a very long time, all these civilizations had only known time restricted indentured servitude as a form of slavery. No civilization has dragged various ethnicities across oceans to their colonies before the Spaniards (and to a smaller extent, the Romans).

One of the hypocritical arguments state how their own kin enslaved them for us, which is true, in part. What they willfully omit is how that was the upgraded British method of the Roman divide and conquer. Almost all cultural, religious and ethnic conflicts in the developing world can be traced back to a colonizer, who appointed a minority as a co-ruler, or has drawn borders on the map with a ruler (pun intended). There's a reason, why Nubia has a Latin name from Roman times, just as much how educated people know that the Barbary pirates were subjugates of the Ottoman Empire, the very factor that forced the start of the Age of Discovery. Yes, kids need to know, why in many places the official language in an African country is an European one, or how black people got to live in the Bahamas. As you said, it's not white guilt, rather the more we know. Just like how Belgians don't like to address, what their ancestors did or why you can see Leopold's statues.

I live in the Gordius Apartment Complex, my interior designer was M.C. Esher.

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Really? Because the facts you just recited were in my "liberal" history texts in college. In the 1970s. If by "white guilt" you're really talking about white privilege, the two aren't the same and you'd do well to study the latter. It's not about guilt, it's about seeing how things are connected and how that affects individuals' experiences.

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[deleted]

[deleted]

Are you freaking kidding me? Think you need to read up on some history. King Leopold killed in the millions. In fact some estimates mention that the population dropped to 50% by the time he had give up on the Congo. The country was basically plundered and the population were mutilated for no reason at all.

In fact many of the Castles and historic landmarks of Belgium were made by money through the plundering of the Congo. They forgot to mention that in the textual narration in the beginning of the film.

Don't even start to compare the mass slavery and plundering that the Europeans did to some local stuff that happened. By the way, even after independence, Belgium together with the CIA helped to destabilize the country and kill the main democratic leader for fear of him being too "lefty".

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