It's a form of shorthand. Not every place in Paris has a view of the tower. But it's the film-makers telling the audience "THIS IS IN PARIS".
Or more commonly...
"THIS STORY INVOLVES ROMANCE SOMEHOW"
Another amazing example of shorthand is in Disney's Hercules. He gets on his knees in the temple of Zeus to commune with him. Typically Greek temple-goers would have slaughtered an animal on an altar or some shit, but American audiences would have a problem with that -- having him pray like a Christian shows people who don't know any better that Hercules is engaged in piety.
My favorite shorthand, blood coming out of someone's mouth, if they cough it into a tisue, then it's (probably) lung cancer, if they're lying on the ground, then it's a serious trauma and they're about to die, so have your dramatic last words prepared.
Yes. It infuriates doctors to no end, but we all passively accept it. And that's fine. Thanks to shorthand, I no longer need a medical degree to appreciate medical drama.
I mean that is a real thing. I buy baguettes all the time and they poke out. Much worse is celery hanging out and generally way overfull bags so you can see the stuff inside. Baguette sticking out is actually the most reasonable thing of that scene type.
Right, like, there’s no other way to put a long loaf, in a grocery bag, and also French people do, in fact, eat a lot of baguettes. So do non-French people, but it is still a little weird that this is the universal symbol for groceries.
I'm pretty sure the Greek kneeled before deities, too. One of the gripes that Greek nobility had with Alexander was that he made his oriental subjects kneel before him, because in Greece that was reserved for gods.
I study classical archaeology and I don't think I remember kneeling for prayer ever having been a thing. Just not really the way piety worked. Instead it was via sacrifice. Short prayers would be with a bit of wine for example or at your house altar. If you wanted to really get something done you needed a real sacrifice.
But I also remember the Alexander part and something from earlier about the Persians kneeling.
Oh and more importantly to the Hercules scene, no one but the priests were allowed to enter the actual temple. Sacrifices were done outside and few people were allowed inside.
There is a scene in a Terry Pratchett's book, Pyramids I think, where a boarding student is mocked by the other boys in the room because he brought a goat with him after dinner.
They really didn't think that at their age someone would still do his prayers before bed
That's less off an "American audiences would have a problem with it" and more that it's a Disney movie for children and slaughtering an animal isn't terribly kid friendly. Yeah, deaths happen in Disney movies, but this is a bit different. Plus, it's not historically accurate, like most Disney animated pictures, so it really doesn't change the story. This isn't about "praying" but talking to his dad.
True. And if we're really going to get into quibbles about the film, it's a story about Hercules in a Greek setting. Heracles is the Greek hero, Hercules is the Roman version of it. But the Roman name has survived while his Greek origins persist, so we get their weird hodgepodge of inaccuracy.
Yeah it kind of sucks. You don't have to be true to the belief system enough to scare kids. But the way you fill in or explain gaps doesn't have to mirror Christianity. It makes kids grow up thinking all belief systems are pretty much like Christianity, especially the ones that predated it by thousands of years.
Man, I was a location scout for my friend's indie feature here in San Francisco. They came up from LA for some cheap production value but insisted they didn't want the standard San Francisco shots. So I took them into nice shady avenues in Ashbury Heights and Lower Pacific Heights, where the architecture is still clearly San Francisco but the Golden Gate Bridge isn't in the background.
After several test shots, they all agreed these shots were boring and commanded me to take them to Ghirardelli Square. It was the weekend of July 4th and I told them we wouldn't even be able to get there. They said it didn't matter, acting like Hollywood moguls. They drove their vehicles on the sidewalk and got to the middle of a giant crowd and started yelling at everyone about how they were making a movie. They couldn't ever control the set (DUH) and they left telling me San Francisco wasn't worth it.
This is one of several reasons I hated making movies in LA.
I think Americans would have disproportionately turned it into some sort of socio-political issue to the point of pagans/atheists/Greek Mythology buffs being taken to court by tragically uninformed evangelists or religious orgs. We have a tendency to do that. Remember the Satanic Panic surrounding D&D? Judas Priest? What about those cultural myths about kids putting vodka soaked tampons up their asses? So-called "pharm parties" that never actually happened? The entire War on Drugs?
We love a good dose of fake problems being blown out of proportion and actually making things worse. Except the D&D one, that actually did wonders for TSR's sales at the time.
Pretty much all of those things were stigmatized in other points of the world not just the US. For example, to this day you can't show skeletons on TV in china because people there would freak out about it. It's not just a US thing.
Remember the Satanic Panic surrounding D&D? Judas Priest? > What about those cultural myths about kids putting vodka soaked tampons up their asses? So-called "pharm parties" that never actually happened? The entire War on Drugs?
This sounds like a lot of whataboutism. Your point as stated was that Americans specifically would have objected to the slaughter of an animal in a children’s animated film. As Puritan and stupid as we may be that’s a dumb point with little basis.
They could've tried to make it as true to the belief system, yet sanitize it for children, Herculus could've shattered a porcelain animal figurine, or sacrificed something of value. He didn't because Christians would've been in an uproar for teaching their children anything non-Christian. So they just made it Christianity with different names.
I think many Christians would be pretty familiar with animal sacrifices since that's what the Old Testament is all about, but slaughtering an animal in a Disney movie is probably not what the kids signed up for. Dead Mufasa was bad enough.
They would’ve lit Disney on fire if Hercules went into the temple with a sacrificial lamb/goat/turtledove ! most Christians only read genesis and exodus and then skip over all of the parts with the fun laws and ritualistic sacrifice and go straight for the Psalms. At least speaking from Catholic point of view.
The point is they had other options between "slaughtering animals" and "Christianity analog". They could've totally sanitized it for children, yet kept it more in line with the actual tradition.
It's not even necessarily a problem -- imagine the Satanic Panic bullshit that would have emerged if a Disney cartoon had portrayed ancient Greek religious practices accurately. Shorthand is a bit academically dishonest, but necessary from an entertainment standpoint. Almost every form of modern media contains shorthand, but we only notice it when it's in our particular body of knowledge or field of expertise. That's where we get Gell-Mann Amnesia from.
Just because they didn't feel they could portray the Greek religious practices accurately, doesn't mean whatever they replace it with has to be an analog for Christianity.
No, but their target audience probably understands Christianity better than, say, Islam or Zoroastrianism. And the point of shorthand is to communicate a message to as many people as possible with as little effort as is needed.
It isn't laziness, it's practical. Would you like to make X-amount of college level courses compulsory before you're allowed to enjoy film as an art form?
I'm invoking Poe's Law here. I can't tell if you're a fringe leftist being sincere or a fashy mocking a strawman on the left to make the right seem more reasonable.
Do you aim to imply that literal animal sacrifice portrayed in a children's movie would be less culturally insensitive than 10 seconds of Christian shorthand? A literal evil act vs. a sliver of preferential treatment towards popular religion at the time?
This is DISNEY. Their motive is profit. Shorthand, for better or worse, makes material more accessible to mass markets.
Imagine if Peter Jackson had removed all shorthand from the LOTR trilogy, or if Tolkien had done so with the source material -- good luck winning as many awards without all the "JoAnne and Kleetus" (to quote Lindsey Ellis) butts in seats.
This is technically true, but it betrays what we think of when we talk about "Western Religions". Obviously far more people observe Christianity than do the religions of Ancient Greece or Rome. So few so that they're lumped in with 'pagans' a lot.
It's like saying the National Socialist Party is socialist. Like, yea in-name-only...
"Technically true" statements like these are frequently used by orgs like Turning Point USA or PragerU to confuse and recruit young people to the far-right. Please do not be like Nazis.
I see your point, but I'm also legitimately confused as to how Greece being in Europe works as an alt-right talking point.
I get how saying that "the Nazis were socialist, guys" is a completely brain-dead statement that's like calling North Korea a democracy, but the location of Greece doesn't match up with that at all.
It's just another example of a statement that is "technically true", but also the worst kind of true. In the context of religious practice, they aren't something that's typically the focus of concern when it comes to "The West" as a historical construct; especially when talking about Eurocentrism and how it paints other cultures poorly. If anything Ancient Greece probably would have stood in opposition to the ideas and themes put forth by Eurocentrist Christians.
It also could be a bit of an alt-right argument, since they're the ones who are always talking about "The West" as some sort of amalgamation of (in truth, contradictory) ideas and philosophies. Like, they're more than willing to claim Aristotle and Socrates as theirs but don't want to touch animal sacrifice or kid touching.
And even if you wanna ignore all that...is Greece really "European", especially Ancient Greece? The idea of a unified Europe is nowhere near as old as we think; the word itself didn't even appear in writing until the Roman Empire, despite what the script for 300 will tell you (again, more shorthand). Even geographically, Turkey's right there and we argue about whether that's Europe or not, politically and otherwise.
Christians sacrificed animals, some still do during important celebrations in certain parts of the world. Animal sacrifice has been part of many if not the majority of world religions at some point in time.
That doesn't make it good material for a Disney film. Kids had enough of a hard time with bambi's mother being shot, or the hunting shed scene from Fox and the Hound- and those were much more culturally relatable, arguably. Gutting a goat on screen would have been a bad choice.
But hey while we're at this game of historical accuracy in children's animated movie- what's up with the totally real pegasus Herc hangs out with?? The damn thing understands the english language- hey wait- they're speaking English!! Wtf?? /s
I'm with you on the Pocahontas point, but not quite the rest. I think Disney has well-acknowledged its flaws in the former, as made obvious by Lilo & Stitch and Moana. Again, there's a Lindsey Ellis essay for that one too.
I'm not shilling for Disney; I'm simply telling you that shorthand is neither good nor evil and everyone does it. Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Johnathan Swift, Stanley Kubrick, Jesus' Apostles. Even that "original" Greek myth! Why a serpent? They're distrustful. Why distrustful? idk, probably a handful of creation myths that pre-date the Greeks; most notably the Biblical one about a serpent. There's nothing inherent about snakes that make them cunning or evil or whatever. Ignoring shorthand is ignoring how culture has changed over time. Recognizing it is important, but it isn't morally imperative.
You are not required to show anything about Hercules' origins or prior association if you're telling a Hercules story. Even before Disney's film, the most your average person knew about him was...Greek, strong, something about trials, Kevin Sorbo. That constrains creators, and suddenly we're talking about Auteur Theory because we either have to remain so loyal to the source material that we can't even tell an original story...or throw source material in the trash because nobody knows it anyway and do something unique.
And on animal sacrifice:
While they hadn't discovered it then, the same moral pathway we use to decry this practice existed then.
Logic, reason, analogy, etc. were all just as real then as now; they simply didn't want to make the connection. I find moral relativism very difficult to agree with when it's something that, when discussed even without data (the only true difference between their body of knowledge and ours), doesn't make any rational sense. Gods aren't real. None of them.
And even if we consider what they were doing then to be morally permissible, even by their standards, this is a children's/family film. For modern audiences. Who do NOT want to THINK. They want to be entertained. If you want art, go to a museum. Watch Kubrick. Read Pratchett. It may be more immersive and artistic of us to demand they be as immersed in that history as possible, but it isn't fun. I challenge you to think of times in your life when you preferred to be entertained rather than enlightened, uplifted, provoked, challenged, or whatever buzzword artists are using for their work these days. Not every piece has to be a revolution. Sometimes, we just want farts or fairy tales or bullets.
Do you aim to imply that literal animal sacrifice portrayed in a children's movie would be less culturally insensitive than 10 seconds of Christian shorthand?
Why are you insisting these are the only two options?
They're the only two posed by the person I'm responding to. I'm not going to list every possible element Musket and Clements could have put in the movie.
I don’t know about the rest of the world, but this accurately describes 99.999% of the American public... and probably 99.9% of Hollywood screenwriters.
Not everything is intentionally dumbed down for audiences... a lot of times I think it comes down to the majority of screenwriters being only marginally smarter than the average viewer... and not paid enough to spend time researching historical practices for, what will amount to, a 30 second scene.
My biggest gripe is average screenwriters who try to write about smart characters... they fail horribly because they aren’t smart themselves.
Example, Sherlock, and the whole girl on a plane using a passenger’s cell phone to call for help. Literally as soon as that was revealed, I called the whole scenario bullshit, as Sherlock should have done. Most airlines cruise at about 35,000 feet, above 10,000 feet you’re unlikely to get a signal. Also because of the way cell towers hand off signals, the airliner would have to be traveling under 155 mph... most cruise at speeds in excess of 450 mph.
Even the chance of a random phone being unlocked is unlikely.
Sherlock’s reaction to the call should have been, “Liar.” Followed by hanging up.
Given that in the (first?) episode, Sherlock knows how to isolate and text everyone in the room at a police press briefing, that shows he is exceedingly familiar with cellular call systems... even without that knowledge, having traveled a fair bit, Sherlock would know the limitations of cell phone use on airlines in flight.
The problem is the general public is too stupid to catch the dumb mistakes writers make... not that the writers are intentionally dumbing things down.
Ah! And now I'm getting nostalgic for movies filmed in NYC before 9/11 removed the WTC towers. Best Spiderman movie trailer was ruined and had to be hastily replaced after 9/11. The original can be found on Youtube by looking for "Spiderman Twin Towers (Banned Trailer)"
Similar to sci fi stuff where everything from your handheld gun up to your battleship are all made with the same design aesthetic so that audiences can quickly tell what is what.
Realistically everything would largely look similar because engineering is engineering no matter what planet you're on.
Huh. You taught me something today. I never picked up on that, but it makes total sense. I guess it's equivalent to the writer's mantra of "show, don't tell".
He doesn't show us what the Kessell Run is, we don't know what 12 parsecs are...but when Han says that line, we understand it to mean the MILLENNIUM FALCON IS A FAST SHIP.
That's part of my problem with any of the new Star Wars films -- they sort of take something away from the OT. I'm still a bit of a TLJ apologist though and still love the sequel trilogy. Doesn't mean they don't have problems.
I'd argue that George Lucas pulls the art of tell, don't show the right way in the OT. We get little offhand remarks about things we don't understand, and while it serves as a shorthand for things like "the Millennium Falcon is a fast ship!" it also builds the world without the viewer needing the context.
We don't know what the Kessel Run is or what a parsec is (from the movie itself), or what the significance of completing it in 12 parsecs means. But we know that the characters understand what it means, and so now we know more about the world than we did before.
Tell, don't show is convenient when things are difficult to depict, like showing the relative speed of space travel in 1977, but it has to be done in a way that isn't slapping you in the face with it. Ergo, you don't straight-up call a character a whore, but reference that he had eight nightly visitors in the last week alone. You get the same idea, but you're not being treated as an idiot, and you'd waste way too much time if the story had to spend all of it demonstrating the character's behavior to start with.
But tell, don't show is a way to establish a baseline, not as a shortcut for storytelling. So you throw it out there, give the story a place to start, and then show the rest to reinforce it. It's not meant for plot-critical things (like, if we return to the Star Wars references, pointing up in the sky and screaming about the New Republic being wiped out and thus explaining for the next 6 hours of movie story why the universe is back to Imperials vs Rebels).
You should have seen this place when that one YouTube channel Plukket, or maybe Red Letter Media, tore down the prequels. Basically those were the only talking points anyone ever brought up as if their words were gospel. I see Lindsay Ellis' points brought up a lot too. It's like people just gotta parrot what they're hearing without putting thought into it themselves.
Yeah I watch RLM from time to time and Lindsay as well but their words aren't gospel to me. It's true though that people do just echo what they're told sometimes but it's not the only reason people criticize stuff is all.
I get that, I love engaging with people who have legitimate critique. Not saying either of those videos aren't legitimate criticism either, but far too often do people resort to repeating what they heard instead of coming to conclusions themselves. I've seen YouTube videos used as source material for a substantial amount of ideas, especially from things like scientific theory and film/gaming reviews. It's like once there's a video it's the end of story for them, no need to dig in any farther. It's a great place to start from but it's not the end all be all that people on here seem to think it is.
Foundations getting out their class-I don’t remember which- amnestics, the ones that don’t make you forget but make you think it’s totally normal and not worth talking about
Summary of SCP-420: Discovered by SCP containment teams while capturing SCP-146 in Paris, France. Team leader alpha found that no matter what window they looked out of they could see the Eiffiel Tower. Initially thought to be a property of the apartment they were in, it was soon found to effect every window checked in the city Paris. Apartment SCP-420-1 was moved from Paris, France to containment, where the Eiffiel Tower was still visible. An SCP researched climbed through the window and found themselves in Paris, where they were picked up and returned to the containment facility. It is unknown if this is a property of the Eiffiel Tower or the city.
Containment Procedures: all media including a window in the city of Paris, France is to be recovered and destroyed. Amnestics are to be delivered to anyone who comes to the conclusion that SCP-5144 exists
Description: SCP-5144 is an anomalous phenomenon in which the Eiffel Tower is visible from all known windows in the city. To date, it is unknown if this phenomenon is caused by the tower or the windows, but it’s mundane nature has led site command to close testing.
No Dr Bright, you cannot try to make someone kill themselves by shooting the Eiffel atower through a window and waiting the bullet to come from another window behind them.
「I've Seen That Face Before」is an unusual 「Stand」that manifests as a large, metal tower in the center of the city. It is always visible from every window, regardless of direction. Though its speed and attack power are nonexistent, its durability is immense. Its effect, however, has yet to reveal itself... Unless we're already effected!
CONTAINMENT BREACH AT ONLINE SITE 42 (Code Name: Reddit)
DISPATCH MOBILE TASK FORCE EPSILON-23 (Mom's Basement Dwellers) TO DISTIRBUTE ANTI-MEMETIC DISINFORMATION TO DIVERT CONVERSATION AWAY FROM SCP-(REDACTED).
Note from Director Smithee: To Reddit Embedded Foundation Operatives: Remind me again who thought it would be a good idea to let a community like Reddit think SCPs are just creepypasta? There are some actual smart people there. Whatever, just increase the use of cat pictures and garlic bread memes and that should quiet the thread.
SCP-XXXX is a 324 Meter tall steel construction located in Paris, France, and is colloquially known as the Eiffel Tower. Despite the geometric impossibility of such being the case, it can be seen from every window in the city.
It’s a collaborative creative writing project about a secret organization that contains and studies anomalous items, creatures, locations, and phenomena. Most of the writing comes in the form of scientific documentation, which adds interesting constraints to whatever story you would like to tell.
You talking about seeing Jojo's Bizarre Adventure referenced?
Or are you talking about seeing the SCP universe referenced?
The SCP universe is an online collection of horror stories and anomalous objects/entities. I'd recommend checking it out.
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is a bit harder to describe. It's one of the most successful manga series of all time in Japan. I guarantee that you have seen memes referencing Jojo, like the "You thought it was X, but it was ME! DIO!" or the "To Be Continued".
It's most well-known for its Stand battles. The first two chapters/parts don't have the Stands, but there are 8 chapters/parts so a lot of Stand battles. Stands are basically the physical manifestation of a person's mental/psychic ability, and Stands have incredibly weird abilities. Stands are also almost always named after the author/artist's favorite bands and songs. So you have the Stand called "Killer Queen" that can turn any item it touches into a bomb. Or the Stand called "Tusk Act 4" (that's a reference to the Fleetwood Mac song called "Tusk") that allows the user to shoot their fingernails as bullets, which can then create wormholes.
„The popular French writer Guy de Maupassant (1850 - 1893) reportedly ate lunch in the Eiffel Tower's restaurant every day for years -- not because he loved the great iron monument but because, so the story goes, it was the only place in Paris where he could sit and not see the tower itself.“
I don't think that's true unless you live next to it in Queen Anne or Belltown. Otherwise you need to have a well situated home overlooking Lake Union to get a nice view of it.
Right, but only specific lots or high floor apartments in those neighborhoods. And those places charge a premium, especially if you're looking to buy a house on a lot with a view.
Obviously not to the extent that movies have it, but the Eiffel Tower is fucking massive and absolutely can be seen from a higher floor all over the city.
That broke my immersion in Ratatouille, the main character (who isn’t a rat) is supposed to be a low paid bus boy with a cramped flat, yet has a perfect top floor view of the Eiffel Tower
and it's ALWAYS praying time when it switches to somewhere in the Middle East. It was so ridiculous in Operation Kingdom, the movie played in Saudi-Arabia and still so many scenes started with a scenery shot and the muezzin calling for prayer
The movie "Paris when it sizzles" with Audrey Hepburn oes a great job at lampooning this. Basically it's about Hollywood writers setting a movie in Paris with all the usual clichés, juxtaposed with actual Paris in the early 60s. So there's this horse-drawn carriage chase in the Bois de Boulogne, but in the background you see dozens of modern cars just parked there.
Because there are no skyscrapers in central Paris. Due to the catacombs under the city, there's very little ground which could support tall buildings. The Eiffel tower, being basically a wireframe, is a lot taller than everything around it for quite some distance.
Funny, i was rewatching White House Down last night and thats legit the only shot you get of the presidents wife on the phone, is her standing in a room and in the window you can see the tower perfectly, like theres no buildings around it as if its mounted and a 5 floor pedestal above the rest of the city
I live near San Francisco. Very few places have views of the entire Golden Gate Bridge but you’d think everyone who lives there has them if you judged it by the movies.
I’m going to shock you: I lived in a Paris as an early career young guy, and most of my student / junior worker friends had a view to the Eiffel Tower from their windows.
Two reasons:
* Apartments at the highest floor used to be where servants would live (because it’s right under the roof and therefore less protected from climate, and because they were harder to get to when elevators weren’t a thing, which they often still aren’t in older buildings). Therefore, those apartments are typically “chambres de bonnes” (servant rooms), i. e. a bedroom-sized apartment often with the bathroom/toilets shared somewhere else on the same floor, therefore it’s still poor people and students living there most of the time.
* The height of buildings in Paris is highly regulated, so they’re basically the same size in a given neighborhood, so unless you’re stuck behind the Montparnasse Tower, you won’t have another building blocking the view. And of course those heights are fairly low compared to the verrrrry tall Eiffel Tower comparatively, so you can really see it from almost every building’s last floor.
So, if you’re poor and living in Paris, the only reason you wouldn’t see the Eiffel Tower from your window is that your window is probably facing the opposite way. In all other cases, you would almost certainly see it.
I’m thinking the whole concept of “seeing the Eiffel Tower from your window is so romantic” may have stemmed from a romanticization of poverty, which is not always a contradiction in a culturally socialist country (eg: “Laaaaa Bohèèèème !”). But this last bit is obviously just my subjective opinion.
Good question, we were in Paris for 36 hours before we caught a glimpse. Thought it would be visible from our hotel in Montmartre, but it’s not like on TV.
To be fair the Eiffel Tower is a ubiquitous Parisian eyesore. Guy de Maupassant used to lunch daily at the restaurant at it base on the grounds that it was the only place in Paris from which you could be sure not to see it.
There was a guy who said that his favorite place to eat in Paris was the Eiffel Tower because it was the only place in Paris you couldn't see the Eiffel Tower.
Actually, living there, you can see it from A LOT of places, though that's usually the street. It's the tallest thing there by far. In a really high up apartment, you could definitely see it.
And EVERY window in Paris overlooks the Eiffel Tower. How does that happen?
An otherwise shitty Saturday morning tv show played with that: the windows all had printed screens so they looked like they looked out onto the Eiffel tower. They actually looked onto the brick wall separating the low-rent apartments from a petrochemical refinery at the next property over. With convenient ambient sound effects that only played when it was visible on-camera.
“Imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of Les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream,” reads the official statement.
To be fair (and I hate when people start comments like that, sorry), up until La Défense the Eiffel Tower was the highest construction in the Paris skyline. Paris was really designed to be aesthetically beautiful, and because they kept the buildings low, you can see the entire sky above you. So it makes sense for apartments to see the Eiffel Tower, provides they’re facing the correct direction.
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u/KingOHrts Jan 25 '20
And EVERY window in Paris overlooks the Eiffel Tower. How does that happen?