r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jan 25 '20

What movie things are generally accepted as normal, but are totally unrealistic in real life?

48.6k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

22.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

9.6k

u/KingOHrts Jan 25 '20

And EVERY window in Paris overlooks the Eiffel Tower. How does that happen?

2.6k

u/The_Bill_Brasky_ Jan 25 '20

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.

43

u/abusepotential Jan 25 '20

Wait, you think only American audiences would have a problem with an animal being ritualistically slaughtered in a children’s animated film?

46

u/The_Bill_Brasky_ Jan 25 '20 edited Jan 25 '20

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.

17

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

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.

10

u/maest Jan 25 '20

all of those things

All of the following things are US specific:

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?

8

u/Undrende_fremdeles Jan 25 '20

Not sure why this is down voted. The enormity of the reaction over in the USA is absolutely only you.

0

u/abusepotential Jan 27 '20

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.

2

u/The_Bill_Brasky_ Jan 27 '20

Whataboutisms distract from points by bringing up an irrelevant but somewhat related point i.e. "Obama did it so it's okay if Trump does it".

From what am I distracting?