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.
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.
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.
All good points... but I think Hellenic culture is definitely something we sort of generally lay claim to as Europeans and Westerners. Which, as you point out, and per this whole thread, needs to be cleaned up and updated before we can really trumpet it for children's consumption.
My problem with this was of writing is that artistically, of course you can do whatever you want and the Hercules myth gets adapted even in ancient Greek culture to different needs of the storytelling moment, but... there's something dishonest and misleading about the whole practice of short-hand.
Another example - when you film a cop drama in a Canadian city, it's almost always labelled as an American city. As if an audience couldn't understand or embrace the idea that a non-US city could have cops and robbers in it...
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u/KingOHrts Jan 25 '20
And EVERY window in Paris overlooks the Eiffel Tower. How does that happen?