"Little Boy" Film

[GeoBQn]

Here's a new apparently faith-based film out called "Little Boy" (executive producers include Mark Burnett and Roma Downey) about a boy who is trying to use the power of faith to bring his father home from fighting in WWII. So far, it has a 7% on Rotten Tomatoes. Secular critics are horrified at the way the film implies that a major tragedy was caused by a little boy's prayers.

Which major tragedy? Think about the film's title in a WWII history context.

http://www.avclub.com/article/little-boy-218450

The film is running a website where they ask people for what inspires them. I know that I am REALLY FUCKING INSPIRED by thousands of people getting incinerated and dying the most unnatural death possible.

30daysofinspiration.com

The Facebook page is filled with people saying how beautiful the film is, and no one asking what the hell is wrong with the filmmakers.

https://www.facebook.com/littleboymovie?fref=ts

[anjulibai]

Wow.... fundies really are fucked in the head, aren't they?

[PennySycamore]

WTF!!

I saw the movie Above and Beyond last week on TCM. After Little Boy is dropped on Hiroshima and Colonel Tibbetts is back at the base, a reporter asks how he feels. Col. Tibbetts says to the reporter "How do you think the people of Hiroshima feel?" That's pretty amazing that a film made in the early 50s could be that honest that the dropping of the Bomb was so devastating.

ETA: It's pretty ironic that the kid's dad was a POW. Some of the victims of the bomb were American POWs. I think that the POWs survived, but they still had to suffer from the bombing.

[artdecades]

It fits in with the Domionist, American Exceptionalism that fundagelicals love. Ehe nuclear bombs were ok because they saved Christian, American lives and the Japanese weren't Christian anyway so their lives mattered less. I expect nothing else from the same type of people who think the trans-atlantic slave trade and Trail of Tears brought the heathen brown people to Jesus.

[anjulibai]

My grandfather talked a few times to me about how his ship (he was a sailor in WWII) was going to be part of the invasion of Japan that was planned if the nuclear bombings failed to cause Japan to surrender.

It really was very likely that many, many Americans would have died, possibly including my grandfather, and he knew it.

That said, my grandfather still abhorred the bombings. They weren't any good choices. People were going to die, including a lot of Japanese, no matter what. The bombings are something to remember as a day when humanity failed, both in allowing WWII to happen and in not finding a way to end the war in another, less destructive way. It's something to remember and say "Never Again".

At least, that's how my grandfather felt. He certainly did not have more faith because the bombings may have saved his life.

[PennySycamore]

It fits in with the Domionist, American Exceptionalism that fundagelicals love. Ehe nuclear bombs were ok because they saved Christian, American lives and the Japanese weren't Christian anyway so their lives mattered less. I expect nothing else from the same type of people who think the trans-atlantic slave trade and Trail of Tears brought the heathen brown people to Jesus.

What's weird is that Nagasaki was a center of Christianity in Japan; in fact, Nagasaki and the surrounding area was about the only place in Japan where Christianity took hold. St Francis Xavier founded the first church there around 1549 and Christianity never completely died out despite official efforts to suppress the faith.

Christian sites in and around Nagasaki

[GeoBQn]

My grandfather talked a few times to me about how his ship (he was a sailor in WWII) was going to be part of the invasion of Japan that was planned if the nuclear bombings failed to cause Japan to surrender.

It really was very likely that many, many Americans would have died, possibly including my grandfather, and he knew it.

That said, my grandfather still abhorred the bombings. They weren't any good choices. People were going to die, including a lot of Japanese, no matter what. The bombings are something to remember as a day when humanity failed, both in allowing WWII to happen and in not finding a way to end the war in another, less destructive way. It's something to remember and say "Never Again".

At least, that's how my grandfather felt. He certainly did not have more faith because the bombings may have saved his life.

My grandfather had the same exact story. To this day, my dad gets angry when people criticize Truman for dropping the bomb. To him, it is like they are saying he shouldn't exist.

I think we can acknowledge the odd turns history takes without claiming that it was good for civilians to be massacred.

[anjulibai]

My grandfather had the same exact story. To this day, my dad gets angry when people criticize Truman for dropping the bomb. To him, it is like they are saying he shouldn't exist.

I think we can acknowledge the odd turns history takes without claiming that it was good for civilians to be massacred.

Exactly. I can't say it I am happy it happened, but I have to acknowledge that I would not be here if it had not.

Sometimes events are morally ambiguous.

[DGayle]

The bombings shouldn't have happened. Saying that being against the bombings because it means some people today wouldn't exist doesn't cut it. Think about the people who don't exist today because it did happen. People who were alive, who had the right to their lives, were killed. Are the people alive today, myself included, worth the price paid by those innocent people? We wouldn't know any different if we never existed, but do you now who does know? The people who were maimed and survived the bombings initially. The people who lost their families.

A lot of people try to justify how the war ended because all Japanese people were bad guys because a government supporting atrocities means the citizens must also support it (funny how we don't all claim personal responsibility for what our own government does overseas), but that is short-sighted. Those Japanese people who weren't involved and might not have supported the war at all were victims just as much as everyone else killed and harmed in that war.

I don't care that this probably is going to get me slammed again for being anti-something or other. It's not morally ambiguous to me. The mass-bombings of innocent civilians is never justified, even though it means some of us wouldn't be here. Our right to our lives now doesn't trump the right the people who were already alive had to theirs.

[DGayle]

I keep seeing the trailer for this movie, and have been on the fence about it. I couldn't tell for sure if it was a blatant religion movie or not, especially since it was playing with a trailer for a movie about a Christian rock band. https://www.facebook.com/officialhillsongmovie

Are these Christian movies really lucrative enough for mainstream theaters to devote screens to them?

[halcionne]

I keep seeing the trailer for this movie, and have been on the fence about it. I couldn't tell for sure if it was a blatant religion movie or not, especially since it was playing with a trailer for a movie about a Christian rock band. https://www.facebook.com/officialhillsongmovie

Are these Christian movies really lucrative enough for mainstream theaters to devote screens to them?

Mark Burnett has made a fortune in reality television and can afford to take a loss on projects that are part of his and his wife's 'ministry.'

[crazyforkate]

You have got to be effing kidding me. What idiot thought this was a good idea? And are they really going to make a lot of money from it? (Who am I kidding - fundie idiots will watch anything if you throw enough Jesus at them.)

[Burris]

I don't care that this probably is going to get me slammed again for being anti-something or other. It's not morally ambiguous to me. The mass-bombings of innocent civilians is never justified, even though it means some of us wouldn't be here. Our right to our lives now doesn't trump the right the people who were already alive had to theirs.

MY life would be so much easier if I were as simple-minded as you are, DGayle.

[DGayle]

If simple-minded is acknowledging that some people only get to be alive because others died who shouldn't have, then I'd rather be simple-minded than to be so self-centered that it doesn't matter what innocent people were bombed to make my existence possible.

[Anny Nym]

MY life would be so much easier if I were as simple-minded as you are, DGayle.

Why is @DGayle "simple-minded" ?

[Burris]

If simple-minded is acknowledging that some people only get to be alive because others died who shouldn't have, then I'd rather be simple-minded than to be so self-centered that it doesn't matter what innocent people were bombed to make my existence possible.

To be fair, I should have expanded on my problem with your view - that problem being the never ending argument: NOVA sides with those think the Nazis couldn't have developed a nuclear weapon of their own in the allotted time, but others disagree with that (including me).

This wasn't just a choice between annihilating hundreds of thousands of people with the deadliest thing humanity had ever built at that point, or a conventional ground-invasion of Japan; it could well have been the choice between fighting the ground invasion against Japan, pouring all Pacific resources into the fight, when the National Socialists finally developed the bomb: They had the technology and the know-how. So instead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki being obliterated, it could have been London or Moscow - so the ground troopers would have still died in Japan, before having procreated, but a million others would have been incinerated - which means a whole more people would have died for nothing than those who actually did,

As for your belief that wanting life is selfish - maybe you're one of the rare ones that would trade, but most people are not. Your castigating them for having working survival instincts - among the most primal drives in any person is to LIVE.

[Burris]

Why is @DGayle "simple-minded" ?

Because she is thinking in a single dimension about a world war and about how the casually map could would affect the future. It's never simple - the choice, as I see it (and likely as those who ordered the bombings saw it) was between taking Japan out of the Axis (and out of the war) and then diverting resources to preventing further German-led incursion (and, if I were right, the creation of their own nuclear weapon).

And besides that, I don't see the selfishness of living people being grateful their progenitors weren't killed before procreating.

[Mama Mia]

So the concept of the film is that a kid praying for his dad to come home led to n entire city of people being wiped out?

Wouldn't that make their audience terrified to pray for anything, ever?

Umm...Burris, I don't get that line of thought. Hitler was defeated months before the atomic bomb was dropped in Japan.

[PennySycamore]

So the concept of the film is that a kid praying for his dad to come home led to n entire city of people being wiped out?

Wouldn't that make their audience terrified to pray for anything, ever?

Umm...Burris, I don't get that line of thought. Hitler was defeated months before the atomic bomb was dropped in Japan.

I was about to same the same thing, Mamma Mia.

I can fully understand the Manhattan Project and why the Allies wanted/needed to develop the Bomb before Germany did. I must confess that I'm a bit ambivalent about the bombings. I HATE that we obliterated those cities, but I'd also hate the loss of life that would have come through with an invasion of Japan. As several writers on the threat posed by nuclear weapons have pointed out, the bombings paradoxically may have kept A-bombs and H-bombs from subsequent use. We've see how damn destructive these bombs car be and not just on a theoretical level.

[DGayle]

I didn't say I would trade, just that OUR right to our lives today doesn't mean their deaths were okay. The right to life goes to who has it first, right? This is why a pregnant woman has the right to abort, because she's got her right already, which trumps the unborn baby.

They were wrongly deprived of their lives, INNOCENT CIVILIANS, including small children. You may have no qualms or care that innocent people were killed so your family could end up on the path to you being, but not all of us are so self-centered that we can shrug our shoulders and not care that innocent people were killed so we could be alive. While I wouldn't trade, since I'm sentient now, this doesn't mean that it's right that I should be here while they were blown apart, died of cancer, lost their families so horribly that the dead ended up being the lucky people.

There are survivors of the bombings still alive today. If you were to sit down with them, could you say too bad, you're alive today (presuming you're somebody who may not be alive if the bombing hadn't happened), that's what matters, so it's a good thing their families died. I know what I'd say. I'd tell them that it's not right I'm alive today when the reason I had the chance to be born was because I had relatives spared at the expense of their innocent civilian relatives, and that it's wrong, that we can't change the past, but I am still extremely sorry, and it is still extremely wrong.

If the cost of Persons X, Y, and Z being alive in 70 years is your family being bombed now, would it be worth it? Or would you see it as a travesty that some people are alive only because of your loss?

Also, I'm sure that the bombings did have a role in stopping other bombs from being used, but if you knew that the concentration camps had in them someone who would be 10x worse than hitler and would basically bring about the end of the world, could you even remotely be okay with the cost of stopping that person being the cost of millions of innocent people? Even if you could say the deaths of those millions maybe saved many more people? Probably not, because INNOCENT PEOPLE were the price to pay. How can someone not have any qualms about that?

EVEN IF the literally only way to end the war, which was already pretty much over at that point, was to bomb INNOCENT PEOPLE, that doesn't make it a good thing, and there's nothing wrong with having qualms about what happened, acknowledging that some of our lives only exist because innocent people, including children, were murdered, and understanding that it was wrong. I guess this "simple-minded" idea is too simple to understand.

[Anny Nym]

@DGayle, there is this saying in latin "vae victis", meaning ""woe to the vanquished". That the death of innocent civilians and their sufferings afterwards (e.g. genetical mutations in japanese babies born after 45´, caused by the A-Bomb) is merely waved away and you are called "simple-minded" 70 years after, that is vae victis in it´s pure form.

To add, I don´t get the "we had to, or the N*zis would have done it" line of thought either, sorry. The timeline doesn´t match up on various points to verify it.

True that the N*zis experimented with nuclear material, also true that the us-american secret agencies got hold of some early informations -and whole scientists - who eventually did lead to the construction of the A-Bomb in the end.

However the Reich itself had neither the resources nor the scientifical know-how to construct one of their own. The Reichsatombombe is a Urban Legend, like the Alpenfestung was.

Also, one has to take the state of the war here after 43´in mind. The WW on the continent - and the fate of the Reich - was decided with the Battle of Stalingrad and the defeat of the 6th army in 1943. From this point on, everyone did know the war was practically lost (even if no-one was allowed to say it out loud). The rest was just withstanding and withdrawal. And, in the end, H.´s fatal "Nero order".

[GeoBQn]

MY life would be so much easier if I were as simple-minded as you are, DGayle.

DGayle, you were accused of being "anti-something or other" in the Chaviva thread for a reason.

[Mama Mia]

DGayle, you were accused of being "anti-something or other" in the Chaviva thread for a reason.

Wow, way to inexplicably and inexcusably slam a person! WTF does one topic have to do with the other?

[GeoBQn]

Because she was pre-emptively defending herself from being accused, as if the previous thread had people ganging up on her for no reason. There was a reason, and she never stopped to understand why.

[Burris]

So the concept of the film is that a kid praying for his dad to come home led to n entire city of people being wiped out?

Wouldn't that make their audience terrified to pray for anything, ever?

Umm...Burris, I don't get that line of thought. Hitler was defeated months before the atomic bomb was dropped in Japan.

Yes, I know: That's the primary reason for the unpopularity of my belief (I linked NOVA as well...because a lot of people think, 'Yeah, no fucking way Burris.' e.g., Anny Nym's comment.) - Berlin had fallen and Hitler was dead at the end of April. The Russians had successfully repelled German assaults and pretty much kicked ass in Stalingrad.

But some of their top people and tools were still around - they ended up being pulled over into Operation PaperClip even before the war ended, such was their knowledge and the threat they posed.

A ground war in Japan would have been perfect for them that weren't recruited or captured.

But yes, in looking at my statement, I did overstate the case for the ability of decimated Wehrmacht ground machinery to attempt additional assaults under whatever fractured leadership remained. The war was most certainly over for many of them; the losses broke some of them.)

(So yes, DGayle, I do apologize for my comment. I still don't understand why you'd begrudge people their desire to exist, however; there's no telling how things would have worked out, or how many others would have died, had the US not used their atomic bombs.)

I guess I'm just glad we never got to find out whether the German nuclear program was as advanced as some believed - especially since the reslt was so terrible when the American bombs were dropped.