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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2009 6:46:24 GMT
The little boys who played with these toys in the 1980's are the same ones using the real things now.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 29, 2009 6:54:52 GMT
Creepy ~~ it definitely looks like desert warfare.
I've said for years that my generation was prepped to go out against a demonized Asian enemy.
There we sat as kids, cheering furiously as the Japanese soldiers ran shrieking in agony out of the jungle after being hit with flamethrowers. That was real footage patched into the war movies, too, not something faked on a set. Flash forward @10 years, when it was time to send the flower of our democratic youth against the communists in the jungles of Vietnam, where "those people" did not have "the same respect for human life" as our noble selves.
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Post by hwinpp on May 29, 2009 9:34:10 GMT
I just read on an interesting website that the difference between boys and men is that the toys get more expensive. The article (in English) was about a minority in China who still practiced matriarchy, link here: www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,627363,00.html The gallery here: www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-42900.htmlThat said the big difference between the Japanese and the Vietnamese is of course that the Japanese were the agressors whereas the Vietnamese were fighting for independence. Going through old photos of my mother's family I noticed one thing. None of the girls on the photos actually looked like girls. No pigtails, no dresses, no jewelry. All have their hair very short and wear boys clothes. In fact they look like boys. When I asked my mother about this she told me the photos were taken during the Japanese Time. Girls had to look like boys then. Any and every girl. I didn't ask further.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 29, 2009 14:21:47 GMT
That's a chilling story about the little girls' photos, HW.
(Just to make sure -- you did realize my last sentence was heavy sarcasm, not my actual opinion, right?)
That article about the Mosuo you have linked above is one of the most interesting things I've ever read. I didn't know about the Spiegel galleries and stories, either -- new bookmark for me!
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Post by hwinpp on Jun 1, 2009 7:46:13 GMT
Yes, I understood.
I also thought what the journalist said about the Mosuo society was very interesting. Funny how a society like that can survive, isn't it?
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 1, 2009 14:24:31 GMT
I just read the sidebar about that journalist -- he is interesting as well. The book he wrote about that culture is available in Spanish and in German. The more one reads about this culture, the more intriguing it becomes. Here is the Wikipedia article. Google mosuo for tons more info. I realize I'm on dangerous ground talking about gender roles, but did you notice in the photos that the men seem "masculine"? It's harder to tell about the women, but they're certainly wearing what we'd consider feminine-looking clothing. What I mean about the men is that their stance and gestures -- particularly in the picture of the two guys smoking -- would announce "male" to any onlooker. And the photo of the men on the dock strongly suggests that they're engaging in time-honored drugstore cowboy ogling.
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Post by hwinpp on Jun 2, 2009 7:51:38 GMT
LOL! Maybe they have to! The wiki article says the matriarchal form of the society was formed to subjugate the peasants by the (patriarchal) nobility in Mosuo society. Thank God that's one thing the communists got rid of.
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