6 ms·

This is a good nutshell reminder of an apparent key fact of existence. This has been known and lamented for more than 2,000 years. Read Ecclesiastes. Ever

This is a good nutshell reminder of an apparent key fact of existence. This has been known and lamented for more than 2,000 years. Read Ecclesiastes. Everything is an iteration of what went before. Things only seem new because our memories are short. No one remembers what happened last week, let alone last year. We forget everything and our children remember even less. ("Nothing New Under the Sun: A Blunt Paraphrase of Ecclesiastes", Adam S. Miller)

smacktoward 8y ago
The last few minutes of Martin Scorsese's (wildly uneven, but still) Gangs of New York found a good way to tell the same story 100% visually. The movie starts with a huge street fight between the followers of the two characters at the heart of its story, Bill the Butcher and "Priest" Vallon, battling over who will control the streets of 19th-century New York. Then at the end we see their tombstones, and in a sped-up time-lapse we see those stones get overgrown and forgotten as the modern city of New York we know today grows up around them, fading out on one last shot of the completely overgrown headstones -- with the Twin Towers looming over them, as if to say, this too shall pass. You can watch the ending here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-8Lu7MRjQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-8Lu7MRjQs It's a really good little example of visual storytelling.
- cableshaft 8y ago
  That was a great ending. Also brings up an interesting thought. If something that gruesome and important to New York's history has been largely forgotten after 150 years, then there will eventually come a time when 9/11 (your mention of the Twin Towers made me think of it) is all but forgotten by society and its residents (assuming New York still exists as a city in hundreds of years) and some future filmmaker could do a similar timelapse starting from where the Gangs of New York timelapse ended.
  - smacktoward 8y ago
    Arguably, that process has already started. To anyone who was born after 9/11 (and that was almost 18 years ago, so there are people born after 9/11 who are almost old enough to vote!), that event is already kind of an abstraction, in much the same way that the attack on Pearl Harbor is to almost everyone reading this. The passing of an event out of living memory is the first stage of that kind of transition from experience into legend. And also, if you're interested in this sort of thing, I recommend subscribing to the blog Ephemeral New York, which highlights all sorts of still-existing traces of New York Cities long gone: https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/ https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/
    - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
      I've been seeing a lot of headlines over the past ten or so years on how this is happening to the Holocaust, which freaks me the hell out, because my grandmother's second husband was a survivor. To think nobody could meet anyone like him anymore is disturbing.
      - hopler 8y ago
        I long for the day when there is no genocide in living memory.
        eli_gottlieb 8y ago
        To talk of "living memory" leaves the future uncontrolled.
    - cableshaft 8y ago
      Yeah. My grandfather passed at the beginning of this year at the age of 94. He fought in World War 2 in Italy (landed in Anzio), lost one of his fingers in the war, and earned a Purple Heart, along with several other medals. We don't have too many more years to go before we no longer have anyone alive who fought in that war to get direct experiences from. He was also on the cover of Life on their March 27, 1944 issue. He's the third one back getting off the ship: https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images1/1/0816/15/wwii-life-magazine-dated-march-27_1_73974f6b872486b89bf467206fe9f9de.jpg https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images1/1/0816/15/wwii-li... "Every day, memories of World War II—its sights and sounds, its terrors and triumphs—disappear. Yielding to the inalterable process of aging, the men and women who fought and won the great conflict are now in their late 80s and 90s. They are dying quickly—according to US Department of Veterans Affairs statistics, 496,777 of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II are alive in 2018." And 348 are dying each day, or about 127,000 a year. Looks like we have about 10 more years at the most before they're all gone. (Obviously this is US centric, I'm not sure what the global numbers are, also the 10 years is based on the provided graph in the link. The numbers they provided suggest they'll all be dead in about 4 more years). https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/wwii-veteran-statistics https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/wwii-veteran-statistic...
- saltcured 8y ago
  Always thought it strange that it didn't include a montage of West Side Story and countless other gangs who know nothing about the previous ones... ;-)
- 1_over_n 8y ago
  Apocalypto, for me, has a similar feeling provoked by the end - it almost makes the whole film both profound and purposeless.

smacktoward 8y ago

The last few minutes of Martin Scorsese's (wildly uneven, but still) Gangs of New York found a good way to tell the same story 100% visually. The movie starts with a huge street fight between the followers of the two characters at the heart of its story, Bill the Butcher and "Priest" Vallon, battling over who will control the streets of 19th-century New York. Then at the end we see their tombstones, and in a sped-up time-lapse we see those stones get overgrown and forgotten as the modern city of New York we know today grows up around them, fading out on one last shot of the completely overgrown headstones -- with the Twin Towers looming over them, as if to say, this too shall pass. You can watch the ending here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-8Lu7MRjQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-8Lu7MRjQs It's a really good little example of visual storytelling.

cableshaft 8y ago
That was a great ending. Also brings up an interesting thought. If something that gruesome and important to New York's history has been largely forgotten after 150 years, then there will eventually come a time when 9/11 (your mention of the Twin Towers made me think of it) is all but forgotten by society and its residents (assuming New York still exists as a city in hundreds of years) and some future filmmaker could do a similar timelapse starting from where the Gangs of New York timelapse ended.
- smacktoward 8y ago
  Arguably, that process has already started. To anyone who was born after 9/11 (and that was almost 18 years ago, so there are people born after 9/11 who are almost old enough to vote!), that event is already kind of an abstraction, in much the same way that the attack on Pearl Harbor is to almost everyone reading this. The passing of an event out of living memory is the first stage of that kind of transition from experience into legend. And also, if you're interested in this sort of thing, I recommend subscribing to the blog Ephemeral New York, which highlights all sorts of still-existing traces of New York Cities long gone: https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/ https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/
  - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
    I've been seeing a lot of headlines over the past ten or so years on how this is happening to the Holocaust, which freaks me the hell out, because my grandmother's second husband was a survivor. To think nobody could meet anyone like him anymore is disturbing.
    - hopler 8y ago
      I long for the day when there is no genocide in living memory.
      - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
        To talk of "living memory" leaves the future uncontrolled.
  - cableshaft 8y ago
    Yeah. My grandfather passed at the beginning of this year at the age of 94. He fought in World War 2 in Italy (landed in Anzio), lost one of his fingers in the war, and earned a Purple Heart, along with several other medals. We don't have too many more years to go before we no longer have anyone alive who fought in that war to get direct experiences from. He was also on the cover of Life on their March 27, 1944 issue. He's the third one back getting off the ship: https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images1/1/0816/15/wwii-life-magazine-dated-march-27_1_73974f6b872486b89bf467206fe9f9de.jpg https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images1/1/0816/15/wwii-li... "Every day, memories of World War II—its sights and sounds, its terrors and triumphs—disappear. Yielding to the inalterable process of aging, the men and women who fought and won the great conflict are now in their late 80s and 90s. They are dying quickly—according to US Department of Veterans Affairs statistics, 496,777 of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II are alive in 2018." And 348 are dying each day, or about 127,000 a year. Looks like we have about 10 more years at the most before they're all gone. (Obviously this is US centric, I'm not sure what the global numbers are, also the 10 years is based on the provided graph in the link. The numbers they provided suggest they'll all be dead in about 4 more years). https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/wwii-veteran-statistics https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/wwii-veteran-statistic...
saltcured 8y ago
Always thought it strange that it didn't include a montage of West Side Story and countless other gangs who know nothing about the previous ones... ;-)
1_over_n 8y ago
Apocalypto, for me, has a similar feeling provoked by the end - it almost makes the whole film both profound and purposeless.