Great stuff. Just as an aside, didn't Sydney Lumet recant some of his socialist ideas in recent decades? I seem to recall that.
The interesting thing about this, from vaguely remembering seeing this as a child on telly, is that the movie is made for reasonably intelligent children so that they see what kind of thinking is being approved, and the concept that's being approved is sealed with the emotional stamp that you mention re. moral feeling. From then on, after watching that, you know where your moral feeling is supposed to go, because you want to AVOID being like the racist boor, the over-fussy objectivist, etc. You want to think of yourself as the Fonda guy.
It's purely an indoctrination into taking the Other's side.
The evil of it is that as a child you trustingly just assume that this is the word from adults and that this is how you're SUPPOSED to think in order to be a good person. You don't realize that it's an alien reprogramming of your mind AWAY from the thinking native to your people and culture.
And the hook is just that you want to be a good person and you want to be a reaasonable person.
Great stuff. Just as an aside, didn't Sydney Lumet recant some of his socialist ideas in recent decades? I seem to recall that.
The interesting thing about this, from vaguely remembering seeing this as a child on telly, is that the movie is made for reasonably intelligent children so that they see what kind of thinking is being approved, and the concept that's being approved is sealed with the emotional stamp that you mention re. moral feeling. From then on, after watching that, you know where your moral feeling is supposed to go, because you want to AVOID being like the racist boor, the over-fussy objectivist, etc. You want to think of yourself as the Fonda guy.
It's purely an indoctrination into taking the Other's side.
The evil of it is that as a child you trustingly just assume that this is the word from adults and that this is how you're SUPPOSED to think in order to be a good person. You don't realize that it's an alien reprogramming of your mind AWAY from the thinking native to your people and culture.
And the hook is just that you want to be a good person and you want to be a reaasonable person.
Pure evil.